In a culture becoming ever less tactile, art faces a crisis of digital reproduction and the devaluation of craftsmanship. It remains to be seen where the public taste will settle on these issues; what is clear is the natural gravity of the handmade.

Spooky Woods is an artist working with his hands. Working primarily with clay, but leveraging sculpture into an array of products and art objects, Spooky’s creative world encompasses clay renditions of images from popular culture as well as original figures his own ideation.

Entirely self-taught, Spooky’s emphasis on composition and color theory mean his works can be deployed across a range of formats, from toys to garments to puzzles. His most recent is storytelling. Dropping collections united by themes and storylines, and with a narrative series in the works, Spooky’s trajectory points back towards the original source of his interest in clay: claymation video.

We spoke to Spooky about his background, craft journey, future projects, the state of clay, and more.

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Welcome: What's your story?

Spooky Woods: I’m 27. I grew up in a really small town called Christiana in the middle of farm country, Pennsylvania. If you're familiar with Amish people, I came from that area. Growing up, I always hated how things were presented through marketing: commercials, the standard bullshit you're constantly fed. I believed there was a better way to sell to people in a way that felt more organic, so I went to college for marketing. But after a few years and a few jobs, I realized that I wasn’t going to achieve that in traditional marketing fields.

I'd always been interested in art so I decided to take an art minor, which let me experiment with different mediums and learn the basics. At that time, I was also getting super interested in streetwear and hypebeast stuff. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do personally after college, but I knew I wanted to do something different related to art and streetwear. My senior year, two weeks before I graduated, I had the idea of doing claymation and making Spooky Woods. I didn’t see a lot of other people doing it. There was this gap in the market. I thought it could be a good way to make content that feels authentic to me. So I started sculpting. 

Welcome: How did your craft develop over those first years?

Spooky: When I first started sculpting, I was really bad. It was a skill I had no background in. I had drawn a lot through my life, but never sculpted. That first period of learning, I went full force. I started trying to remake popular things in culture and media. That was an easy way to learn: recreate things I was familiar with and others could relate to. Kanye album covers, Travis Scott, hypebeast type stuff. I had this really dank rough style at first. I think people liked that combination.

For my first year through COVID, I was dedicated to that grind. I lived off commissions. I was doing it for the love of doing it. I moved down to Florida. I wasn’t making any money, but everything was cheap enough, and I was living with roommates, so I made it work. That first year, I was living off like $1,200 a month. It was a grind, but it was fun and I was learning the craft. That’s kind of how things started.

Welcome: What about your works do you think resonated with people?

Spooky: There weren’t so many people doing it. At the time, there were so many super talented illustrators, insane graphic designers, but not people in that space fully committed to clay. The first part is that scarcity. Clay is a bit of a forgotten art form. It's been coming back a lot recently, but it requires patience and time. People value that. They value things they think took time. I think there's also something very human in it. Especially when you're consuming digital things, there’s a rawness people gravitate toward.

Welcome: Your story maps onto this pipeline of artists who start making culturally identifiable images—Kanye covers, well known cartoon characters—and then move to their own original creations. Do you remember when you made that mental switch and decided to introduce your own character?

Spooky: Yeah, one hundred percent. That first year I was still learning the craft and trying to connect with people through popular media. I didn’t have the skill set or the confidence to fully make something of my own. And I was relying on commissions, which fed into the pop culture stuff.

At a certain point I was like, I'm broke, I'm sick of making 1-off characters for other people, and I had just started dating my girlfriend. I was bumming it before, but once I had her, I felt I needed to provide more. I decided to get a day job and stop doing Spooky Woods full-time. Once I had that job I could reclaim my art and my time, put it toward my own ideas. That was the switch. From that point on I just did what felt right and fun for me.

Welcome: How did that switch change what you made?

Spooky: It was a gradual thing. I didn't have ideas for what I wanted to do. My first thought was, what if I make really psychedelic weird characters? Or recreate Sesame Street characters but with a ton of different limbs and eyes. That was me finally being able to take a risk. After two months of still doing pre-existing characters in my style, I was like, all right, I’m sick of that. I want to do my own original characters entirely. So I started making skeletons, birds, whatever.

Welcome: What is on your Mount Rushmore of influences?

Spooky: It’s funny, claymation used to give me nightmares as a kid. I was so afraid of it, and it created a strong, weird response in me. After avoiding it for so long I got curious and started watching Wallace and Gromit, Tim Burton movies, Lee Hardcastle clips. More than anything, those first few Wallace and Gromit episodes stuck with me. The longer I’ve worked, the more I like to explore other influences. But those were the big ones.

Welcome: Do you connect that strong reaction to claymation with why you gravitated towards it later?

Spooky: Maybe subconsciously. I haven’t honestly thought about it. But yeah, maybe. It came from a place of fear though. That used to scare the shit out of me. At some point I guess it switched.

Welcome: There is something unsettling about it. Why do you think that is?

Spooky: I think what makes it freaky is it's kind of like puppets: supposed to be humanlike, but it's not. There’s this impostor thing to it. Especially old Adult Swim claymation stuff I’d see as a kid. Really unsettling.

Welcome: When did you start to make clothes and organize your work into collections?

