On Friendship, Art, and the Collaboration That Followed

I first met Seth, the artist and creator of MEFREEK, in an undisclosed location. Some might call it Malibu. I call it rehab. But that's neither here nor there, except that it's exactly where I met Seth, on the cliffs of Malibu, on July 8th, 2019.

I had just moved into a house with black mold. This is a whole other topic, but needless to say, I have a severe mold allergy, and not the sneezing kind. I'm talking debilitating anxiety. It took me ten years to figure that out. Once I knew, the logic seemed simple enough (don't move into a house with black mold). Even when a landlord tells you the house is in great shape, maybe don't believe them every time.

I needed somewhere to go while they handled the remediation. An old acquaintance recommended a place with two facilities on the property, one for mental health, one for drugs and alcohol. I needed to reset my nervous system.

The moment I set foot in there on July 3rd, I was like, whoa, maybe this wasn't the right choice. The place was silent. A horrible display of Independence Day feasts, most of which I couldn't eat, being a vegetarian. That was a very long weekend. But luckily, on a day just like any other day in Malibu, Seth entered the premises.

Safe to say Seth is my most expensive friend (rehab isn't cheap). He came in hot. This guy was wired. Usually, when someone's acting erratic or unstable, I keep my distance, but there was something safe and welcoming about him; right away, he opened up and told me his whole life story, which was very entertaining. He had an interesting way of telling sad stories but making them seem funny, call it a gift or maybe a disorder. One of my favorite memories from that whole stretch in rehab is him getting on the treadmill in the common area, cranking it as high as it would go, and playing catch with a football in full street attire with another housemate from across the room. Complete absurdity, the guy couldn't sit still.

We hung out every day. We talked about everything, most of it about how we saw the world and the people in it. We were always first in line for our therapy session, oh wait, I mean breakfast, lunch, and dinner buffet (after the 4th, the food got better; the staff was apparently on vacation for the holiday), and yeah, you gain weight in rehab. Still haven't lost it, and it's been 7 years. We talked about everything and just became great friends. After about forty-five days, we left the facility together, not on a white horse, but in two separate cars.

Since this was his first time sober since the age of 11, he had some reconstructing to do. I offered to let him stay with me, and I figured I could use the company, which was helpful when I asked him to throw away stuff I thought was contaminated with mold. He stayed with me for about 4 months and moved back to Tulsa to be with his children. It was sad to see him go, but we kept in touch every day and took a couple of road trips a year. We would always pick up right where we left off.

In 2020, when the pandemic hit, we got to spend some more quality time together. We took my old Sprinter van and drove around the West Coast, exploring while everything else was closed. One of the things we did in every town was to stop and play tennis. We're both highly competitive, and I know he didn't want me to beat him. I still consider myself a tennis prodigy, and the only reason I don't go pro is that I don't do night matches due to my strict supper time schedule.

On one of the most memorable days of that trip in 2020, we rented sand buggies and drove the dunes in southern Oregon. By the end of it, I'd worked up quite an appetite, and I didn't exactly have access to farm-to-table cuisine out there. Seth, on the other hand, had no mercy: store-bought sushi and fried chicken, literally hand in hand.

I always knew he was talented and an artist at heart. He was constantly writing, and eventually he started showing me these very detailed pencil drawings, based on photos of his family, and a couple of me as well. The detail and the shadowing were impeccable. A year or two later, he started sending me photos of his paintings, and I remember thinking, this is crazy. I love his work. It started with these little MEFREEK sketches and cartoons, then the vivid paintings started coming in.

While all this was going on, I still hadn't gotten into leather craft yet.

Seth got more and more immersed in his art, and he eventually opened his own gallery on Route 66 in the Meadow Gold district of Tulsa. After getting into leather work, I was obsessed with the idea of putting his characters on my bags. I'd been asking him, repeatedly, to let me use his artwork. For a long time, I got unenthusiastic responses, the kind you would expect to receive in rehab. Then one day I said it again, kind of offhand, man, you should let me do this. He just said, go for it. I was kind of shocked, honestly.

He recently invited me to his studio to do a pop-up show. There was a classic car show happening on Route 66, and he figured that'd be a good place for me to bring some bags and experience Tulsa firsthand.

It was the first time I'd seen his paintings in person, after knowing them only through photos for years. I couldn't believe how detailed the pieces were up close. He walked me through how he gets everything so smooth, all the techniques he uses to make each painting better. He even stretches his own canvas.

As soon as Seth gave me the go-ahead to use his artwork, I was very excited. My cousin Jayson had just started working with me, and we began experimenting with ways to apply Seth's art to leather. First attempt: a professional silk screener. It looked great! We have a winner! I was almost finished with the bag when the print peeled right off the leather panel. I was livid. More research and more effort. We finally found a solution. I would hand-paint Seth's work myself. Just kidding. Using airbrushing and silkscreening, combined with proper prep and paint, we had something very solid, with an end result that looks amazing.

I'm calling this a soft release, or to quote Seth, a "flaccid" release. I plan to expand the universe Seth has created, and I am excited to see it become a "new pop culture trend."

Along California's coastal waters, Seth unexpectedly dried out, leading to our accidental meeting in a place neither of us intended. That encounter surprisingly evolved into years of road trips, tennis matches, and now, collaborating professionally with his artwork on my leather. Neither of us foresaw this from a treadmill in a common room in Malibu. Our bond is strong—some mistake us for brothers, others for lovers, and on a good day, both.

Born with severe hearing loss, Seth grew up in a house right under a highway underpass in Tulsa, the sound of cars roaring past like a lullaby he couldn't quite hear anyway.

Before the paintbrushes, he and his brother built a cannabis business from the ground up. When the raids started piling up, he took the hint, and they packed up and moved to Los Angeles to continue the business.

After spending enough time in LA, he returned to Tulsa and began to focus on his work as an artist. Self-taught and maniacal, Seth brings as much vivid detail into a graphite portrait as he does a full oil painting. His grandiose bodies of work shift from MEFREEK cartoons and characters to surrealist oil paintings.

He now lives a quiet life with his wife Lizzie and loves spending time with his children more than anything else.