Porn Set Designers Are Artists, Too

Christopher Norris, AKA Steak Mtn California-based graphic artist and porn set decorator Christopher Norris, aka Steak Mtn, started out designing album covers for punk and hardcore bands, such as Against Me!, Cult Ritual and Combatwoundedveteran. Now he’s a real artist with exhibitions and shit. His first solo show in the UK, Get Ready, Jungle Heat, opens today at the Beach Gallery in Shoreditch. Chris had just finished painting the gallery walls and floor black when we came by to say hello, which was the perfect setting for an interview with a decorator of sex dungeon sets. His 26 small inkblot drawings all have titles like "A Moist Fisting", "Bat Choking" and "Hair Slicked With Spit", which Christopher says “aggressively explores the mouth’s role in human sexuality”. VICE: Hi Chris, what’s Get Ready, Jungle Heat about?
Christopher Norris: All the drawings are dirty and filthy in some regard and revolve around sex in some sort of capacity. But I always try and keep it so it's still like some sort of art; I’m never just drawing a chick with her fucking legs spread. I paint with pornography, but I also work in pornography in America. I’m a set decorator for a company called kink.com, which is a BDSM hardcore pornography company. I also do a daily blog called adultfilm.tumblr.com showing behind the scenes of adult movies I do sets for, because it’s interesting how unsexy making pornography is.

above: "Science Club".

above: "Moist Fist" What’s your "A Moist Fist" drawing about?
Exactly what it sounds like. It’s just somebody getting their mouth filled with a hand and drooling everywhere, which is something I see a lot at work – just gagging people out with their hand rather than with somebody’s wiener. I’m sure another kind of moist fisting would be you’re all lubed up and you’re playing somebody like a puppet. Why do you call yourself Steak Mtn?
I didn’t invent the fucking nom de plume. It was something I started calling myself at the time when hip-hop was really big and everybody had these fake names and I was really influenced by the idea that you could be somebody else. Who the fuck is going to pay attention to Christopher Norris? I wouldn’t. At the time, I just thought it was funny to be vegetarian and call myself Steak Mtn.

above: "Hair Slicked With Spit"

above: "Ghrost" You started out designing album covers. How did you get into that?
I was in a couple hardcore bands in the mid-90s to probably about 2000 and I’ve always been interested in graphic design. Everybody else just wanted to make shit look like Discharge records, or pictures of dead children charred in the Xerox machine a whole bunch of times, and I was like, fuck all that. So I started developing this really bizarre style because we were an aggressive band, but I wanted to not have aggressive covers. I switch styles a lot; I bring an idea rather than a style. It’s a certain sense of humour; it’s been called gallows humour before. If it’s not funny, then it doesn’t matter to me. Obviously you have to compromise when you’re working with six jerks with instruments and I’m just as arrogant and pushy as they are.   What’s next for you?
It’s going to be a big year. I’m working with an American band called Fences, there’s an Against Me! record coming down the pipeline we started working on, and then I’m probably going to work with a band called Fake Problems. Truthfully, that will probably take me to September. I also work with a LA-based company called Blood is the New Black that do a lot of artist-based T-shirts.

Cool, good luck with the show.

Get Ready, Jungle Heat is at the Beach Gallery in London from the 6th till the 26th of April.

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