Ithaka (artist)
Ithaka Darin Pappas (born July 8, 1966), known professionally as Ithaka, is an American-born multidisciplinary artist of Greek ancestry who creates using music, writing, sculpture and photography (both as separate entities or using them in combination with each other). He has authored a collection of short stories, entitled Ravenshark Chronicles published in international magazines and periodicals, which have sometimes been the basis for his travel-oriented lyrical content. In a 2005 article for the magazine Waves, journalist Ricardo Macario described Ithaka as "The Miscellaneous Man". In a 2008 review of Ithaka's sixth album Saltwater Nomad, the online surf-culture platform Surfline stated that "the artist effortlessly traverses at ease between all of his choses mediums of expression [music, sculpture, writing and photography]", and that "his life's journey is a soulful balancing act somewhere between the worlds of euphoric creation and aquatic diversion." Early life Ithaka was born and raised in coastal Southern California, and began experimenting with his father's 35mm and 120mm cameras at the age of five. He began surfing at the age of twelve, after vacationing with a friend's family on the Hawaiian island of Maui and observing the locals riding six-foot tubes at Honolua Bay. “That's the life for me”, he thought to himself. Upon returning to California, he sold his drum kit to buy a surfboard. The ocean, until present day, has been a major influence for the artist. As a young adult he began traveling the world in search of waves and adventure, largely inspiring his photography, three-dimensional artworks and voyage-oriented lyrics and stories. As he told Dance Club Magazine in a 2005 interview, I live it, write it, rap about it. He has since resided and worked in a variety of locations including; Greece, Japan, Portugal, Brazil and Mexico. Career Photography Ithaka's first professional photograph was published in 1984, in Thrasher skateboarding magazine. Much of his early portraiture work was of aspiring Hollywood actors, but he then began getting more involved in music industry photography, working with Los Angeles area hip hop artists such as; A Lighter Shade of Brown, Big Lady K, Low Profile, Eazy E and N.W.A. After the release of F. Gary Gray's 2015 biographical drama about gangsta rap pioneers Eazy E and N.W.A., entitled Straight Outta Compton, there was renewed visibility in some of the early pictures that Ithaka Darin Pappas had made of the artists (all created while freelancing for Priority Records between 1988 and 1990). In 2016, many of his photographs, including the cover of their 1989 Straight Outta Compton remix single release, were projected as a backdrop at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York during the induction ceremony officially admitting N.W.A into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2017, more photographs appeared in the HBO documentary, The Defiant Ones directed by Allen Hughes. Other photographs of N.W.A. by Ithaka were shown in the 2018 museum exhibition "Hip-Hop : Un Age d'Or" (or The Golden Age Of Hip Hop) at the Musée d'Art Contemporain in Marseille, France. Later