Layer upon layer

Andy Morton can be defined a number of ways: composer, project manager, DJ ‘Submariner’, stencil artist extraordinaire.

Andy grew up in Texas and relocated to New Zealand when he was nine years old. As a teenager, he attended Auckland Grammar School and left in sixth form to pursue a Diploma at The School of Audio Engineering (SAE).

Like his music, art started as a hobby for the keen creative.

“I had always been interested in art at school, especially stencilling, but I was never much of a ‘get a pen and draw’ kind of guy.

“I like the way I can construct [my art] beforehand and use the pieces to make the final artwork. It’s a much more controlled process.”

The images in his first collection are stratified stencils, comprising of anywhere between two and nine layers. He first finds an image he likes and scans it into the computer. From there, he determines if the image can be used as a stencil.

“It needs to be able to hold together as a stencil,” he explains. “You can’t have too many holes or pieces floating in the middle of nothing.

“Once you’ve gone through the technical side of it, you can play with the colours and what you want to put it on. Stencilling makes it a lot easier to work with different mediums because it’s easy to put your print onto a wall or any kind of crazy surface.”

Stencilling allows artists to create an image or text that can be easily reproduced. Although, Andy says the political propaganda with which the art was originally associated gave it a bad name. He prefers velvet to street walls.

Considered the father of velvet painting, Edgar Leeteg has been a huge influence to Andy.

While living in Tahiti, Leeteg was inspired to paint the beautiful women of the island but with no canvas available, he opted for velvet as his medium.

“The thing I like about working with velvet is you’re working backwards,” says Andy. “You’re starting with black and pulling the light out of the darkness.”

Combining his two passions, a major career highlight for Andy was creating Tha Feelstyle’s Break It To Pieces album cover, which won the Best Album Cover at the Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards in 2005.

“We decided early on that we wanted to use a velvet painting on the album cover so we spent a lot of time researching Charles McPhee who was known particularly known for his work painting Samoans.”

Andy has been writing music for over 20 years, earning him the production name Submariner.

“In my teens, I was always interested in synthesisers and the idea of a one-man-band – something I picked up watching music videos.”

Andy’s day job in music and sound production has seen him working with big names like Che Fu, Bic Runga and Fat Freddy’s Drop, just to name a few. He also composed the soundtrack for Sione’s Wedding.

Not only an accomplished producer, engineer, arranger and remixer, you can also catch Andy at The Turnaround, a monthly club night that's been turning the tables for six years.

In November last year, Andy was one of four artists to feature in the UnCommon Company: Under the Radar Practitioners gallery.

For an artist who’s main motivation was to “decorate my house”, Andy says this first show was definitely a highlight of his career to date.

“The show was a collection of work I’ve done over the past five years. It was nice to get it out of my system so I can start again.”