Andrew Conners

AXC is an autobiographical exhibition about how I became an artist and how my style developed. Growing up, I was a quiet kid and mostly kept to myself. Art gave me a way to express thoughts and feelings I had trouble putting into words. A lot of what I made was surreal or strange because that was how I could show what those feelings were like. Before I studied art in college, I took a T-shirt-making class in high school. Designing shirts made me realize how much I enjoyed making things people could wear and connect with. That experience drew me toward graphic design and clothing, and it helped me start developing a style of my own. Today, I consider myself an urban surrealist artist. In my paintings, prints, and illustrations, I draw from architecture, history, street art, and pop culture. I like taking something familiar, like a building or an image you’ve seen a hundred times, and putting it somewhere it doesn’t belong. That shift lets me show how a place or a memory feels to me. When I was a kid, I was told that the eyes are the windows to the soul. I think of my artwork the same way. Each piece is a window into a world I’ve imagined. As you move through the exhibition, I hope you recognize something familiar, look closer, and decide for yourself how it makes you feel. You might see something in that world that I never noticed. AXC is the signature I put on my artwork and the name of the brand I’m developing. It represents how far I’ve come and the creative identity I’m still building.