I needn’t have worried. Sebastian’s a talker. And a reader. And is very smart. And funny. And busy – having just had a retrospective at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, been invited to give  a TED Talk and a yawn on Times Square.

This is an artist who likes to challenge conventional thinking – for his university thesis in Santiago he asked his professors if he could hand in the first and only blank thesis. Something people would actually look at versus the 200 pager students were required to submit. The university heads refused, only to write Sebastian 15 years after he’d graduated to say they’d changed their minds.

Sebastian reads six to seven newspapers a day looking for inspiration.

“For me it’s all about ideas. I need you to get my ideas as quickly as possible”.

This thought came to him after learning that on average three females and one male get killed by their partners everyday in the US.

The high rate of campus rape in the states inspired this jacket. Sebastian spouts off disturbing facts with alacrity. One in five women on a college campus will be raped. Eighty-five percent will know their attacker. Ninety percent of the cases will go unreported. Sebastian says:

“The male student athletes accused of rape often receive support from the schools while the girls tend to suffer public shame until silenced”.

Flying back and forth between NYC and Santiago during the Iraq war, Sebastian was used to seeing shell-shocked looking American soldiers in uniform. When he researched the statistics and discovered that twice as many soldiers committed suicide after the War than got killed in it, Sebastian was inspired to create this street art, “American Kills” in 2009. This image went viral and CNN ended up covering it.

Sebastian is also a talented and meticulous designer. Here are just a few of  his tools.

He makes everything from exploding maple cabinets to covetable heels to lamps that quack.

He is currently designing the interior and exterior of a G650, the biggest and fastest commercial jet available. He suggested to his South American client that the wing should read “Goodbye Losers”. The idea was vetoed, but maybe in 15 years…

February, 2015

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