Born in Miami to a Cuban mother and Syrian father, Jason Seife always felt that his Hispanic side was “fulfilled”. After all, he had Spanish-speaking friends and he spoke Spanish very well, but the missing part was the Arabic.
That’s where his inspiration for art came in. He found nostalgia in carpets, specific ones that were showcased on walls in his home as they were “family heirlooms”. With that intrigue, Seife traveled to Syria, Istanbul, and Iran closely working with carpet weavers.
“(I wanted) to understand how they are made so that I can then take it and hopefully make it new and exciting for younger generations to come,” he says to online news outlet, Arab News.
For this specific piece Seife is working on now, he started with an actual carpet and started to gradually add life to it. The art piece is done digitally because Seife finds that using animation makes more possibilities happen. He says that “You can paint a more complete picture and show what’s really happening. It’s like a comic book, and with this medium, we can narrate as much as we want. ”
Seife also talked about the process in which the designs came to life, “Every flower, leaf, and vine is 3D-rendered. When you animate something like this, you have to do “rigging,” which is essentially a skeleton that goes inside of the animal or the flower that allows it to move naturally. ”
And every single frame is done individually, so you can imagine how many moving parts there will be. It takes a lot of work, when it all comes together because there is always the important part of finding the spot-on speed for the animation.
“I wanted it to feel like a symphony — calming and therapeutic,” says Seife, “Like looking through a window on a spring morning. When it all came together, it was so rewarding.”
Jason’s work is heavily centered around creating decorative paintings and installations which give a nod to the heritage of traditional carpets through reinterpretation. The artist has worked on several projects with big names such as Kanye West, Nicki Minaj, Pharrell Williams, Mac Miller, Big Sean, and more.
