Finding the circular nature of things with Ivan Louey

Ivan Louey’s jet black kitty, affectionately called Doomtrain ducks under the couch as I enter his home, an apartment with sweeping views of the North Vancouver mountains. I’ve met up with him after Stefan Tosheff, an earlier participant in At Home With My Art suggested we connect.

After some brief introductions, we jump straight into talking about Ivan’s career up to this point. As a Senior Designer at Titmouse Studios where he works on animation for tv shows,  he’s observed and experienced himself some of the challenges of working in a creative field. “Management often doesn’t speak creative and creative often doesn’t speak Management.” As he’s evolved, he has learned to speak the “management language”, equating quota and quality to cost along timelines with resources required. Ivan shares, “I also learnt that if you know how to lead you know how to follow. There is often a circular nature to things and when people find themselves over-worked, there’s the factor of the person’s skillset and limitation, but it’s often also because they weren’t given enough support, whether it be guidance, or a reasonable workload rated to their skill-level.”

We move into his studio where he shares with me his favorite piece of art which is a newspaper print advertisement of a Pall Mall cigarette advertisement from the 1960s taking pride of place in the centre of the wall behind his desktop. This ad was created by Mary Blair, an iconic artist who was also one of the first female artists to work for Disney and was the artist who created “It’s a Small World After All”.

Ivan finds the advertisement to be a great reminder that there is a career outside of art and that it can be more than just cartoons. Ivan was inspired to study at the Art Centre College of Design in California after completing a degree in Psychology in Victoria, BC and having the realization that he was not bound by the style or content of what he was studying. He found that a lot of people were being fooled into the idea that after graduating art school, they would be made Art Director or immediately be taken seriously, when in reality, for the vast majority of people start by being a cog in the machine, with a focus on making art that fit the client brief as closely as possible, while learning the vast machine from the ground-up. 

For Ivan, the Blair advertisement is also a reminder to not let his work consume him and to remember that there is a bigger world out there. He believes that it is important to be exposed to different styles of art, such as commercial work.

Beyond environment design, Ivan wants to continue to learn and be exposed to other areas of design (such as character design). Once his portfolio is complete he then foresees himself move on to Art Directing within the next 5-6 years. Perhaps another sign that his creativity knows no bounds, Ivan then mentions, “I just like making things, maybe I’ll also get into wood working”.

You can find out more about Ivan at www.ivanlouey.com or connect with him via his Instagram @ilouey