Stamping Mad

Interview with Steven Vander Meer of Meer Image

by Katelyn on August 16th, 2007

I was lucky enough to interview the talented Steven Vander Meer of Meer Image. If you’ve never taken a look at his stamps, you are in for a treat. They are beautifully drawn, deeply etched and wonderfully mounted. Right now he is accepting submissions for a rubber art book called Stamp Naked. (To clarify, he’s looking for rubber art featuring artistic nudes, not suggesting that you stamp without wearing clothes.) I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I did. Steven has some really great answers here:
1. How did you get started with rubber stamps?

In the late 1980’s I was making the type of animated film where you draw every single frame, it was a lot of work so I began using rubber stamps for some of the imagery. Leavenworth Jackson, Good Stamps, Graven Images and others had great stuff, but I needed to get some of my own drawings made into custom stamps too. That got me using stamps outside of film making, and I wanted more stamps - of my own designs, so I began sending away for full sheets made in photopolymer. To pay for this rather expensive habit, I made extras to sell, but I found it was hard to sell them without a way of showing them off, so I decided to make a catalog. It seemed I couldn’t have a catalog or “collection” without some kind of clever name, so I came up with Meer Image. When the stamps began to sell, people would write checks to “Meer Image” so I had to open a bank account, but the bank wouldn’t let me unless I had something called a “fictitious business statement”, that seemed silly but I went to get one at the courthouse and they said I needed a business license first, so I got that and found I had started a rubber stamp company totally by accident.

2. Where do you get your inspiration for your wonderful art?

Mostly by looking at naked people. No, seriously, I do life drawing several times a week, have for over ten years. If you want to get ideas flowing for drawings, you just have to start drawing, anything, and life drawing gets you to draw a lot. So, even ideas that don’t have nudes in them can come out of it. Also, I daydream a lot. Sometimes I steal ideas from other people, if I think I can do it better. Customers send me there ideas too, and I’ll either get annoyed, or else I’ll get really into it and it will become a best seller. My best sellers are usually not my own ideas.

3. What is one thing you wish you knew before you started a stamping business?

I wish I had known that I was starting a rubber stamp business.

4. Stamping for stamping’s sake is less popular than it was. What do you say to people who say they used to stamp?

I think stamping has gone too far in the direction of “here’s a cool thing, and here’s exactly how to do it yourself”. In other words, the creativity has gone out of it. I would say to people, stop duplicating the step-by-step projects, and just get out some stamps that you like, and play with them. Ignore all the rules, and I mean ALL the rules. Clean your stamp off on the very paper you are stamping on… make a mess… go with your mistakes, not against them… throw away your glitter and all of your embossing goop, along with all of the trinkets and eyelets and doodads that you might be tempted to glue onto your artwork…. use pencils and pens, simple tools… if something seems icky and difficult - get rid of it….

But, that’s just my opinion.

5. What is the strangest thing you have ever used a rubber stamp on?

A teenager.

Steven also mentioned that he wished I would have asked how he stays in business with the high cost of producing his gorgeous stamps. I wish I would have asked that, too. Sounds like a trade secret would have been revealed!

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