Balfua (aka Sam Balfus, b. 1994) makes art from within his own world, known as the Sayssiworld.

The Sayssiworld is a digital spirit world, inhabited by abstract creatures called slollas {slah-luhz}. Slollas can take any form: some are anthropomorphized and have faces or hands, and some are more abstract; taking the shape of plants, birds or clouds.

Balfua comes from a graffiti background, so 2D/3D organic shapes are his modus operandi – and once you’re aware of this fact, the bodies of slollas become more familiar. He always been inspired by handstyles (a rudimentary, single color form of graffiti) and particularly very wild illegible ones. Eventually Balfua’s handstyles evolved into slollas. You can think about each slolla as a fluid gesture like a tag, each with its own personality. In the sayssiworld, these essential personalities exist together in an ecosystem. There are parts of the sayssiworld that are dark and violent, and parts that are gentle and quiet. 

Balfua creates slollas in a variety of different ways, sometimes drawn 2D on pen and paper, or fabricated IRL using traditional sculpture methods, or digital fabrication techniques such as laser cutting or 3D printing. Recently, he has been making his slollas in virtual reality using a program called Oculus Medium, which lets him draw and manipulate clay in the air in 3D. These shapes are exported from Oculus Medium and imported into Blender 3D software, where he lights them, textures them, and places them within a 3D environment.

The Sayssiworld exists in a larger mythical universe. Balfua’s band, Znzn Kanshan (@znznkanshan), creates art and music together from within a grand universe known as the Gooniverse. They have been improvising music together for almost 11 years, (since they met in high school) and at this point they have a very intuitive flow for creating music, characters, stories, and other lore.