Hello, Rockstars and Art Lovers!
Here at Vegas Music Scene we have always been a huge fan of these two things: Freedom of Expression, and Creativity, and luckily this amazing Art Gallery in the heart of the arts district called Recycled Propaganda (I dunno, maybe you have heard of them? lol) has all of these things in spades.
I feel so incredibly honored that I got the amazing opportunity to interview the man himself, the creative genius Behind Recycled Propaganda, Artist Izaac Zevalking! He chats with VMS about his background, love of art, freedom of expression, community, and his new kid! Enjoy!
All Photo’s Courtesy of Tiffany Salerno. 🙂
This interview, recorded on April 17, 2025, at Recycled Propaganda, has been edited for length and clarity.
VMAS: First things first. Tell me about your background as an artist and how all of this came to fruition.
Izaac Zevalking: I was raised in a very artistic manner. My mum was an art teacher. My sister was—and still is—is a visual artist, and my other sister is a dancer. I grew up in a creative environment, but I also watched my mom in England try the whole “selling your art” thing and get frustrated, so I was never taught it was a viable career. It always felt more like a hobby.
I moved to the States in 2012 and got a job doing graphic and web design at Rio. After about a year, I had a real yearning to make art about social, political, or environmental issues, or anything that aroused curiosity. That is when I started Recycled Propaganda. The idea was initially T-shirts, but I reconnected with my artistic roots. I’d been very artistic until high school, then shifted into an engineering master’s degree because art sometimes frustrated me with its pace, and nothing felt that edgy in the postmodern era.
When I came to America, the politics were just different enough to make me start questioning things at a deeper level. Once you question reality, for me it becomes catharsis — getting ideas out of my head, whether through stickers, T-shirts, street art, canvas work, or murals. It’s selfish in a way; it just makes me feel better.
I did that part-time while working part-time in graphics for three to five years. Then I went full-time, and I’ve had the gallery for almost seven years now. The challenge these days is just maintaining time to be creative while the business grows around it.
VMAS: How has your art evolved and grown over the last seven years?
Izaac Zevalking: I started in 2012, so from then, it’s [been] more like 13 years [since I began]. I’ve had just this physical brick-and-mortar for seven years. Before this, I had a couple different brick-and-mortar stores, but I was mainly doing pop-up stuff. My answer to that question is gradual. So when you reflect, that’s when you’re like, wow, I’ve come a long way, but I feel in a weird way I rode the wave of the town growing, too. I think that being around these other businesses in the Arts District that are also go-getters and [that] have ambition really makes you feel like you’re doing the normal thing. I love being in that environment, and I would attribute that a lot to my recent success, but also, for me, artistically, you have to stay true to yourself and keep producing.
VMAS: Do you have a favorite artwork or project you’ve worked on?
Izaac Zevalking: No, I really don’t. Everything has its own life and evolution. Certain designs stick around and almost become more relevant, like the “Chain Migration” one I did originally in 2015. It was international news, the mural on the side of the building. I did like 20 international news interviews in a week about that one because it was the timing of when Trump first came in. Very similar to where we are right now, so certain pieces have a cyclical nature where they become relevant again [while] other ones fade into existence.
To me, it’s about getting it out of my head and letting people decide what they like and then trying to curate what I have to what people like is a big part of it, too. “USA is the Prison” was my new huge one that everybody loved this year. Your darkest times can be your most fruitful. It’s a good affirmation to anybody, artists especially. And that should make you feel better at least a little bit. When you’re in the dark, you just need to express it. Covid made me realize that. It was a very bleak time for all artists, and we already struggled just existing.
VMAS: Do you have a favorite artist or artists that inspire you? Or do you find inspiration everywhere?
Izaac Zevalking: That’s probably the number one question I get in interviews. I feel people are waiting for me to say Banksy, but I’m much more inspired by world events than I am a specific artist. If there’s any artist that I’m the most inspired by, it’s [the] law breaking graffiti, hardcore stuff that just makes you push the level of what is possible, what is legal, and what is right. In terms of stuff that looks similar to mine, I would say I have more of a relationship with it now, because I’m in that scene by meeting those people.
I met Shepard Fairey this year, and we traded pieces. Just meeting somebody that does like-minded work, even if it’s different stylistically, [it] makes you feel part of the community, and that inspires you. With somebody like him, the business side of it then inspires you, but you can become something you know, worldwide, in terms of apparel or murals, and all of that. It doesn’t have to be a singularity, you can do anything. A lot of the time, the reason I wanted to become an artist, and why being an artist turns me on. There’s no limits to it, and that’s what I love about it.
VMAS: That is definitely the hardest part because I grew up with a whole family of artists, too. Unfortunately, the world wants to squash you down your whole life and pretty much tell you that what you’re doing is stupid, saying, ‘No, it’s this. No, it’s that.’ So it’s like constantly fighting against the status quo.
Izaac Zevalking: My mom was very much liberated [in] my house [and] taught me all the art that I know, basically. Recently, [I] had a daughter, and she’s like 15 months old. I finally feel like I can relate to somebody. The Picasso quote: [“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”] It has always stuck with me. You must look at every corner with curious eyes, not because it’s your job, but because it’s who you are.
VMAS: Has your daughter taken an interest in art in any way?
Izaac Zevalking: Oh, she loves eating the markers (haha). I’ll be doing sticker pieces while looking after her, and she’ll tear them off. So, she loves tearing stickers. Some would call it a hangover, It adds texture. It’s something I couldn’t develop. I’ll even guarantee you, my mom wasn’t trying to raise me as an artist. It’s like something you do, inevitably by accident (haha). There’s no way she’s gonna look at me and see my life and see other people and be like, I don’t want to do that (haha).
