Today we’d like to introduce you to Bobby Soto.
Bobby, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Being a lifelong artist, I always knew I wanted to use my talents to create. Working as a full-time firefighter didn’t give me that particular creative outlet so I needed to do something in my time off. I just didn’t’ know what that thing would be. In the beginning, I put a lot of time and effort into creating a portfolio I could show to a tattoo shop and gain apprenticeship to become a tattoo artist. I’m still a huge fan of American traditional and Japanese traditional art but my sights eventually landed on doing something that fit more in line with my unique vision of what medium would best represent my particular style of art. I settled momentarily on stickers and sold them to friends and family with all types of random sketches I had drawn up on my tablet. It was rough around the edges but it was fun. This came to be known as The Benevolent Sticker Company. The concept was simple. Sell some stickers, donate to charity. And it worked for a little while. It was a blast to see friends and family get enthusiastic about buying art while doing some good for some charities. The problem was that the scope of the business was just too small. Fast forward to 2023 and 8FOLDPUNK was established. All of the art would still be done by me and my team and it would be centered around concepts of philosophy, mental well-being, connection to one another, transcendence, creation and the struggles of living a good life in modern times. Much of the inspiration for the concepts I would go on to draw came from a 10 year journey into meditation and to a lesser extent, Buddhism (Spirituality at large). Equally, I draw influence from a lifetime growing up in punk and hardcore music culture, playing drums in multiple bands and frequenting shows all through South Florida. I also draw inspiration from life in Florida and what it means to be born and raised in a state where people tend to come and go. But all this wouldn’t even be possible without the belief and support of my wonderful wife, Clare. She truly is the backbone of the business. From behind the scenes, she works diligently to ensure we have a functioning website, stocked inventory, advertising, social media presence, all while helping to maintain a house and raise a properly well adjusted Chocolate Lab, Barry. She truly is a Godsend. But it hasn’t all been an easy road for us. In the short course of our life as business owners, Clare lost her mom without warning to an aggressive form of cancer. Life didn’t give us too much time to grieve as only a few years later we lost her father to complications from Pulmonary Fibrosis. All in all, since the inception of the business, we have watched seven family members lose their lives. In the midst of all this grief, the business took a back seat and it was unclear if we would continue at all. But we realized that now more than ever was the time to channel our grief and loss into creation. It all was a sobering reminder of the preciousness of life, the importance of living life authentically as you are, and giving to those who need. It lit a fire under us and we plan to keep running this business with those principles at the center of what we do. Given the passing of Clare’s mom, Beth, we donate portions from every shirt sale to the nonprofit organization FXCK CANCER. In honor of Clare’s dad, Tom (former Mr. Garlic), we will be selling a tribute shirt of him at this years Garlic Festival in Delray Beach and using portions of sales to donate to his favorite charity, St Jude Children’s Research Hospital. We believe when we honor those who have passed by embodying the principles they lived by, they forever live on through us. So here’s to the future of 8FOLDPUNK. We don’t know where we’ll be five years down the road, but we’re enjoying the hell out of the process so we don’t plan on slowing down anytime soon.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
We answered some of our struggles in the previous post but we will outline them here as well.
It hasn’t all been an easy road for us. In the short course of our life as business owners, Clare lost her mom without warning to an aggressive form of cancer. Life didn’t give us too much time to grieve as only a few years later we lost her father to complications from Pulmonary Fibrosis. All in all, since the inception of the business, we have watched seven family members lose their lives. In the midst of all this grief, the business took a back seat and it was unclear if we would continue at all. But we realized that now more than ever was the time to channel our grief and loss into creation. It all was a sobering reminder of the preciousness of life, the importance of living life authentically as you are, and giving to those who need. It lit a fire under us and we plan to keep running this business with those principles at the center of what we do. Given the passing of Clare’s mom, Beth, we donate portions from every shirt sale to the nonprofit organization FXCK CANCER. In honor of Clare’s dad, Tom (former Mr. Garlic), we will be selling a tribute shirt of him at this years Garlic Festival in Delray Beach and using portions of sales to donate to his favorite charity, St Jude Children’s Research Hospital. We believe when we honor those who have passed by embodying the principles they lived by, they forever live on through us. So here’s to the future of 8FOLDPUNK. We don’t know where we’ll be five years down the road, but we’re enjoying the hell out of the process so we don’t plan on slowing down anytime soon.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I work full time as a firefighter and my wife is a Nurse Practitioner. I have been doing this for ten years and before that I worked as an ER tech in the hospital setting. Prior to that I was a private ambulance driver. All in all I have been working for the last 15 years of my life in the field of emergency care.
My professional life as a business owner and an artist has been a lifelong journey. I was drawing from a very young age and it took many years to develop a style, though I think it is still evolving. I predominantly used pencil and paper to draw for the vast majority of life but in more recent years, I have developed a fondness for oil painting and digital art. I would say digital art is where most of my focus goes nowadays as it is the medium I use to create shirt graphics. I’m known for approaching darker imagery such as skulls, daggers, blood, and grim reapers with loud psychedelic colors, a sense of playfulness, and a positive message. I’m most proud of being able to help others with my art. Anytime I hear someone tell me that a drawing or message I made inspired them, it is the highest praise I can receive. We had a fan of the business tattoo one of my shirt designs on their thigh and that’s pretty amazing to me. I think what sets me apart is my life experience working in a field where the loss of life is not foreign to me. And since our shirts are often about the heaviness of life and death and the pursuit of living a good life, I feel like I’m not having to imagine any of my experience in order to create art that has weight. I can pull from my own experiences firsthand. That isn’t to down play anyone else’s artistic process and what they pull from. The best art I believe is a form of alchemy, the process of taking heavy emotions and channeling them into something beautiful and many talented artists can do that from their own unique struggles and insights.
What does success mean to you?
Success for me is being able to live life on my terms, being true to myself, and being able to use the gifts I’ve been given to improve the world around me. Often times, these improvements may seem small in comparison to what social media portrays to us. But living a life of integrity, surrounding myself with people I love who love me back and helping those in need will outweigh a more superficial definition any day of the week. From an artist’s perspective, success can be measured by how deeply you can feel into your experience, how skilled you can become at your craft, and how authentically can you translate that into your art. I’ll often fall short of this measure but then I’ll remember that it’s also just part of the process and I go back to the drawing board.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://8foldpunk.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/8foldpunk?igsh=NW9xbXdpOTRvOTZu&utm_source=qr
- Other: https://linktr.ee/8foldpunk
Image Credits
Caleb Siegel @siegelcaleb, Parker Rockenstein @rockenphotos
