Working people are working even longer hours, even though we won the eight-hour workday at the Haymarket General Strike in Chicago.

By the time I was in my early-twenties and was living there on the Lower East Side, I was so surrounded by tragedy that I think that inspired me to try to reflect it in the artwork.

Most visual artists, just like most writers, tend to be solitary. While they're doing the art, that is. They may have a crazy orgy that morning, but at a certain point they kick everybody out, and say: "Come, go home. Yeah, I had a great time too." And then you're alone again, and then you're freshly inspired and energized.

Infiltrating the mainstream was a natural extension of my street art. I've always tried to communicate ideas to the public as directly as possible.

The art was just a way of hooking people in, saying: "Hey, maybe there's something cool about the tenant meeting. If the picture's really cool and weird, maybe I should check this out." And I think all of my art has really developed out of that realization.

I find it very difficult to be funny, it's much easier to do tragedy than it is to do comedy.

There's the fact that animation is extremely time-consuming, tedious, labor-intensive, and therefore, extremely expensive as an art form to really do it right, to really do full animation.