If you've seen tiny paintings of robots at coffee shops and galleries around town, you've seen Nick Kuszyk's work.
Now, his eye-popping robots are making the leap to the glossy pages of a children's book.
His first children's book, "R. Robot Saves Lunch," was published last week by Penguin. He returns to Richmond this week to sign copies at Chop Suey Books and show off his latest work in a new group show with Ed Trask and Chris Milk at Red Door Gallery.
Kuszyk started painting robots 10 years ago as an art student at VCU and never stopped.
"It was easy and fun to do," he says. "I started as a way to not think about the subject matter, which is like graffiti style. It becomes an icon. And then it snowballed."
The 31-year-old artist started selling the quirky, iconic robots at apartment art shows around Richmond for $1-3 per piece. The apartment art shows were a success, which eventually led to coffee shops and then a group show at Artspace called "Ground Level Railroad" that attracted over a 1,000 people.
Kuszyk moved to Brooklyn in 2005 where he continued to show his work on the street, exhibit in coffee shops and galleries and has even been rumored to have worked with the notorious graffiti artist Banksy. (Which, when we asked about it, got a "No comment").
He also made T-shirts with his artwork on them. And it was the T-shirt that caught the eye of a publisher at the Penguin Young Readers group.
"One of my friends was teaching Pilates," Kuszyk says. His friend was wearing the T-shirt when the publisher noticed it and asked about the artist.
"She talked me up and gave me the publisher's email. I always wanted to write children's books -- as I imagine everybody would like to write a children's book," Kuszyk says with a laugh. He sent the publisher an email and eventually, the storyline and subject idea for "R. Robot Saves Lunch" was born.
"I sent them a ton of ideas," Kuszyk says. "But they appreciated the weird ones. So I just wrote this weird story."
"R. Robot" has Kuszyk's signature style of quirky, personality-driven robots powered by minute and moving parts. In the story, it's lunch time at the robot factory and R. Robot needs to serve a whole cafeteria of hungry robots. Overall, the process took four years, from the intial pitch to "R. Robot" hitting bookshelves last week.
He doesn't like to have his picture taken (so no author photo?), but he did send us this self-portrait, where he appears with a scruffy beard, and, of course, robots.
These days, Kuszyk continues to draw robots with no plans to stop.
"It's feast or famine," he says. "Sometimes I don't sell anything for two months. But I love it."
Another "R. Robot" book is in the works and when he returns to New York, he'll be showing at Cinders Gallery in Brooklyn.
But first, you can catch him at Chop Suey Books this Saturday signing copies of "R. Robot." And next week, he'll be in a new show at Red Door with notable names such as Ed Trask, Dalek, Brent Loverde, Brad Bacon, Chip7, and El Kamino.
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