Born in the basement of his family home in Littleton, Colorado, in 1977, Ravi Zupa was raised in an environment where, in his words, “art was an ordinary part of daily life — no different from eating breakfast.” The PureHoney artist of the month recalls that he and his siblings had access as children “to a wide range of materials and tools, along with complete freedom to explore any medium that interested us.”
Supervision was minimal. “I remember cutting my finger while using a bandsaw alone when I was eight,” Zupa says. “It seems strange now, but I was never seriously injured, and I deeply value what I learned during that period. We were constantly making, experimenting, and creating.”
The self-taught high school dropout is now an established artist and illustrator with a thriving practice and credits including a movie poster for “One Battle After Another,” director Paul Thomas Anderson’s contender for Best Picture at this month’s Academy Awards.
Zupa’s work suggests kinship with the ideals, if not the methods, of the would-be revolutionaries in “One Battle.” A quick survey reveals an intense absorption with themes of violence and cultural unrest. The movie poster is a woodcut-style rendering of actress Teyana Taylor’s very pregnant radical, Perfidia, firing off a machine gun, shell casings flying.
In other pieces, Zupa uses the words of hip-hoppers and folk singers alike — J Dilla, A Tribe Called Quest, Woody Guthrie —- as jumping-off points to critique police brutality and fascism. “We are surrounded by violence, and we should do everything in our power to reduce it,” he says. “I feel deeply troubled by violence. It’s something we need to talk about and consider seriously.”
His work has been paired in exhibitions with that of art-world luminaries such as Shepard Fairey and Andy Warhol for its similar immediate impact and alignment with values and ideas. At “Power of the People: Art and Democracy,” a Museum of Fine Arts Boston exhibit in 2024-2025, the theme was work that can change minds and move people to act. And there was Zupa’s black-and-white 2015 screen print, “An Extremely Old Problem,” featuring a bare skeleton beaten to the ground by another skeleton in a police uniform, under a scarlet headline quoting Dilla: “Who protects me from you?” The piece has been accepted into MFA Boston’s permanent collection.
If Zupa is having a moment right now, it’s a culmination of habits that date back to the carpentry mishap: A child of artists, Zupa has always taken his life choices into his own hands. “Whenever I wanted to learn something new — film and video editing, ceramics, welding — I could find someone to give me a brief overview,” he says, “and then I would set out to accomplish specific goals on my own.”
The self-sufficiency is buttressed by a voracious reading habit. “Franz Kafka and Jorge Luis Borges are at the top of the list,” he says of authors, adding. “I use books, poems, and lyrics as inspiration for my art. … I want to conjure in others the feeling I get from great books or great art. I don’t know how often I succeed, but that’s what drives me.”
Given his visual trade, is it likely that filmmakers are an even bigger influence? “That’s a tough question,” Zupa says. “I love David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick. PTA, of course. I think Ari Aster is my favorite newer director—he’s amazing. When I look at the films from these directors, I feel small and humbled, and it makes me want to work harder. That’s my best answer.”
He’s currently listening to the David Byrne and Brian Eno collaboration, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. “It’s incredible,” Zupa says. “I drive my employees crazy playing it over and over again. I’ve also been listening to a lot of Kid Cudi and JID.”
Asked what keeps him coming back to the studio (also in Colorado), Zupa replies: “I love art. I genuinely enjoy it. Sometimes it’s challenging and uncomfortable, but I know I’ll always find it fun. I don’t think I could ever run out of that fuel. I also live in my studio, so I’m kind of stuck here — literally and figuratively. What else am I going to do?”
Find the artist on Instagram @ravamarzupa and at ravizupa.com ~ Kelli Bodle
