"intaview with a balla" - Brendan Megannety aka Chunks aka Chunky Mane aka...

bloodoftheyoung:

If you’ve been following Blood of the Young for a while then I hope you’re already familiar with Brendan Megannety’s work. We’ve worked with him on a large number of our exhibitions and zines in the past and are proud to call him one of our right hand mans.

TRH: First of all, you’ve got a lot of new zines and books out. Tell me about those, why should people care?
CHUNKS: Haha, good question. I guess I’m just trying to do something a little different with my new zines/books and other goods. I’m trying to break out of the “strictly a zine about one thing” or “just a photo zine”. I’m trying to incorporate illustration, design, found photos, original photos, collage, whatever into my new stuff.
I was lucky enough to get to team up with Tobin Reid for FINAL BOSS, which is mostly illustration and appropriated design stuff. I got to see his pages when I was about 90% done my side of it and I was like “damn, I gotta step my shit up”. So I did, and I think it really shows.

You’ve been down with the crew since the beginning, but I noticed over the past 6 months or so you’ve been pumpin it up into extra high gear. What do you think spurred that on?
Man, honestly just trying to move my energy and attention in a different direction. I’m not gonna explain exactly what I’m changing about my life but yeah basically I think I spent a lot of years being creative in spite of what else was going on. I guess I thought you had to be fucked up to get some good art vibes going on but now that I’m making changes I can see its the opposite. I’ve put a lot of energy in to my work these days and people are telling me it shows. I guess I’m doing something right!

Your zine reviews on Nighted have been a highlight of my tumblr-ing for the past few weeks. Tell the people a little bit about that and how you got hooked up with ‘dem N-Block dogs.
Me and Nick just ended up trading when I put out a zine a few months back called Poor Impulse Control. I had heard of Nighted a bit but didn’t know what the deal was really. Anyways I was down with what he sent me so we started working on stuff. We are constantly just bouncing ideas off each other and getting each other stoked. I was lucky enough to have a couple spreads in Nighted Life 2 and I’m actually going to be doing distro for the Nighted stuff in Canada now. Me and Nick have some patches in the works too, so keep your eyes peeled!

You’re probably answering these questions on an airplane - headed to good olde London town and then getting Amsterdamaged. Working on anything over there? What’s got you excited about those cities? other than getting out of Toronto…
Ah yeah I am actually typing this shit on my iPhone waiting for my plane to start boarding. I’m just heading over to get a lil break from the scene here. I have been crazy busy the last 2 months and I think I’m dipping out on a high note, having a real successful group show 2 days ago called Don’t Trust Anyone Over 30. [ed. note: the police department sent about 10 officers to shut ‘er down] I am just going to say whats up to some people ‘n family and to spend some time in some galleries on some chinstroker shit. I got a couple spots that are interested in zines and whatnot so I brought some samples out with me.

Chunks’ Bodega opened yesterday and I hear the doors basically got smashed in, people mobbing the hell out of your shop. What can we expect from the Bodega in the future?
Haha, yeah man these people got me workin! I opened it up like pretty late at night and when I woke up in the morning I had a crazy amount of orders. I’m not gonna drop numbers but basically it was enough to make me be like “damn, I can’t believe people wanna buy this weird shit that comes out of my brain”. So I rushed my ass off packing envelopes and stuff before heading to the airport. I’m just gonna keep trying to have fresh releases in there to keep people hyped. No one likes some stale product so I just wanna have new patches, pins, zines and all that every few weeks. Nighted and BOTY collaborations too!

Shout out:
Big shout out to all my family! They deal with a lot of shit on my end and I’m surprised they still talk to me sometimes. And of course my street family: NICK @ NIGHTED, DIMITRI AND REILLY @ BOTY. BORES, HERBS, ALL THE 56 CREW. DARK ARTS ESPECIALLY THAT FOOL BIG JOHN JR., SETH G @ DOOM SPIRAL. Probably some people I’m forgetting. And of course I wanna give a very special shout out to every girl in the whole entire world. Never change, ladiez!