If Ferris Plock’s work looks oddly familiar, it probably is: The 31-year-old San Francisco artist’s finely tuned creations have been featured on the sides of buildings (a Converse billboard in downtown San Francisco), Robin Williams’ chest (Plock has a side business in T-shirts), in magazines such as XLR8R and Tokion, and in galleries from San Francisco to New York, Tokyo to Dublin.

Born in New Jersey, Plock spent his formative years skateboarding and running amuck in East Palo Alto. After graduating with a degree in Modern Literature from UC Santa Cruz, he gave up writing to pursue art, illustration and graphic design.

Plock’s art incorporates masterful line work with a surrealist twist. Wonky and slightly diabolical yet sweet enough for the kids, his characters are like Maurice Sendak's critters post-adolescence: They're wonderful to look at, but would you want to meet them in the dark?

Nicole Harvey: I'm interested in what we say to people when they ask us what we do. Some of us may work in the sanitation industry, but we're also Butoh dancers. So when someone asks you what you do, what do you say?

Ferris Plock: I usually dumb it down and say that I draw stuff for stuff and stuff. I have not found a good way to talk about my art with people yet.

NH: At what point did you know this was something you wanted to do full time? Or do you know this?

FP: I knew that I wanted to draw after I gave up on writing ... I think I was looking for my outlet and it finally showed up.

NH: Where did the writing go?

FP: I wish I knew ... I figured that I’d said what I needed to say.

NH: What's one thing you want to do right now but feel you can't? Or is there nothing that will stop you?

FP: I want to help a small, top-notch team of scientists figure out how to make a bigger chicken.

NH: What would you do if you weren't doing what you do?

FP: I would be working at the Cork City Opera House in Ireland, building stage sets.

NH: I was walking by the Shooting Gallery the other night on the way back from a YBCA opening, and it was the usual: kids with tallboys in paper bags, taking pictures of each other smoking in front. It reminded me of one of my favorite statements by the Goncourt Bros: "A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world." Considering the presence of canned Tecate at most openings, have you heard anything good lately?

FP: I think gallery openings are birthdays for artwork – they always have some cheer and some good times. Sometimes there are some lack-of-verbal-editing-skills gems that are thrown out there. However, I am a physical humor enthusiast; my good friend knocked over a table of wine once and I thought that said it all.

NH: How long have you been doing this for real, and how long do you intend to do this?

FP: Hmmm ... Taking it seriously since ‘99. That would be a good T-shirt tagline. I want to keep going and going and going.

NH: How would you explain the Lower Haighters? Are they the heirs to the throne of the Mission School?

FP: Well, I was at the recent lower Haighters staff meeting and … Wait, wait, wait, I am so sick of the need to label everything. Why label it? What is the distinguishing characteristic of the Lower Haighter style? The Mission School? Is that for the history books? I am pretty sure Barry McGee didn't come up with that label. Seems like people need to label it so they can understand it, market it, and sell it.

NH: I don't like it anymore than you do, but it makes it easier to understand regionality in art, until such time as it becomes cliché, which seems pretty quick these days. Apart from a barrage of things, what is it about the Mission School that is so attractive?

FP: The aesthetic that I think of with Mission School is putting up as much shit as possible ... a bombarding of the senses by large amounts of work. Each piece is dependent on the other pieces that are butted up against it. I like the way it looks but I am hesitant to employ that style of placement of my own work. However, I do work in series format; I get hold of an idea and I like to take several attempts at that idea ... i.e. the Wulf Wheels series.

NH: And finally ... Kool Keith or Ghostface?

FP: Kool Keith is a genius... he wears banana hammocks and his rapping styles are insane, not to mention who he works with on a regular basis. Ghostface is dope, too, but I'm going with Insomniac from Palo Alto.

See more of Ferris Plock’s art at ferrisplock.com and at the following shows: Halcyon (halcyonline.com) in New York City, April 11-May 7; Schmancy (schmancytoys.com) in Seattle, May 5-June 1, and in September at Compound Gallery (justbedesign.com) in Portland with Kelly Tunstall. A mural he painted with Tunstall at Anno Domini (galleryad.com) in San Jose is on view through May, and he will paint a mural in Riga, Latvia, in June.