It’s been a year since Igor passed and it’s taken me this long to put into words how his absence has affected me. Grief is something I process slowly, and I wanted to honor him with the care and respect he deserves. This post is my way of memorializing him and a place I’ll revisit to keep his memory alive.
It’s hard to describe just how painful it was for me to receive that call from his wife, Crystal. Last year was one of the most difficult periods in my life. Having to deal with a stack of physical, mental and emotional issues, I was hanging by a thread and finding out that one of my closest friends had passed away was such a blow to me. I wasn’t prepared to lose someone I loved so dearly and who shaped so much of who I am today.
At the time I wanted to write something meaningful that expressed just how much he meant to me. I just couldn’t put the words together. Instead, I worked with Crystal to create a video from a collection of photos spanning his life. It was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done, but it gave me an opportunity to grieve and honor him at that moment in some small way.
Igor was my closest friend and confidant for nearly 30 years. We met in 1995 at his t-shirt shop in Buckingham Square Mall, where I wandered in looking for work as an airbrush artist. We clicked instantly. I never ended up “working” at Igor’s T-Shirts, but I spent more time at his shop than at any of my actual jobs. We passed the time there talking for hours about anything and everything… art, music, philosophy, life. No topic was off-limits, inappropriate humor was on full tilt, and the best part there was never any judgment.
At that time, I had just moved to Colorado and Igor was a welcoming presence when I desperately needed a friend. His inclusivity was one of the things I admired most about him. He brought me into his circle of friends and treated me as an equal. We bonded over shared experiences… both of us having moved to a new country as kids, growing up in single-parent households, navigating similar challenges. Many of our friends shared similar upbringings, and I like to believe having someone who understands what that’s like made us feel like family.
In 1997, Igor and I moved into an apartment in Aurora, where we lived together for a little over four years. Those years were some of the most memorable times of my life. It was a place were we bonded deeply over art and music. We learned to dj there after I had bought a set of turntables and hardly a day passed without either Igor, me, and a rotating cast of friends spending time playing records. Music was such an important part of our lives in those days. Didn’t matter what it was so long as it was good. He introduced me to so many great bands that I would have never listened to outside of what I would have casually heard on the radio. Igor loved classic rock… specifically artists like Pink Floyd, Alan Parsons, Supertramp, Steely Dan, the Rolling Stones and electronic bands like Tangerine Dream. He also loved hip hop, groups like Mystik Journeymen, De La Soul, Deltron 3030, Souls of Mischief, Jurassic 5… these were in constant rotation. But of all the music we bonded over most, electronic music by far was the most present. Before djing was something we even considered doing, it was the music we obsessed over. We spent a lot of weekends clubbing or attending raves. One particular rave stood out for me as we spent a good portion of the night driving around Denver looking for a map point that eventually led us to a location in Fort Collins. Determined and with nothing better to do, we eventually made it… a rave in an abandoned airplane hangar and easily one of the best I’d ever been to… not just for the music and the atmosphere, but because Igor was there and equally enthusiastic about it as I was.
The apartment was also a stage for hilarious moments, like when we were snowed in during the blizzard of ’97 and spent the day snowboarding off the stairwell. It was also the place I was introduced to Igor’s passion for fish keeping, and one of my biggest sources of laughter witnessing Igor’s love / hate relationship with an imperial angelfish. This angelfish had an incredibly aggressive personality, going as far as spitting at him if it wasn’t fed on time. One time, Igor bought a saltwater shrimp which he was extremely excited about and having spent an entire day acclimating it to the tank, he released it… only for the angelfish to swoop in and eat half of it as it floated to the bottom. Igor screaming at that fish “GODDAMN IT… you are such a fucking DICK!” still makes me chuckle.
Igor was an effortless comedian but just saying he was funny is a complete understatement. I have never laughed as hard from anything more than simply hanging out with Igor. He loved to make people laugh and if you were around him, you knew you were in for a good time. He could turn any ordinary story into a full 10 minute skit and have you in stitches. There was a story he told me once just after he got home from having knee surgery about the pain killers he was taking. He mentioned how powerful they were but they made him incredibly constipated. “Dog, these pain killers… I can’t feel anything from the waist down… but I took a shit this morning and I could feel THAT… you ever seen rope in a bucket?!”… I was in tears.
Igor was also a futurist with a love for sci-fi and concept art. In fact, for over a decade, he ran the celebrated Conceptships art blog, showcasing artists and building one of the most celebrated art blogs in its time. He was so incredibly dedicated to it and talked so much about the artists he’d showcase and people he would otherwise never have had an opportunity to build friendships with had it not been for the blog. Years earlier, he and I took a trip to Los Angeles to attend a Gnomon Workshop conference. We were both star struck being around so many of our favorite illustrators and vfx artists headlining a seminar or casually walking by. Who knew that Igor would eventually befriend so many of them and become equally respected in the vfx community for his contribution through his Conceptships blog.
As an artist, Igor was remarkable. Although most people know him as the airbrush guy, Igor was an incredibly talented digital artist. From 3d, vector, filming, animation… Igor could do it all. He had so many accomplishments but there were two that stood out for me the most. The first was the day I opened up the April 2008 issue of ImagineFX and saw his artwork featured across a two page spread. I remember calling him that day asking him to come over so I could surprise him with it. I’ll never forget the look on his face seeing his artwork published in an international art magazine. The second was the work he did for Redwire, specifically designing the patch for NASA’s Artemis I Mission. Igor talked a lot about his hopes that someday his artwork could open a door outside of his everyday responsibilities as a shop owner. But the fact that he was hired to work for Redwire knowing how much he adored the subject of space travel, and that his artwork did eventually open that door due to his unrelenting dedication… if that’s not a Rudy moment, I don’t know what is.
When I left the US to live in Spain, Igor was the constant connection to my past life. We stayed in touch through messages and video calls, memes and articles. We talked in great lengths about our families, our kids and nerded out over our shared interests. Its one of the things I miss most about him, just being able to talk and geek out on stuff. Every now and then I run into an article or video that I think Igor would have loved, and it reminds me of just how much I miss him. Igor was a renaissance man and could talk endlessly about art, music, photography and design with incredible depth and passion. He loved to explore and discuss ideas, sometimes to a fault, but it reflected just how passionate he was about things he was interested in. One of my favorite quotes from him was, “If you love it, you’ll learn it”… not only because it’s true but because it describes so much of how Igor was. There are so many things he was passionate about… art, music, photography, skating, design, filming… his auto-didactic nature and enthusiasm for so many things brought such a unique perspective to a lot of our discussions.
In August of 2021, I flew out to meet Igor in Bratislava. His father had passed away and it was an opportunity for us to catch up. This was around the tail end of Covid restrictions and I’m so glad to have had that opportunity to see him again, to meet his family and get to know where he came from. We partied like we were 20 years old again, even managing to find and dance at an all-night rave in a pontoon boat on the Danube. I was there only for a few days, but the memories we made there will last me the rest of my life.
It’s been a year since he’s been gone and I am still processing not having him here. I wish he could be here right now so I could tell him just how much I loved him. How much I appreciated his friendship through all the time we knew each other. How I admired his thoughtfulness, his humor, his passion and work ethic. What his kindness and inclusivity in those early years meant to me and that he was one of the most beautiful souls I have ever met.
There is a quote from the movie Shawshank Redemption that puts into words exactly how I feel:
“I have to remind myself that some birds aren’t meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up DOES rejoice. But still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they’re gone. I guess I just miss my friend.”
Miss and love you, Ig.