David Schwartz
I was born in New York and attended art school in Minneapolis; I dropped out in my second year to pursue music. Shortly after I had the opportunity to be mentored by the musical icon Prince to record, perform, design, tour and write songs with him at Paisley Park. I'm featured on 2 Prince albums and a few music videos one of which The Daisy Chain, where I'm featured on the chorus, a rap verse and playing basketball with Prince (article on my years with Prince).
In 2002, I relocated to Atlanta 2002-2010, started a design company with a focus on album covers and branding for many artists and labels. I moved to Los Angeles 2010-2020, working on social campaigns and creative for Entertainment Brands. I've been an Art Director and Designer on projects for Netflix, Marvel, Beats By Dre, Paris Hilton, Akon, Gucci Mane and many more.
I was such a fan of Hip Hop album covers in the 80s/90s that I started my career as a designer and got to work with hundreds of artists on their album covers. After 20 years of mainly creating digital work for others I'm now creating physical work and my nostalgia for that period influences my art.
The journey to make this piece from an idea to reality was exciting, gut wrenching, educational, and risky but made me feel alive to create in a new way. The first sculpture in this series I dubbed the Rhyme Capsule.
This first piece in the
I was born in New York and attended art school in Minneapolis; I dropped out in my second year to pursue music. Shortly after I had the opportunity to be mentored by the musical icon Prince to record, perform, design, tour and write songs with him at Paisley Park. I'm featured on 2 Prince albums and a few music videos one of which The Daisy Chain, where I'm featured on the chorus, a rap verse and playing basketball with Prince (article on my years with Prince).
In 2002, I relocated to Atlanta 2002-2010, started a design company with a focus on album covers and branding for many artists and labels. I moved to Los Angeles 2010-2020, working on social campaigns and creative for Entertainment Brands. I've been an Art Director and Designer on projects for Netflix, Marvel, Beats By Dre, Paris Hilton, Akon, Gucci Mane and many more.
I was such a fan of Hip Hop album covers in the 80s/90s that I started my career as a designer and got to work with hundreds of artists on their album covers. After 20 years of mainly creating digital work for others I'm now creating physical work and my nostalgia for that period influences my art.
The journey to make this piece from an idea to reality was exciting, gut wrenching, educational, and risky but made me feel alive to create in a new way. The first sculpture in this series I dubbed the Rhyme Capsule.
This first piece in the
Rhyme Capsule series featured a marble podium figure presenting the boombox over his head. The base figure is made of solid Marble and is the result of a tandem collaboration between myself and artist Isaac Madrid. The entire sculpture weighs 1,200lbs (the boombox alone weighs 188lbs) and took 15 months to complete.
The boombox itself was made with 96 pieces of high clarity 100% lead free optic crystal. Permanently sealed inside the capsule walls are 180 authentic Hip Hop tapes released between 1980-2000 which coincides with the cassette boombox era. Included are albums that inspired me personally, some that influenced the masses, and some that "heads" can all agree are classics. A few of the tapes have become collectors items and rare to come by; almost all are albums but a few singles are in the mix.
There will only be a few variations of the crystal boombox made but this first particular piece with the marble figure base, as a set, was the first and an original 1-of-1.
