B4
THE ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, MAY 20, 2021
Artist turns vinyls into works of art
By SAMANTHA
SWINDLER
The Oregonian
The music might be gone
from a scratched and worn
vinyl record, but there’s still
art to be found within its
grooves.
With surgical precision,
Vancouver artist Ty Givens
knows how to excise it.
Givens carves into vinyl
records to produce stylish
silhouettes of local land-
marks, comics characters
and more.
“I tend to focus on things
more local — sports, the
area that I’m in — but I also
have a nerdy side so I like to
make things of anime, comic
books, video games, things
that people enjoy that make
them happy,” Givens said.
He sells his work under
his brand, 2025th Street,
which is not an actual street,
but a nod to his fi rst name,
comprised of the 20th and
25th letters in the alphabet.
Givens’ website includes a
catalog of 50 designs, fea-
turing everything from Dr.
Who and Star Trek, logos of
the Timbers and Trail Blaz-
ers, to dozens of Pokémon
characters.
Givens carves old, damaged vinyl records.
Photos by Samantha Swindler/The Oregonian
Ty Givens carves a vinyl record at his home in Vancouver.
It takes a steady hand
to slice clean lines through
vinyl, and Givens uses a
variety of tools, including
a Dremel and drill, a wood
burner with a heated utility
blade and a needle fi le to cre-
ate his work.
Most of the records he
uses have been donated by
1709 Records and Every-
body’s Music in Vancouver
— and audiophiles, don’t
fear, they’re all unplayable.
“I’m not going to destroy
music that can be played
when there’s plenty of older
stuff out there,” Givens said.
“I was also a musician for
years, so music and art are
two big things for me.”
Givens was a trombone
player in high school and
college and spent close to a
decade singing bass in bar-
bershop quartets.
“It’s a weird one,” Givens
admits of his love of barber-
shop. “People are like, ‘You
did what?’”
Givens grew up in Flor-
ida and moved to the Pacifi c
Northwest on, essentially, a
whim. He said he was work-
ing at a theme park and feel-
ing in a rut.
“I got into that rhythm
that I guess people get in
their life where you wake
up, you go to work, you go
to bed, and you do that every
single day,” he said. “I just
felt trapped. There were no
other jobs to get, there was
nothing else to do.”
So about fi ve years ago,
he sold everything that
didn’t fi t in his car and spent
two months driving across
the country, making stops
in New Orleans, the Grand
Canyon and the Redwood
forests in California before
visiting friends in Vancouver.
“They said, ‘Stay with us,
see how you like it,’ and I
just never left,” Givens said.
Givens had been creat-
ing vinyl record art for years,
but things took off after he
started carving Pokémon
characters. In 2019, he was
hosting Pokémon Go tourna-
ments at the former Vancou-
ver restaurant Warehouse 23
and attracting crowds with
his Pokémon carved record
prizes.
Last year, he’d initially
planned to set up sales
booths at a few anime and
comic conventions, but when
those were all canceled due
to coronavirus pandemic, he
launched 2025th.com.
In November, Givens
teamed up with Portland
artist Mike Bennett for a
“Pokémon Govember” scav-
enger hunt. Each artist made
a daily Pokémon creation —
Givens out of vinyl, Ben-
nett out of plywood — and
placed them at a local busi-
ness that could use a boost of
foot traffi c. The pair posted
clues about the locations
online, hiding a new set of
Pokémon each day for a
shopper to fi nd.
Aside from his Pokémon
series, Givens’ most popular
seller is a silhouette of the St.
Johns Bridge.
Collaboration explores the immigrant experience
By STEVEN TONTHAT
Oregon Public Broadcasting
In 2020, Portland was at
the center of rallies for social
justice.
Musician Joe Kye didn’t
attend any of them but
wanted to channel his cre-
ativity to something positive
for his community.
“I’m a father of two,
and they can barely walk.
So going to protests is not
where I think I can have
the most impact,” he said.
“It’s through art, it’s through
music that I can build these
emotional connections and
coalitions.”
The result is his latest col-
laborative project, “The Way
Out.”
“‘The Way Out’ is an
audio art piece, part music,
part beats, part protest col-
lage; it comes from a collab-
oration with high school cho-
reographer Diego Garita in
New York City,” he said. Kye
was introduced to the project
in the summer where he was
paired with Garita, 16, as part
of the Young Dancemakers
Co., a nonprofi t based out of
New York that pairs musi-
cians and dancers together to
create works of art as part of
its summer program.
The song Kye worked
on is part of a dance per-
formance piece called “Los
Delores de la Raza” and
was inspired by the migrant
children who were sepa-
rated from their families at
the southern border of the
United States.
The title’s literal transla-
tion is “Pain of the Race,”
but Garita said there’s more
nuance to it.
“I can’t really translate
that to ‘the race’ because
it doesn’t really have the
meaning that I wanted to
seem,” he said. “‘La Raza’
was really big in the Chi-
cano movement in the West
Coast. And they would use it
like ‘This is my Raza, this is
us, this is El Pueblo.’ I guess
it could be translated to ‘El
Pueblo,’ like the town, the
community. So ‘Los Delores
de la Raza’ could be ‘The
pain of the race, the strug-
gles of being an immigrant,
the pain of going through
that process of being a citi-
zen, of coming to the land of
the free.’”
