His name may be Shag, but his art is sharp. The California-based artist has brought his angular, animated retro look to merchandise that marks the upcoming 40th anniversary of Walt Disney World. The centerpiece is a stylized map of Magic Kingdom theme park, circa 1971, and elements of it are repeated in shirts, glassware, coasters, postcards and charm bracelets now on sale.
Shag — a pseudonym for Josh Agle — was born in Los Angeles, but his family moved to Hawaii six months later, returning to California when he was 8. As a child, he remembers seeing previews of Disney World on the "Wonderful World of Disney" television show. He didn't make it here until 1989.
Agle, 48, has been holding autograph sessions at Disney World, including one Saturday. He spoke with the Sentinel at Magic Kingdom on Friday.
How do you describe your style?
It's sort of based on illustration from the '50s and '60s — but usually it's got sort of an ironic twist, which is more from this decade. The colors are a little brighter and a little more funky than they would have used back then. But it's based on my love of the look of that. Disney used a lot of that back in the '50s and '60s as well.
What reference materials did you use?
A lot of those old ["Wonderful World"] episodes are still onYouTube, so I watched some of those. I went on eBayand ordered all the maps and things from the opening year and the little souvenir booklets from that year and sort of used that as reference.
Your pieces have stories to them, and that's one of Disney's big things — everything has a story.
A lot of artists don't want to tell stories with their paintings. Art kind of moved away from that in the last 120 years or so. I just thought, 'Hey, you know, artists told stories for the last 5,000 years, starting with the cave painters and stuff, and then suddenly for the last 120 years we're not going to tell stories anymore?' I thought, eh, I'm going to stick with the longer tradition of art and try and tell stories.
Are there stories you can tell for the Magic Kingdom map?
Without getting too detailed, this kind of talks about my childhood dream vacation, if I were able to come to Disney World in the first couple of years that it was open, the kind of things I would have wanted to do.
What was your training?
I paid my way through college as a commercial artist. So, you just practice, mainly.
Not to be Oprah, but when was the aha moment when you knew "Oh, this is my thing"?
I don't know that there ever was a specific aha moment. I worked as a commercial artist and worked in a lot of different styles … It was just the style that was nearest and dearest to my heart.
Did your Hawaii background influence your tiki stuff?
It must have subconsciously. When you're a kid there, it's part of the background noise. Tikis, hula dancers, whatever, you know? I figure that it's when I got back to the mainland and lived there for 10 or 12 years, I think subconsciously it creeped into the stuff I liked.
You were at Disney World earlier this year. What was your reaction?
I was surprised. It was sort of a last-minute thing. … It was jam-packed. It was a solid two-hour line of people waiting to get stuff signed.
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