Clay Hickson is back with a bunch of great new work

“All hail Hickson!” were the words with which we finished our last post about Chicago-based illustrator Clay Hickson back in 2012, and while it doesn’t give us much to improve on, the expression certainly still seems to fit our feelings for him. Since we last checked in, Clay has developed his practice immeasurably, stepping away from pencils to embrace Adobe Illustrator and printmaking all the more enthusiastically, and making a heap of new work in the process. He’s stuck to his old penchant for pop surrealist scenes and funny-shaped girl parts – he loves a boob and a sausage, does Clay – but the calibre of the work has improved in a striking way.

He has also set up Tan & Loose Press, an independent publisher specialising in limited edition artists’ books and prints, which operates out of an old funeral home in Chicago using a Risograph RP 3700. It also gives Clay the leverage to work with some of the best upcoming illustrators out there – from Jordy Van Den Nieuwendijk to Jiro Bevis and Hisashi Okawa – to create a band of talented, like-minded people equipped with the necessary tools to fire printed matter around the world.