Over 205 hours.
That’s how much time artist Isaac Wynter Weins spent creating a Crayola crayon box out of wood. It’s to-scale eight times the size of the one you probably had back in grade school. That is, unless you had the fancy 64-count.
And, what does every giant crayon box need? A massive peg board with a peg to hang off of. Weins has those, too.
You might’ve seen the Wisconsinite’s videos about this on social media under his artist name, Ike Wynter.
When he revealed the project a couple months ago, it was met with 3.4 million views and 266,690 likes on Instagram, and 2.9 million views and 355,400 likes on TikTok. Plus, loads and loads of comments, including one from Crayola itself.
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The art supplies company called it “one of the coolest things ever.” Weins’ viral videos also led to a collab with Dandelion Crayon Girl, a TikToker who has a shrine to the discontinued Dandelion-colored crayon — her childhood favorite.
“It’s just cool to have the thought that millions of people have potentially smiled or shed a tear over something that I made,” Weins said. “I think that’s the coolest part of something going viral in today’s day and age. If it’s for the right reason and does good in the world, that makes it even more special.”
While Weins’ art usually lives at his Butler studio and on social media, the crayon box hanging from its peg will be on public display Wednesday — more on that later.
The piece that helped launch Weins’ social media career a couple years back was the one he made for former boxing champ Mike Tyson. Recently, he created a Father’s Day surprise for “Power Ranger” and singer Chance Perez.
In between, he’s constructed Tommy Pickles from “Rugrats,” a “Hoan Town Lager” for 414 Day, a Polaroid camera with interchangeable photos, Legos, a depiction from “Giannis: The Marvelous Journey” and more.
The Mequon resident’s muses are nostalgia and mental health awareness. Sometimes, he finds ways to combine the two.
“I feel like a lot of us, your childhood is your greatest years,” Weins said. “You just have so many beautiful, warm thoughts. If I can create art that makes people remember things and experiences in their child for that glimpse of a moment as adults now, I just think it’s a cool opportunity.”
Weins is now a full-time artist. But, this all originally started as a way for him to breathe new life into the wood collected by the junk removal business he began with his brother.
Essentially, Weins stumbles across or hunts for discarded wood, whether it’s in the form of tables, crates, dressers, drawers or doors. Sometimes, he finds it on the side of the road. Other times, he dumpster-dives.
With a great-grandfather who owned a junkyard, he said, this is very much in his blood.
Never using stains or paints, he waits for imperfectly perfect pieces in the colors he needs to bring his artistic visions to life. Or sometimes, it’s the wood — the color or texture — that sparks the inspo.
“The way I was raised is to just utilize materials that already exist in the world, as well as getting creative,” he said. “When it came to art, I think people’s first, initial perspective of ‘Let’s do an art project’ is to go to the store and buy the materials. And, I want to open up and change the way that people thought about creating art — by being an artist that can create beautiful pieces of work with items that already exist.”
His main tools are a scroll saw and sander, but he also has a band saw.
And, long before wood was Weins’ medium of choice, music was.
Here’s a look at the art and lives of the local artist and social media star:
How the junk removal business Ike Wynter started with his brother led to his career as an artist
“I never thought I would be doing art in my life ever,” Weins said. “I was not the kid in grade school or high school that was good at art that was destined to be an artist.”
Music was his thing. While attending Menomonee Falls High School, Weins and his friends started the hardcore metal band Narrow Hearts. With Weins on guitar and bass, they played shows at The Rave and all across the country.
“It was a dream of mine to do that forever,” Weins said. “Music was my life back then. And then, things changed and my priorities changed.”
In 2016, Weins said, his older brother, Andrew — who was in the U.S. Army and remains in the Reserves — had just finished a deployment in Guantánamo Bay.
They decided to start a junk removal business together, now called Camo Crew Junk Removal, in Butler. That’s the village where their grandfather, the late Dr. Raymond Kuffel, a professional football player, Marine and dentist, had his practice.
Trying to be eco-friendly and not let the wood the company would gather go to waste, Weins started taking it home with him.
It took him back to when he was a kid on job sites with his dad, who remodels homes. Cutting wood with a miter saw brought Weins joy back then and he wondered if cutting up wood still would.
It did. And, it became his nighttime hobby.
After building several coffee tables, he wondered if there was another form of art that involved the cutting of wood. After doing some searching online, he discovered wood artists.
Weins started off making mountain landscapes, which he sold on Etsy for several years. And in 2021, Wynter moved to Minneapolis in pursuit of his passion.
Soon after, however, he’d split his time between his own dream and helping make the dreams of others come true.
Ike Wynter joins a nonprofit foundation, connects with Mike Tyson
Enter dream maker Charlie Rocket Jabaley, a brain tumor survivor, athlete and former music mogul.
Weins said he first connected with “Charlie Rocket” when he made a piece for him.
“Charlie Rocket” founded the Los Angeles-based Dream Machine Foundation, which essentially channels the power of social media to fulfill the dreams of people across the country who are facing hardships.
Weins would go on to land a “dream job” with the nonprofit, working as its tour manager.
In 2021, “Charlie Rocket” was a guest on Tyson’s podcast, “Hotboxin’ With Mike Tyson,” and Weins got to meet Tyson and see the show live, he said.
Months later, when Weins was back to making art in Minnesota, he reconnected with Tyson’s team and ended up doing a custom piece for the podcast set.
