4.17.2011

ALEX NORIEGA

 



I´m Alex Noriega, an almost 30 years old fella from Barcelona. I was born and raised there, but I'm currently living in Maputo, Mozambique, where I spend my days drawing, reading and drawing even more. When I finished high school, I went to an arts and illustration school in Barcelona named Llotja. Picasso's father was a teacher there for a few years... and even Joan Miró studied there (he was actually born two blocksaway from the school)

I lived in Holland for two years after I got my illustration degree. I worked as a janitor in a couple goverment buildings. It was a pretty interesting experience. I had tons of time to think and draw and I eventually started to work more and more as a freelance illustrator.
I went back to Barcelona and after a year I realized that the amount of illustration work that I was getting wouldn´t be enough to live by my own so I started to look for standard office jobs. I found one in a fashion company... I had no idea what I was getting into.

At the beginning it was tough because I had no idea of fashion nor interest in it, but after a while I found that I could actually do the work pretty well. I designed prints for t-shirts and underwear... they had to be very cute and I learned a lot about what sells and why.
At some point in 2010 I was going through a crisis due to some issues at work, so I decided to start this blog as a way of trying to find what I was doing wrong. I wanted to put on paper all that I had learned in life as simple as possible and try to see if what was happening around me made sense.  It didn´t.

Now I don´t work in fashion anymore. I'm actually working on a graphic novel about what happened in that weird crisis. It's going to be called "Anosmic".
"Stuff no one told me" doesn´t have a book deal yet, and I would lie if I said that I'm not looking for one.