Because we couldn’t call it Watts
Drawing inspiration from Sanford and Son, urban decay, blight, the complexities & disparities between municipalities in Metropolitan Detroit, aggressive skating culture, Where’s Waldo, record DJ’s, late night weekend radio shows, outdated home computing and the world wide web. Voltz came into existence during the peak of the mid to late 1990’s.
What started as drawings in planners and in the back of bulletin inserts quickly grew into a city of stories with people, places and vehicles. Characters are inanimate, alien or mammal. In 1998 the first formal voltz drawing was created. Finding a set of prismacolor markers at a garage sale the summer before laid the groundwork for fully utilizing color. The second voltz drawing followed later that year.
With the start of post secondary studies in architecture and the art supplies that are required drawing skills and abilities increased. The tradition of sketches in notebooks and remained throughout. After college life started getting in the way of things but the crime noir, or Noir style was the heartbeat of voltz from the late aughties to the early teens. After the noir era calmed down most voltz drawings were contained to half letter sized spiral bound sketchbooks which are still being utilized today
Voltz has been ‘all gas’ and ‘ho brakes’ since NYE 2022. Since that time artwork has been digitized, preserved, and archived. Uncompleted projects have been completed and old projects reborn. This site is the culmination of documentation. Enjoy.