Garita, who was born in
the United States and whose
parents immigrated to New
York from Mexico, saw the
struggles the people in his
community were facing and
wanted to use his creativity
to do something positive.
He knew after speaking
with Kye that they would
work well together. The
two connected through their
experiences as artists and the
sons of immigrant parents.
“He just told me a lit-
tle bit about his stories and
about how his parents were
immigrants and how my par-
ents are also immigrants ….
It just came together beauti-
fully,” Garita said.
Diff erent coast,
same goal
Because they couldn’t
physically be in the same
space, their collaboration
took place entirely through
Zoom. Through those meet-
ings, they created a piece that
refl ected their thoughts about
the immigrant experience in
the United States.
“When we fi rst met and
chatted about what he might
want to create, he started
Gary Chandler
Portland musician Joe Kye’s latest single, ‘The Way Out,’
explores the issues of U.S. immigration at the southern border
as well as the immigrant experience.
talking about family separa-
tion at the border and chil-
dren who are being torn
away from siblings and fam-
ily members. And it’s an
issue that was really import-
ant for me,” he said.
The piece combines video
from Garita’s recordings of
the social justice protests he
attended in 2020 with Kye’s
own musical recordings on
his violin.
“Diego showed me some
of those videos, and I was
able to take some of that
audio, which I found per-
sonally very inspiring and
weave it through the piece
itself,” Kye said.
It begins with slow,
melodic violin string pick-
ing. Sounds of a jail door
closing juxtaposed with sam-
ples of school children play-
ing slowly start to seep in.
Then, the sounds of crowds
gradually start to take over
until eventually, cries of “No
Justice, no peace!” are all
that can be heard.
When the melody returns,
it’s underscored by audio
of the protests, as if ensur-
ing that the listener will con-
stantly be aware of it.
Kye and Garita also incor-
porated the sounds of heart-
beats and breathing into the
piece.
“He has diff erent danc-
ers holding their hands over
their mouth ... there’s obvi-
ously the reference to George
Floyd and ‘I can’t breathe.’
And then also the silencing
that I think a lot of immi-
grants are constantly expe-
riencing,” Kye said. Despite
the chaos, Kye said that the
song ultimately ends on an
uplifting note.
“By the end, after we’ve
also heard monologues and
speeches that Diego recorded
of the diff erent leaders of
these protests, I think it
becomes clear that what
we’re looking for is justice,”
he said. “And it is absolutely
crucial that everyone joins in
this protest.”
The dance piece pre-
miered in July 2020 via
Zoom. And though creating
a dance piece entirely online
had its own advantages and
disadvantages, overall, Gar-
ita was happy with the result
and the public response.
“When I fi rst put it out
there, they were happy
because artists are using
their platforms and their tal-
ents to bring this problem up
and spread awareness using
our own creativity,” he said.
“And it just creates a whole
thing of ... this is happen-
ing, but this is me telling the
problem my way.”
Even though the music
was just one part of the over-
all performance, Kye felt
that it was strong enough to
work as a stand alone piece.
So in March, he released it
digitally, under the title “The
Way Out,” with the cover art
done by Portland illustrator
Molly Mendoza. The title,
Kye said, is a metaphor for
Black, Indigenous, people
of color and immigrant com-
munities coming together
through coalitions and com-
munity organizing.
“We can’t be in the cellar
together fi ghting and picking
over scraps. We have to get
on a team, think about our
diff erent strengths and work
together to fi nd that way
out,” he said.
All
proceeds
were
donated to Pineros y Camp-
esinos Unidos del Noroeste,
Oregon’s oldest advocacy
group for Latinx farm work-
ers and their families.
“I think if I made any
money on this, it would feel
wrong,” he said. “ It would
feel like I was profi teer-
ing off of the suff ering of
another group of people. And
that’s not what this project is
about.”
Fighting for social
change through music
The immigration issue is
one that is especially import-
ant to Kye.
Born in South Korea, Kye
and his family immigrated
to the United States when
he was a child. Like many
immigrant families, he and
his parents endured many of
the hardships when fi rst set-
tling into a new country.
“We were low income and
so making ends meet was
diffi cult as it was, but then
also trying to acculturate
and become part of a whole
new country that was very
quick to judge us because
of what we looked like and
what we spoke, what we
sounded like,” he said. “It
was challenging.”
His parents moved back
to Korea in 2008 and, as he
was producing the piece, he
thought a lot about how dif-
fi cult it was to be so far from
them.
“I’ve been separated
from them from age 20 on,
which has been really dif-
fi cult,” he said. “ I can only
imagine if you’re a 4-year-
old or a 6-year-old, or some-
times even an infant, and you
are separated from the most
foundational piece of human
relationship, your parents, I
can only imagine how dam-
aging that is.”
Kye’s passion for com-
munity organizing and social
justice was amplifi ed by
the recent rise in anti-Asian
violence.
“The rise in hate
crimes
against
Asians
and Asian-Americans has
become
impossible
to
ignore,” he said. “This proj-
ect has really fi lled me with
a sense of purpose, as well as
an outlet for all of the anger
and fury that I feel as an
immigrant.”
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