Artist Makes Tropical Inspired Music and Collages

Clevland-based visual artist and musician Ted Feighan makes bright and tropical paper collages, inspired by travel, exotic plants, animals and vintage interior design. In addition to that, he runs (alongside his wife) a lifestyle brand, Valley Cruise Press, that creates art-focused accessories, apparel, and home goods. A busy life, to say the least.

“I started making paper collage work when I began taking art classes in college,” he shared with the Urban Outfitters blog. “But before that, I had been doing a lot of digital collage in high school, mostly for band merch.”

“On a normal day, I’ll get into the studio, answer some emails and start digging into some old books,” he shared. “I usually have 5-10 projects going at once so I’m always sourcing a lot of imagery. I’ll spend a lot of time cutting up paper and listening to records before I start to assemble any of the finished pieces. I’ll usually work on putting together a few at once.”

Talking about his inspirations he said: “I’ve been very into indoor plants lately. For a long time, I had been focusing on flowers and blooms when looking for images but recently I’ve been inspired by the green foliage plants. I think this has been a response to moving from Los Angeles to Cleveland in the middle of winter and needing to surround myself with plants inside my home.”

His music project, Monster Rally, produces sample-based exotica, tropicalia, and hip hop, that accompanies his collages perfectly (and vice versa). We recommend you play his music while you scroll through his Instagram page.