Dalstrong x Arik Roper Collab
MEET THE ARTIST
Arik Roper
From visual design for music festivals and gaming companies to skateboard decks and promotions for Iron Maiden, The Black Crowes, and The Grateful Dead, Arik Roper’s multi-decade career has touched every corner of commercial and fine art. His work encompasses diverse styles, including simple graphic imagery, vibrantly detailed color illustrations, lettering, logos, and more. Roper draws on fantastical elements such as science fiction and archaic myths for lush, inviting designs that transport you to other dimensions. For our Valhalla Knife series, we asked him to bring our viking-inspired series to life. Tyr!
Arik Moonhawk Roper attended the School of Visual Arts in New York from 1991-1995 specializing in cartooning, illustration, and screen printing. He began his early career primarily working with bands creating album art for cds and records for which he developed a devoted following. He soon moved into storyboarding for commercial and ad agencies, then onward into animation design, book and magazine illustration, visual design for music industry artists, and art direction for creative groups and game companies. Roper’s work encompasses a diverse field of design and distinct style, ranging from black and white illustration, to meticulous lettering and logo design, to rich abstract psychedelic color and landscapes that often seem to exist in their own universe. The imagery springs from the depths of a fertile imagination, invoking psychedelic visions, ancient dreams, and idyllic natural environments. With an interest in mythology, consciousness, psychology, religion and other timeless subjects, Roper mixes the light and the dark within his art to reveal imagery which is at once strangely unique, distantly familiar and always soaked with an earnestly fantastic aesthetic