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Fine arts graduate student Amir Fallah is the editor of Beautiful/Decay, a magazine that document

The creator of one of artdom’s hippest magazines doesn’t even have a office. In fact, he’s never had one.

From his bedroom to cyberspace, Amir Fallah has always done it his way. The maverick, self-made entrepreneur has literally created the first six issues of his cutting-edge magazine from cyberspace, culling his material, conducting interviews and communicating with his New York-based partners and his network of international artists and contributors via e-mail, instant messenger and occasionally his newly-acquired retro fax machine.

The international cyber-scope of Fallah’s project is one indicator of just how far the Persian-born, Virginia-raised artist has progressed. As the founder and creative director of the aptly-titled urban lifestyle magazine Beautiful/Decay, Fallah, currently a graduate art student at UCLA, is making serious inroads with the art-loving, magazine-reading public.

Celebrating the release of its sixth issue today, Fallah’s gritty yet glossy, photo- and illustration-heavy magazine can now be found at indie bookstores and specialty shops around the nation. The magazine combines elements of graffiti art, fine art and music.

Beautiful/Decay’s present prominence is a far cry from its humble beginnings as a hand-made, home-produced ’zine.

“I started out in high school with a ’zine, like a black and white, Xeroxed ’zine with my next-door neighbor,” said Fallah. “Even back then it wasn’t a graffiti magazine or an art magazine, but a kind of hodge-podge of all my different interests. We had music, graphic design, graffiti art, fine art. It was just very low budget.”

Fallah cites among his early influences the graffiti and public art around his hometown and underground bands such as Fugazi.

“I come from a punk rock background where I listened to a lot of underground music,” said Fallah. “All these bands didn’t have a major label. So they put out their own records, set up their own shows. So I come from that kind of thinking, where if nobody else is doing it, do it yourself just because you want to see it out there.”

While the do-it-yourself sensibilities of punk may have provided the impetus for Fallah to churn out his home-made ’zine, music constitutes only a section of the magazine’s content. Recent issues of Beautiful/Decay feature major sections devoted to graffiti and public art, as well as fine or modern art from across the globe. The magazine has evolved into a fitting reflection of Fallah’s own multi-ethnic considerations as a painter.

“His (own) art combines American Graffiti grittiness with the tradition of Persian ecstatic decoration to spectacular effect,” said Robbie Conal, a respected Los Angeles-based artist and writer.

Conal writes a monthly art column for LA Weekly called “ArtBurn.” He also teaches drawing at USC, and is a self-confessed admirer of Fallah and his ground-breaking magazine.

“He spent years putting together Beautiful/Decay, growing it from a ’zine when he was just a kid,” said Conal. “It’s a very hip classic synthesis of international graffiti and hip-hop sensibilities.”

Conal thinks that Fallah’s magazine performs an important role within the art community.

“(It’s) so important that young artists start their own publications and don’t rely on older establishment structures to express themselves and communicate with their audience,” said Conal. “(That’s) a kind of ‘grow your own’ approach to culture that I can completely identify with.”

Fallah attributes the home-grown success of Beautiful/Decay to the fact that it brings together a variety of disparate interests and genres. Urban art, like graffiti art, jostles for space with more “legitimate” forms. Again, the eclectic spread reflects its creator.

“I had all these interests, and I felt like I had something to say, to contribute,” said Fallah. “I’ve always been interested in magazines. I buy magazines once or twice a week. I really just love reading them. So I was like, I should start my own magazine. Again, I couldn’t find anything out there... that appealed to my various interests. There was nothing that had everything I liked, so I made it myself.”

Beautiful/Decay only survived three issues in its original, Xeroxed form. But during his senior year of college (he attended the Maryland Institute College of Art, before coming to UCLA) Fallah sold several of his paintings at an art exhibit in New York.

He bankrolled the proceeds from the sale, and with the help of volunteers from college, resurrected his original concept, but this time as a full-fledged color magazine. In 2002, issue A of the all-new Beautiful/Decay was born. That issue had a print run of 3000 copies.

The current print run of the magazine has more than tripled since, and Fallah anticipates that figure will double again in the near future.

Fallah and his partners, Ben Osher and Fubz, are confident that the magazine will continue to hit the right vein with its target readership.

“(Beautiful/Decay) is both cool and relevant because we deal with a very wide spectrum of art, from graffiti to acclaimed fine artists in a cohesive format that presents everything in an accessible way, “ said Osher.

“We fill a gap in print media, which is an art magazine for a younger urban audience, without pandering to the mainstream ‘urban lifestyle’ genre.”

Fallah understandably has high hopes for his growing pet project. There’s one target he hopes to see fulfilled soon though – to see a copy of Beautiful/Decay on the shelves at the UCLA Store in the near future.

“We’re at most newsstands, but we’re not anywhere on campus,” said Fallah. “That’s one thing I’d really like to see.”