Introducing the amazing artist behind our Christmas Campaign, LA based artist, Clay Hickson. Clay is a freelance illustrator and printmaker, who's contributed to The New York Times, Apartamento Magazine, Bon Appetit and Netflix. He runs Caboose, an independent publishing company and is co-editor of The Smudge. The Smudge is a monthly newspaper where they donate the publications proceeds to worthy causes, such as Planned Parenthood, LGBTIQ rights, immigration centres and food banks.
How long have you been an artist and how did you get there?
I sort of fell into doing illustration jobs starting around 2011. I was just out of art school with no plans for the future. Luckily, some charitable art directors offered me jobs.
Who have your favourite collaborations been with?
One of my favorite projects was illustrating a soup cookbook by Apartamento magazine. Illustrating a cookbook had been a dream of mine and to be able to do it with my favorite magazine was unreal.
Tell us a little bit about your publication, Smudge.
The Smudge is a monthly publication that my Wife, Liana Jegers and I started in 2016. It's just a place for us to experiment and collaborate with artists and writers that we admire.
Are you much of a foodie and what are your fav restaurants in LA? I usually pick my favorite restaurants based on the atmosphere more than the quality of food, so that probably disqualifies me as a foodie. But I love to eat! Some of my favorites in LA are The Original Farmers Market, Woon, Bay Cities, and El Coyote.
What's your go-to dish to bring to Christmas?
In my family, Christmas breakfast has always been a bigger event than dinner and my favorite part of it is always buttermilk biscuits.
The Hagan's from McIvor Farm are also counting down the days until Christmas!It's their award-winning pigs that we use for our house-made hams, which is why we've asked Jason and Belinda to share why farming sustainably is so important to them.
In celebration of Mother's Day, we had the wonderful Wroud from Free to Feed share a recipe that her mother cooks alongside almost any Syrian meal. Wroud, who grew up in a small city called Al-Hasakah in Syria, has kindly shared some of her cherished memories around food and family.
