COOL Brooklyn ARTIST ALERT: Linda Zacks

Linda Zacks' work is self-described as "part poetry, part paint, part zip and zoom." Once the Design Director at VH1, this local artist now works solo, creating mixed media work for big-name clients like Sony, Newport Beach Film Festival and INQ Mobile, just to name a few. Her work is bold and beautiful, and manages to look both haphazard and deliberate at the same time. Last year she was featured in Photoshop User Magazine where she confessed her love for scanning as many objects as she can get her hands on (including ink-soaked paper towels, rusty jar lids and her own dog), which she then throws into Photoshop, which is used as "a kind of virtual glue stick." I recently had a chat with Linda, a Brooklyn rez who loves working with found materials and takes her pooch to Park Slope's favorite pet hospital, Animal Kind. 

Do you have a favorite NYC museum exhibit, past or present?

The gems at the museum of natural history...LOVE those color blobs!

What are your favorite materials to work with?

 I love using things I find on the street. I recently found a piece of a broken guitar that someone smashed all over the place -- I picked up an awesome shard and used it in a poster. Also, pallets! love those things – the wood is amazing and old and battered ...and of course, anything you can get in an art store, and juicy colored goos of all shapes and sizes. I'm definitely on an ink kick!

Ever get a really strange request from a potential client for a piece of artwork? If so, what was it? 

It’s more about normal requests from strange people.

Have you ever been fucked in Park Slope?

Ha! Of course I have. Parking tickets, being run off the sidewalk by stampedes of yuppies with strollers carrying iced coffee drinks. My doggie has been accosted by screaming kids and renegade pit bulls in parks. A few toxic meals with repercussions, complete with rude waiters waiting for their big acting breaks. Um, the list goes on...

You can keep up with Linda on her blog, and if you're looking for a cool housewarming, birthday or I'm-sorry-I-ran-over-your-cat-Skittles gift, she also has plenty of cool work for sale on Etsy.