LOWBROW BEAT
Douglas Seaton keeps his Icon on the prize.

After years spent toiling in a comic-book warehouse and at the goth/alternative boutique FashioNation, Douglas Seaton acquired a keen eye for kitsch-as-culture graphics. He wound up managing Dina Castillo's DC Gallery, the now-defunct space that was Denver's first true home of lowbrow art - a genre that Seaton eats, breathes, and has inked in his skin. When DC went belly up in March, Seaton wasn't ready to throw in the towel. He conceived Icon Industries, his new retail website, as a way to promote his favorite artists like John John Jesse, whose "Revenge" is the first exclusive print Icon is offering. An impeccable gentleman and a driven aesthete, Seaton aims to keep the momentum of Denver's lowbrow scene going strong.

The A.V. Club: How did you get into lowbrow art?

Douglas Seaton: Comic books were probably the thing that opened the door, Mike Allred's Madman and Dave McKean's stuff for Sandman. What really got me into it, though, was the first time I saw a Joe Coleman piece in some old issue of Jux [Juxtapoz, the leading lowbrow art magazine]. I was like, 'Holy crap!' Ever since then, I've been hooked on that whole genre.

AVC: How did you end up working at DC Gallery?

DS: It kind of fell on my lap. I was getting tattooed by Dina's boyfriend at the time, Jef Kopp, and she asked me if I'd be interested in managing her new gallery. I always wanted to do something like that. When DC started, there was nothing going on like that in Denver. You'd occasionally see something over at Andenken Gallery, a piece here or there that reflected the genre, like Evan Hecox's stuff. I got to work firsthand with all these artists I admired for so long, people like Joe Sorren, Shag, Glenn Barr, and Derek Hess, and that kind of fueled my passion.

DS: A lot of it is the content. Regardless of the style they're using, it harks back to a lot of symbolist work. It's very illustrative, whether it's a Shag piece or a graffiti-style piece. There are messages and stories. It's very narrative. I also love the way they subvert religion and pop culture.

AVC: For a while, lowbrow art seemed to get stereotyped as retro. Do you think it's broken out of that?

DS: Yeah. Lowbrow as an art form started in Southern California with Von Dutch and Robert Williams and a lot of custom car culture, a lot of hot rod and tattoo art. I think a lot of other artists got lumped into that because there wasn't another category for them. Highbrow artists would look at this stuff and say, 'This is just illustration work.' A lot of these artists still embrace the name lowbrow, but a lot of them shun it. That's where the pop surrealist name came from, something that's a little more academic.

AVC: That term would also fit some of the underground comics artists that Icon is representing, like Kim Deitch and Jim Woodring.

DS: It's so great that people like Jim Woodring have been able to break out of just being comic book artists and get accepted as fine artists. That's one thing I want to do, focus on these people that have been such an inspiration.

AVC: DC wound up going under. Has that scared you off from turning Icon into a storefront gallery someday?

DS: No, I definitely want to open up a physical space in the not-too-distant future. Right now, doing Icon is a way to keep my hand in it and keep in contact with the artists. Having a website is the easiest way to do this. I'll be doing several exclusive prints a year, which I hope will promote the artists by giving people an option other than buying original art, which is highly expensive at times. Like John John Jesse, he doesn't have any prints available at all right now besides ours. His new print is the flagship.

AVC: What about local artists?

DS: Oh, yeah. There are a number of local artists I'm interested in, particularly tattoo artists. Their fine art is so different from their tattoo stuff. Other people, too, like Alex Meyer, who's really starting to break out of being just a local artist, and Jenny Lee. There's a handful of talent working in this genre in Denver, and I think it's just a matter of time before they get recognition. I'm hoping to be a part of that.