Labor of Love

The dynamic between low brow and high brow culture continuously blurs. In high end street fashion, carefully crafted popular television, Kendrick Lamar’s poetry, Junot Diaz’s Putlizier winning street vernacular, and even the New York MoMA’s modern fashion exhibit. What was formerly pedestrian has been made academic and revered.

Likewise, west and east reflects a similar dichotomatic relationship. From Gatsby’s East Egg, to more historical divides between Western and Eastern civilizations, Bicoastal made the most sense for this inaugural issue of Low Brow. A look at opposites and their gradual convergence and influence on another.

Where New York is purposeful, California is nonchalant. Where Asia is gritty and neon, Europe is ornate and neutral. Yet as more and more New York restruants encroach the West Coast and yet another juice shop opens in Manhattan, we see the divide get smaller. Here we refer both to the east and west of the United States, and more broadly what we know as the east and west in world history.

Bicoastal is meant to highlight the differences that exist in cultures and geography of the east and west but also celebrate the intermingling of the two.

Low Brow is zine that intends to take the daunting high brow topics and making them more accessible. A collaborative content effort, art directed by me.