Spooky: I was working for a marketing company and hated it. I had been designing new characters and stuff that whole time. I’m a big believer that you can recognize good art from a distance just through composition of color and texture. I had a bunch of colored pencils. I created groups and pairings of color I liked, made sure they all worked together in unison. Everything came together. As soon as I made my own characters and put them on clothing, it immediately took off. I put out one post showing new characters on clothing and it got like 6,000 likes, which was big for me at the time. That was the turning point.

Welcome: Why did you start to incorporate themes and storytelling into your collections? You mentioned coming away from your marketing degree with a sense of a right and wrong way to market. Do you apply that to your own work and the way you market collections?

Spooky: For sure. Once I had characters, it felt like a natural progression to make things that support them. One of the first things I did was make a puzzle. At that point, I had to think about the world around them. That was the first time I said, “I’m going to make everything relate to these characters and fit within that theme.” Storytelling just naturally happened. Thinking through products accelerated it. The idea of themed drops and cohesive worlds is very natural to me. A lot of my inspiration comes from putting myself in a setting and designing things to fit within that. Every drop since, I’ve tried to maintain that same level of focus and world building.

Welcome: Do you think that has something to do with why this has been able to cut through in the saturated screen-printed t-shirts and hoodies space?

Spooky: I'd like to say it's because you can see—or hopefully it shows—how much I care and how much time and energy I put into it. One thing I believe is the best marketing is creating really good art, not trying to play on people’s emotions or take advantage of their insecurities. If you present something in the best light possible, that’s the most genuine and authentic marketing. I try to make every product something I think is cool. Hopefully other people feel the same.

Welcome: What about when you transition into bringing your characters to life with video? How did you decide to get there?

Spooky: The animation stuff is my pet project. It has not been financially responsible at all. There’s been no payout. Maybe someday, but it’s just pure love and wanting to create something cool to show people.

I’m interested in storytelling and creating characters. I’m not fully capable of doing that myself—traditional stop-motion requires a huge team and a lot of time. So finding new ways to create something close to stop-motion through collaboration is very rewarding. SaberMade and Justin Lemmon are super important collaborators of mine. They’ve helped bring this world to life in a way that feels true to the form.

Welcome: There are snippets of a new show on your site. Tell me a little about that world and how it connects to your normal merchandise.

Spooky: In a perfect world our animated show and episodes would align with each collection. I'd have a drop that perfectly matches the story. But realistically, it's hard to make that work. Saber and I are both super strict about what we like, and the animations we’re working on take so much time. I won’t be able to align them perfectly, but everything is in the same world.

Welcome: You touched on it a bit, but I’m curious about your creative process. What’s it like from start to finish?

Spooky: It’s hard. Ideas come from a million places, never one way. Obsession, really. I think about this stuff all the time. Each drop usually starts with one seed. For Mad House, I had the idea of making a prison, and from there, I thought through everything. That was the easiest collection I’ve done because there are so many themes that go with a fantasy prison: prison guards, the prison itself, toys, sculptures. It’s a natural progression, thinking through each part, then turning those into different things through sculpture.

As far as creating a toy or t-shirts—once I have the idea, I sketch, then sculpt. First sculpt attempt, I usually hate five things about it and redo it. Second sculpt usually works, sometimes more ideas hit during the long sculpting process. Usually two or three iterations of a design. It takes about a week to make two or three iterations.

Welcome: Do you feel you’re still improving at the sculpting itself? Or have you settled into your style?

Spooky: I want to expand and be better. I think I'm still getting better, still learning to work faster. Once you hone in on a style, you do hit a point where your skill set for that style is fully developed. At this point, I can make anything in that style. But yeah, if I wanted to expand into new styles, that’s where the next level up would happen.

Welcome: Do you have a favorite cartoon show from when you were a kid or now?

Spooky: I’d say OG Simpsons, like the first 9 seasons. I don’t know if there’s anything better.

Welcome: What inspires you? Artistically or just as a person.

Spooky: I get a lot of inspiration from random places. Recently I’ve been into old Magic: The Gathering cards. Referencing those old illustrations is so cool. So much amazing art already exists. It’s fun to study and learn what makes it good. I’m inspired by graffiti too. That art form has been around forever, but you still see people change the game again and again. Small changes can shift how an entire piece feels.

Welcome: You mentioned you're not super into fashion. How do you approach outfits and dressing yourself?

Spooky: I just always wear t-shirts. I’m not someone who’s fitted up. I put on what I like. I wear colors I like. I don’t think too hard—if I see something that looks cool, I buy it. I find a way to put together a fit, but I don’t go too hard. I’m a jeans and t-shirt person, primarily.

Welcome: What’s next? What do you want people reading this to look out for?

Spooky: Definitely the show we’re working on. I have the first pilot episode coming out this August which I’m super amped about. We’ve been working on it over the last year. It’ll be the first long-form content I’ve ever released, which will give more insight into where I want to take things. There’ll be more clothing, toys and new stuff that I’ve never done before tied to the show.

Welcome: What does a perfect day look like for you?

Spooky: I get satisfaction when I make something really good. So, a perfect day is: I have a really good idea, I execute it, and then I’m chilling the rest of the day. I live in Philly and there’s amazing food here, so I make some art I’m proud of and I’m eating good. That’s my perfect day