True

Who is True?

TRUE, formerly known as David John Riggins is an American artist / designer of German-Russian, African-American, and Blackfoot descent who lives and works in New York City. He is regarded by the international design community as being among the “A-list” of the world’s “leading design innovators” whose work has been discussed in numerous design books, magazines, and conferences, as well as in newspapers, television and radio programs around the world. He began using the word “TRUE” in place of his birth name in the mid-1990s. His work incorporates elements of illustration, character design, and graphic design.

He began his professional art career in the late 1980s as a set painter for Roger Corman Studios in Venice Beach, CA. He moved to New York in 1991 to study at Sarah Lawrence College, and then transferred to The Art School of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. He first gained international notoriety for a series of non-permissional site-specific “guerrilla” installations on the streets of Los Angeles and New York City, and in NYC’s subway system, which were done under the pseudonym “str8up”. The impetus for these projects was the belief that the “Art World” was unnecessarily ethnocentric and elitist, and that greater meaning could be infused into a work by taking a populist approach.