Cey City: With Cey Adams

Front and Center

This week we are thrilled to have Cey Adams on the program.
Cey Adams is a New York City native and visionary artist, who emerged from the downtown graffiti movement in the 80’s alongside fellow artists and friends Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring.

Adams began his art career while still in his teens, tagging “Cey City” on subway cars and painting graffiti murals to showcase his artwork. He appeared in the historic PBS documentary Style Wars about subway graffiti in New York.
In 1983, Cey Adams met The Beastie Boys. They developed a fast friendship with the band and designed their first logo, t-shirts and singles. The Beastie Boys and Adams would go on to be longtime collaborators including designing the album: “Hello Nasty”.
Around the same time he met manager/music producer Russell Simmons where Adams designed logos and merch for his artists. A few years later Simmons along with music producer Rick Rubin founded Def Jam Recordings where Adams served as the founding Creative Director.
In the late 80s Adams and his partner Steve Carr co-founded the Drawing Board, Def Jam’s in-house visual design firm overseeing the visual style of Def Jam’s artists. The firm was responsible for some of the most iconic album covers, logos and advertising campaigns for Run-DMC, Beastie Boys, LL Cool J, Slick Rick, Public Enemy, The Notorious B.I.G., DMX, Jay-Z, Usher, Mary J. Blige, and many more.
Adams has also collaborated with global brands including Levi’s, Mattel, The Recording Academy, Apple, Bacardi, IDEO, Foot Locker, Converse, YouTube, Google, and many more.
These days he has returned back to his fine art roots. He exhibits, lectures, and teaches art workshops at leading institutions including: The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, MoMA , Brooklyn Museum, Museum of the City of New York, School of Visual Arts, and museums around the world.
He currently has a solo exhibition, Combinations, opened on October 21st in Austin at the West Chelsea Contemporary. The show is on view until November 19th so you have like a week left to go see it.
Cey also has a traveling retrospective exhibition called Departure: 40 Years of Art and Design. The show debuted last year at Boston University Stone Gallery and is currently on view at the College of Visual Arts & Design at University of North Texas Denton. It will travel to Ft. Lauderdale and Miami next year.