If you’ve seen Tyson’s show, you may know which one we’re talking about — the heart with Tyson’s face tattoo tied into it.
“Millions upon millions of people have seen my art through that podcast,” Weins said. “It’s kind of funny when I bring it up because everyone has seen clips of it, traditionally … And, that’s my art. So that’s just very cool.”
Weins credits that piece as the one that kicked off his social media career. But his goal with the platform isn’t to sell his work, he said.
“It’s to bring joy and a sense of belonging to people online,” he said. “I just like making people feel good online and making them feel loved and appreciated as humans through that avenue.”
In April 2023, Weins moved back to the Milwaukee area and took his art full-time.
A glimpse into Ike Wynter’s artistic process and studio
Weins has between 100 and 200 concepts at any given time, which he keeps in the Notes app of his iPhone. He usually knocks them out one at a time.
“I couldn’t tell you what project I’m about to do next,” he said.
When we caught up with him at his studio earlier this month, he was working on a Crayola marker box.
The studio is connected to the veteran-focused junk removal business his brother continues to run. As you walk up the stairs to it, there are posters of Weins’ former band and a guitar he broke on stage hanging on the wall.
When Weins is working, music is blaring. It could be anything from heavy metal to ’90s hip-hop to Olivia Rodrigo.
“Every day, I have to kind of figure out the vibe,” he said.
The studio itself is decked out with Weins’ works, a billboard of his buddy’s band and a piano rescued by the junk removal crew.
In one corner of the space, Weins has his woodworking tables and tools. To his side, there’s an industrial door that opens to the outside, which is situated alongside train tracks.
Across from his workstation, countless pieces of wood and wooden objects wait for future projects.
When Weins finds discarded wood, sometimes he uses it that day. Other times, it sits around for years.
If he’s making something recognizable, he first sketches it onto big sheets of white paper to make sure he gets the details right. Then, he cuts the paper into stencils, working his way from the largest section to the smallest.
If there are words or other design elements, he cuts those out of wood, then stencils those pieces of wood onto the slab of wood they’ll be inserted into. After cutting out the spaces for those into the slab, he pops the letters or designs into place.
Several of Weins artworks, however, have been “freehand,” including his rendition of Bikini Bottom from “SpongeBob SquarePants.” Last summer, he spent 120 hours making it with 215 pieces of wood from 60 sources, he said.
The mountain pieces Weins made toward the beginning of his artistic explorations were “rinse and repeat,” each taking a couple hours to make, he said. The projects he does now are one-offs and take an average of 40 hours — a full week’s worth of work.
“I’d rather be an artist, not a business,” Weins said. “And, when I think of doing repeats of the same piece, for me, as an artist, it gets boring … I think there’s so much beauty in one-of-ones, saying, ‘Hey, this was created out of wood that was found and discarded, and now, this is the only time this one thing will ever exist in this fashion.’ … Whoever owns, it owns it. That’s it.”
Artist Ike Wynter’s mental health journey is reflected in his art
While making people happy through nostalgia is one of Weins’ artistic endeavors, the other is deeply personal and rooted in his own struggles.
Around the time Weins began pursuing art as a career, he was diagnosed with long COVID, he said.
“I retained a lot of the mental health symptoms that come along with COVID: Brain fog, delusion, increased anxiety, increased lack of situational awareness. Just overall that fogginess and not being yourself,” he said.
Every day is a new day of navigating it. But this year, he said, he’s been “fortunate enough to get a better grasp on it.”
On top of that, he said, he’s constantly riding the unpredictable waves of social media, from exhilarating moments and exciting conversations to lulls.
The things that have helped him: Support from those in his corner, finding the right medications and doing what he does best — cutting wood.
“The fact that I can come back to just cutting wood and that’s kind of my neutral zone and the thing that brings me peace and harmony, I’m just blessed I know that as a resource,” he said.
His mental health journey is what led him to start creating art that brings awareness. He hopes what he makes helps others feel comfortable and safe opening up about whatever they’re going through.
One of those pieces is “YOU HAVE PURPOSE,” a phrase Weins spelled out with wooden Scrabble letters that span six feet. The number values on the letters made up the Suicide Hotline, which has been simplified to 988.
This was one of around 20 of Weins’ works that were a part of his first and only gallery showing. It was hosted by Unfinished Legacy, 201 N. Water St., Milwaukee, in late summer 2023. It also included a collab in which the brand screen-printed the “YOU HAVE PURPOSE” design onto shirts.
Where you can see the Crayola crayon box in person in Milwaukee
The crayon box hanging from its peg is set to be on display at Wednesday’s Milwaukee Night Market, which runs from 5 to 10 p.m. on West Wisconsin Avenue between North 2nd Street and North Vel R. Phillips Avenue. Weins reworked the peg board to make it portable.
And, for the first time, he’ll be selling merch there.
Another one of Weins’ pieces is on display outside The Elephant Room, in the Milwaukee Athletic Club. Soon, a film canister he created will be a part of a private art gallery at the New York Stock Exchange and remain there for a year.
As Weins looks ahead to what’s next, he hopes to someday collaborate with the Milwaukee Art Museum, as well as the Milwaukee Brewers.
Where to find Ike Wynter’s art, how to purchase
You can keep up with Weins’ journey and latest creations on social media at instagram.com/ike_wynter on Instagram and tiktok.com/@ike_wynter on TikTok.
To view pieces that are for sale or to make a purchase, visit etsy.com/shop/IkeWynter. His new website will be launching soon.