VMAS: How has your artwork changed since having a child?
Izaac Zevalking: I’ve definitely done more salvage and reclamation stuff, taking the things that I have, and 3D sticking it. That’s been a big shift in my original artwork, the digital stuff. I feel like [it] is always developing more based on the zeitgeist of the social, clerical environment more so. When I’m doing the digital stuff, there was a period of trying to get it more complicated. Then, there was a period of trying to get it more simple. It’s always oscillating.
VMAS: Tell me about your general creative process.
Izaac Zevalking: Generally, I illustrate stuff and then I make stencils, [using] wheat paste, [and] visual images. Now that I’ve been doing it for so many years, those [illustrations] turn into products. I save all the stuff that I make the art with, so I have a lot of salvage and a lot of reclaimed stuff. Street signs, poker chips, dice, etc, I’ve got thousands of all of these things, dab jaws, anything that you can think of playing cards, old money, and then one day old paint brushes that you use and then one day you feel like doing something, and you go stick your old paint brushes to a piece of cardboard And you say, that’s a piece of art (haha)! So It all starts really with Illustration for my most known works. But for me, what art can be doesn’t really have those limitations, It can be anything.
VMAS: Which exhibition is currently on display and what’s next?*
*Editor’s Note: This Question was asked originally in April of 2025, So the Current Exhibitions are Called
“We Are The Sky” By Artist Laron Emcee and “The Many Faces Of” by Antone “Suneg” Gantt.
Izaac Zevalking: Initially, I opened a gallery because I couldn’t get a gallery show myself. So, [now that I] have one, I want to display all my stuff everywhere. Giving people art shows is actually more valuable than me having a space, and that clicked after I was always showing other people’s stuff. [In] my very first show, I had plastic Jesus sculptures. [I] try to curate the space by giving people opportunities. I think it’s been about the traffic we get. We get an insane amount of people that have used it. The opening weekend of the show we had 4,000 people. Those numbers were unheard of when we opened. Now that we have more of a buzz, we can start booking bigger people and then give opportunities to localize, which would feel far between.
VMAS: What are the pros and cons of the arts scene for Vegas?
Izaac Zevalking: When we first moved here, it was very kind of egalitarian but backstabbing, like everybody knew each other. There was an even keel amongst everybody, but there wasn’t necessarily this big money coming in where there was such a level of competition. There were fewer gigs, but fewer eyes still. Covid was a big boost, We had a lot of Bay Area, California people come down at that juncture. The last couple years we’ve had a big influx of art-typed people coming into town, and to me, the pro of that is raising the whole bar of the art scene. What people can expect when they come down here in terms of the skill set and how good stuff is.
The downside is [that] there’s not enough places representing [art] like mine. We’re one of the few art galleries that does art shows that are external and [don’t have] a wall hanging fee. We are doing art shows for arts sake. [The] Arts Factory has a lot of great studios in it, but generally, the art scene here is kind of by name only. You’ll find it on the streets and then in very few and far between places. That’s the con, we’ve exploded, but we haven’t exploded necessarily in the business-minded, collaboration art side.
The talent has exploded [in Las Vegas]. I have all these young kids who are crazy talented. But there’s not the money for the financing and organization at those higher levels within the low art scene here. The reason is because we don’t have that historical precedent, but if you look forward, we probably are going to be the most preeminent art scene in the world at a certain point because we’re already such a visually intense city. We have the infrastructure for it, and now we have the Arts District, everything’s snowballing. That’s the next step that we’re waiting for, is more corporatization of it.
VMAS: I was born and raised in Las Vegas. We definitely have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go at this point.
Izaac Zevalking: We’re still an incredibly, art ignorant city. People even struggle while looking on, interpreting up here a lot of the time. I always put that to it because it is visually bombarding on the Strip, you can’t grow up with the tendency to blink yourself from visual stuff. If I don’t understand it, [then I] just don’t look at it.
A more profound experience for me was over Covid going to the Strip and seeing it without people because you’re always looking at the crazy people everywhere. And you’re like, ‘What the heck?’ It blew my mind. If somebody came here now and looked at what I’m looking at, you would be like this is the craziest place in the entire world, just the architecture. It can be fake and rip off other cultures, but we still made it and learned about history. Everything was a rip-off of the previous generation.
VMAS: So knowing what you know now, and from where you’ve come, what advice would you give an artist that’s up and coming, and just figuring it out?
Izaac Zevalking: Go bigger and go bigger sooner, honestly. I always felt like I was being cautious, but the greatest things happened to me when I took those leaps of faith. [If you] don’t know how to do a mural, book a mural, and then figure it out. Have confidence in yourself, try to network and talk to other artists, but know that you want to do it and know that there’s money to be made. It’s all about persistence. People give up too easily. I still really feel like I’m just getting started, deep down in my soul, that’s what excites me about finally being here, and “being successful” is seeing what the future holds.
VMAS: So, when you’re creating whether it’s a new piece or the pieces you’ve already done, what are the goals you’ve set for yourself. What do you want the audience to take away from your art?
Izaac Zevalking: The longer I do it, the less that becomes significant. It’s all about what I need to do to maintain my own mental health in society. A lot of the time that is being relevant or people liking what you’re doing, but a lot of the time that is making something because you want to make it. That’s I think the most important lesson for artists, do what you want and people will love you for it.
For more Information about Recycled Propaganda, please visit their website: https://recycledpropaganda.com/
—-VMS xoxoxox