The Short Story
Stewart is a conceptual art director with an ad agency background and strong experience on-set executing ideas. With more than six years of experience in print advertising campaigns for global brands like LG, Samsung, Target and Viacom, Stewart shifted his focus to the digital world working where he has spent the last few years in New York as an art director freelancing at ad agencies such as DDB, Droga5, Huge, Jack Morton and Maude.
Member or the Art Director's Club
The Real Story
Stewart grew up in the scenic city of Savannah where he enjoyed catching fireflies, mosquitoes and humidity. After traveling much of Europe with the junior US soccer team losing to Germany in the Youth World Cup, Stewart's passion for playing the drums eventually dominated his dreams.
After failing every possible aspect of the ninth grade at a private institution, he was banished to military school in a scary town in rural Georgia where kids kill themselves and you can smell the town's numerous chicken farms when it rains. But Stewart learned how to learn while he was there and became Valedictorian then Salutatorian then euphemistically graduated a day early.
In college, Stewart's militaristic quarantine had made him incredibly well read, a monster behind the drums, and in possession of a blood lust for high-ranking high jinks. While attending UNC the band Bobby Dazzler was formed and they recorded their first album in a barn just outside of Chapel Hill.
Stewart moved to LA and like most of us, had a painfully shitty job, in Stewart's case, parking expensive penis extensions in and around Hollywood. On one occasion, he was parking cars outside an exclusive Hollywood photo studio. After a few glances onto a photo shoot that one can only imagine involved several erect female nipples, Stewart parted his hair and begged for a job at Hollywood's Quixote Studios. He continued playing drums and his music career reached its pinnacle when he recorded a demo album with Duff McKagan from Guns N’ Roses.
Taking the time to master the mechanics of studio photography, Stewart soon began rattling off countless rolls of film, using all of the numbers, equations, and reciprocals that were saturating his life on and off set.
He soon won a national award for his “untitled whimsical piece...affecting a sense of twisted joy” LA Times. Wherever Stewart went, his wind-blown Southern charm would subconsciously persuade subjects to sneak out of their own life and into the photographic world of this Savannah, Georgia native's life-sized photo fantasy shoot.
Moments in Stewart's photos are playful, yet reserved, soft, yet saturated. A photo that might be seedy through another photographer's lens becomes sexy and even intimate through Stewart's. Likewise, a scene that might be mundane, will be split down the middle, and exposed from the inside out. His photos remind us of the fucked up fun you have when you almost die. Stewart's photographs move 100 miles per hour, with a Miller High Life between the legs, and Rush blasting through the tape deck. Definitely Rush.
A few years later he was on a first name basis with heidi Klum, kissed Adriana Lima and carried a thong-wearing Bruno around the studio. Unfortunately the party came to an end, along with a six year relationship, his American Express card and the economy. So naturally Stewart decided to get a master’s degree in advertising and move to New York to share his experience with you.