Corwin Nicassio is the art curator and graphic designer at BUDSSMOKE. He has been with the company since it was established in 2019 and has been coming up with the most intricate and creative ideas for the brand since. You can often find his smiling face at our Pickering location where he puts his creative juices to work. To Corwin, art and cannabis are a “way of life”. He loves to indulge in some London Cheeze before creating and some Walts Burger afterward to settle his thoughts.
Corwin has been interested in art as far back as he can remember. He stems from generations of artists; his father painted with watercolors and his grandfather painted with oil. The majority of his work consists of traditional pencil and paper compositions. While he does enjoy painting on canvas, he states that “it’s a very involved process, it is unintentionally surrealistic…because [I] work iconographically…” His work is emergent, where many unplanned details are often added in; hidden narratives he discovers to perfectly tie in with the theme. For these reasons, it can take Corwin anywhere from a couple of days to years to complete a canvas.
“I’m more of a pencil and paper kind of guy out of convenience, my larger body of work consists of doodles on top of newspapers and magazine photos. My carrier as a Graphic Designer is the skill set that’s more in demand and puts food on the table but I’ve also sold a lot of canvas.”- Corwin
Most recently, Corwin designed our Valentine’s Day cards. The cards were inspired by a few different elements. The first was Philadelphia’s “LOVE” park statue, where he took the word BUDS and mimicked its likeness. The second element came when designing the font, where a triggered memory of The Beatles’ cartoon “Yellow Submarine” made sense to tie into this theme. A satirical version of the song ran through his mind “All you need is BUDS! BUDS, BUDS is all you need.” The rest of the card design was motivated by the artistic director Heinz Edelman for the film.
“It kind of rang true for the times, because I feel these last few years a large part of the population is feeling more isolated than ever, especially during Valentine’s Day. I wanted people to laugh a little and also feel that there’s no pressure to find “Love” this year. All you need are Buds; in the form of friends and cannabis.”- Corwin
Keep your eyes on our socials/ blogs to see what Corwin’s up to next. Cards are available at all locations, where $1 from each card’s proceeds will be donated to The Heart and Stroke Foundation.
