I am a bunch of monkeys.

The Bunch of Monkeys Workshop is David Huyck, and I am David Huyck. I live in St. Paul, MN, and I am currently teaching a course at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, in addition to my freelance projects.

I was born and raised in Evanston, IL — the first city north of Chicago along the lake. I grew up on TV and sugared cereal in the home of an English teacher who is also an amazing cook, so my take on pop culture is simultaneously indulgent and literary. We spent time every summer in southwest Michigan along the lake, playing in the piney dunelands there, so despite being a city kid, my love of the woods must be factored in as well.

Like most people who draw all the time will tell you, I never stopped drawing the whole time I was growing up. My younger brother and I would spend hours doodling, and playing the "What Should I Draw?" game. It goes like this: first one of you asks, "What should I draw?" And then the other one says something like, "A bear." And then you draw a bear. He's in architecture school now.

My two brothers and I used to voraciously consume Legos, Ed Emberly drawing books, The Far Side, Calvin and Hobbes, The Muppets, and later Monty Python, The Dark Crystal, and all the original Star Wars and Indiana Jones we could take. These stories mingle in my head with Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time series, Lord of the Rings, and now Harry Potter and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series. Okay, and I'm a total movie junkie. And I can't stop reading non-superhero comics, like anything from Chris Ware, Jason, Tony Millionaire, Jordan Crane.... I loves me some words with pictures.

Anyway, I've been filtering through all this stuff in my brain and it bursts out in various drawings, paintings, comics, sculptures, and animations whenever I can harness it. I completed my BA in Studio Art at Carleton College in 1998, and after several years building websites (including five fabulous years at Planet Propaganda) I decided I wanted to refocus on the visual side of things, and I returned to school. I finished my MFA at UNC Chapel Hill in May of 2007.

— DH.2007