Whether it’s new music, biopics, runway buzz hot from Paris or tussles with PETA, Virginia Beach native Pharrell Williams ensures year after year that his name, exploits and undertakings remain part of the pop-culture zeitgeist. Throughout it all, he reps his city.
While his Something in the Water music festival at the Oceanfront was officially canceled in January, Williams isn’t done with Virginia Beach. The Grammy Award-winning fashionista is still showing love.
On Thursday, he launched a brand called Virginia via social media and a website that showcases the work of Virginia Beach visual artist Sam Clayman.
“I think there’s a connection that a lot of us creatives, from this area, have to one another,” Clayman said. “We saw the same stuff. We smelled the same stuff. We felt the same stuff growing up here. There’s just something that will kind of forever connect us to that and one another.
“So, yeah, it’s humbling someone like Pharrell likes and used my work,” Clayman said. “He’s an incredibly generous human being.”
The website is blackyachtrock.com, named for Williams’ 2024 album. And in one sense, its design is simple.
Streamlined and clean, its homepage is without too many options, links or apparent places to click. The word “VIRGINIA” is written at the top of the page. There’s a navigation drawer, hidden until activated, at the top left. But Clayman’s work takes up the rest.
His art, a digital drawing, depicts a day at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront.
Composed on an iPad, its scene is brightly colored and sprawling. And like a wacky dream, it’s cluttered with cartoonish characters and anthropomorphic sea creatures. With little dead space, the work has a frantic-like energy to it.
At the immediate center of the page, a bicycle-riding jellyfish hangs onto handlebars with a human-like hand while clasping a lit cigarette with a tentacle. And from there, the whimsy only heightens: Nearby the jellyfish, a sunburned woman holds a hot dog, a mullet wearer is missing teeth, a kid with a flattop hairstyle carries a boombox, a scantily clad woman roller skates toward the water, a woman snaps a picture with her tongue hanging out and googly eyed seagulls swoop about the landscape.
And that’s only the first frame.
Looking at the webpage, “scroll to move” directions are posted at the bottom right corner. Scrolling moves the page to the right — revealing more and more of Clayman’s drawing.
If it were transposed on a physical canvas, the artist said its dimensions would measure 10 inches tall by 9 feet long.
When a website visitor scrolls and scrolls, Clayman’s zany depiction of Virginia Beach goes and goes until reaching another jellyfish, this time riding a scooter, at the end.
The executive director of the ViBe Creative District in Virginia Beach, Kate Pittman, pointed out contemporary artists often use tongue-in-cheek techniques.
“Sam’s artwork is obviously a playful take on what someone might witness down at the Oceanfront through the lens of a young male eye and just poking and having a humorous take on the characters it draws,” Pittman said.
She was happy to see it on a platform with national reach. The launch also coincides with this weekend’s opening of the city’s Atlantic Park surf complex, which is backed by Williams.
“In recent years, from Something in the Water and through the Atlantic Park project, Pharrell and his team have been very supportive of local artists,” Pittman said.
Throughout the online artwork, visitors can click on Virginia-brand merchandise available for sale, or they can use the navigation drawer, or “hamburger menu,” to find the products, such as $72 canvas tote bags, $12 beach balls and $50 T-shirts featuring a picture of one of Clayman’s big-eyed seagulls.
Williams’ latest Adidas shoe, the Virginia Adistar Jellyfish for $300, was listed as “sold out” by Thursday afternoon.
The 10 tracks that make up Williams’ latest 2024 album, “Black Yacht Rock, Vol. 1: City of Limitless Access,” can be streamed from the website for free.
Anyone willing to offer up microphone access can sing karaoke versions of Williams’ latest songs into their device and receive access to notifications about future products, music and events through the “limitless world of Virginia” site, as Williams called it on social media.
Representatives for Williams did not respond by Thursday night.
Colin Warren-Hicks, 919-818-8139, colin.warrenhicks@virginiamedia.com
