Thanks to Arizona based vinyl artist Daniel Edlen stumbling upon the recent Amoeblog on the work done by fellow vinyl artist / Amoeba Hollywood customer Colton Tran (Making Art Out of Records with Colton Tran of TransylVinyl & Broken Vinyl Record Art) I was introduced to the equally (although very different in composition) vinyl art of the SoCal born and raised Edlen. "Good to see someone else do something distinctive with records," posted Edlen in the comments of that Amoeblog on Colton Tran. Since then I have been fully introduced to Edlen's amazing vinyl art, like the Prince piece above, for which he utilizes straight acrylic paint and, as he jokes, "a cheap brush" to painstakingly create this beautiful art on 12" records. Edlen, who accurately describes his work as "creating art on the artifacts of creativity,"  has much of his art on view via his main website.

Dave Paul (Bomb Hip-Hop/The Prince & Experience) is among the vinyl artist's many fans/collectors. "The appeal to me of Elden's work was the artist's face hand painted on the record," said Paul who has bought two pieces of Edlen's art. Like fellow vinyl artist Colton Tran, Edlen is also a major Amoeba Music fan: one of the things I asked him about when I caught up with him recently to talk to the Amoeblog. In that interview, that follows below the video clip of him making his art, I also asked him about the details of creation of his vinyl art, his musician subjects, and his work with both the David Lynch Foundation and VH1 Save The Music.

People buy records from Amoeba for more than one reason. While most record collectors buy vinyl to spin it on their home turntables or perhaps out at DJ gigs, and some simply to add directly to the shelves of their prized collections, there are others who buy albums from Amoeba for aesthetic reasons. These are mostly the folks who will buy vinyl strictly for art's sake: buying LPs simply for their wonderful cover art - regardless of the music  contained within the record's grooves. And then there is Amoeba Hollywood regular Colton Tran who literally makes art out of his Amoeba vinyl finds. This the mixed media artist does not in the traditional Steinski cut-and-paste type approach of sampling sound bytes off records and transforming them into new pieces of collage audio art. Rather the prolific independent artist/filmmaker makes art directly out of the actual vinyl that he cops on his regular trips to the SoCal Amoeba's bargain bins, and takes home to his studio to painstakingly transform into pieces of art like his “Jason” titled & inspired piece above (48" by 36" in size) which was made out of all vinyl: ten black vinyl 12" records plus four red colored 12" records to create the blood effect. Recently I caught up with Coltron to ask him what exactly goes into creating his art, getting the right records, who the market for his pieces (which sell from $50 to $500) are, and also about his in-the-works feature length project Gloom.


Amoeblog:  Rob Galluzzo from Amoeba Hollywood was into your work before I heard of you and wrote about your art on the wonderful Icons of Fright website where he called it "horror art."  He was referring to specific pieces but is that a fair tag of your overall work or is "Broken Vinyl Record Art," as I have seen written on your site, more how you describe your medium?