> What is it that drew you to painting on the streets,

> as opposed to

> painting on the walls of buildings (as many artists

> do), etc?

One of the reasons I chose to paint on the streets is

that asphalt is everywhere. There’s more asphalt than

anything else in the city and frankly, I’m surprised

that it hasn’t been exploited more than it has. I also

feel that the walls of most cities are generally

over-saturated with graffiti. Painting the streets

means you’re not competing with other pieces but it

also means you’re exposing yourself a lot more. Great

for “getting up” or should I say “getting down”

purposes but not so great for maintaining anonymity as

I discovered. There is a convention of viewing

art/images on the vertical plane that I wanted to

undermine. Playing with expectations is one of the

things I enjoy most about doing “street art” and

painting on the horizontal does just that. You’re just

not conditioned to expect art, advertising or any

other message to come at you from the ground. By

painting the ground, you’re simply adding another tool

to your arsenal of “expectation disturbance devices”

or “E.D.D.’s”. I think people are more receptive,

more open to dialogue when they’re hit with something

unexpected that doesn’t necessarily fit into their

lexicon of categorizations (reminds me of the problems

troops in Iraq are having when faced with the specter

of “terrorism” which in itself defies categorization

and therefore a manual dictated response). There is a

kind of subliminality about painting the streets and

working around street lines simply because asphalt is

so ubiquitous and its language (by language I mean

“street markings”) so predictable to the point where

we don’t even notice it.The goal is to jolt those

people out of their waking reveries who walk the

streets, staring at the ground or who stare

impassively at the road from behind the wheel of a

car. Most people are on auto-pilot and the city is

designed (subconciously and conciously to a certain

degree) to facilitate this. This brings me to perhaps

the main reason for choosing the street and that is

for what it represents, symbolizes for me. One of the

things it represents is a prevalent and collective

psychology marked by denial. On one hand the road is

“beneath the radar” so to speak, negligeable (at

least for those not having to maintain, build or pay

for it) “un note-worthy” and yet it is perhaps one of

the most defining symbols of civilization. The road

is the tentacle of conquest, trade,culture,

communication and more specifically, capitalism. There

is a certain reverence for the road that is not even

acknowledged but that I think is upheld by the fact

that it has maintained for the most part a certain

“pristineness” hitherto untainted by graffiti or

advertising for example. While it has brought

prosperity and humanity to where it is today I feel

that is both a symbol and an active agent in an

imbalance characterized by over-consumption and

unchecked capitalism in general. “Car culture” is a

manifestation of that and by hitting the road I wanted

to make a statement. I wanted to break through the

“reverence” , the “authority” of the road, open it to

scrutiny so to speak and thereby question our own

relationship to it and everything it represents .

> What does using the roads, and incorporating the

> existing municipal

> paint into your art, say about your art? What does

> that mean to you?

> And how does it effect how your audience perceives

> your art (if it’s

> possible for an artist to answer that last

> question)?

I think I answered this to a certain degree in

response to the question above. Using street paint

along with the clean, iconic aesthetic that’s derived

from the use of stencils was an effort to blend my

message with the stark, functional sometimes

authoritarian tone of the language of street markings.

Again, this was partly to achieve a subliminal

quality, partly to keep people guessing. I had a lot

of people come up to me saying that they thought that

what I did was maybe done by the City itself. This was

pretty satisfying to hear as this was partly the

intention. As I mentioned above, keeping people

guessing is the name of the game. It gets people

involved, it gets their minds working. I also think

working around municipal street markings provides a

great opportunity for a certain kind of satire.

Because the language is so drily functional,

authoritarian the contrast created by superimposing

something playful, humourous, bizarre, out of place,

whatever you want to call it, creates a comedic

tension that I find similar to satire.

> How does the fact that you have to (presumably) work

> beneath street

> lights, as opposed to in a dark alley, on top of a

> dark building, etc,

> affect how you work?

Well you definitely have to be very patient when

painting under the glare of street lights. When I

first started painting the streets I was using

cardboard stencils and paint out of a bucket. real

ghetto. you bascially had one or two chances to lay

something down ’cause if a car came along (and they

always do) and drove over it (and they have many

times) then your stencil is fucked and the night is

basically over. This forces you to take a lot more

risk ’cause you have to stick with the piece ’till

it’s done meaning you can’t leave and come back to it

if a car or worse a cop car comes along. With

cardboard it’s sort of all or nothing. Nothing worse

than an unfinished piece. Over time I started making

my stencils with more durable material that could

actually resist a car driving over it so I could start

something, leave the stencil behind and come back to

it in between surges of traffic. Plus I discovered

street paint in spray form which made the whole

process less messy and quick. I also got good at

recognizing the timing of street lights and therefore

the movement of traffic which helped me decide when to

lay down a piece. Working in this way means you’ve got

to operate very quickly and decisively.

> How does it affect what you actually paint? (would

> you be able to

> paint more complex stuff, with more colors etc if

> you were in a less

> open area? — would you even want to do that?)

Yeah definitely and I since I was arrested I have had

many opportunities to explore using more colours,

space, time etc… Different challenges present

themselves and the results are not necessarily better,

more interesting. There is something simple and

elegant about some of the pieces I did illegally and

relatively hastily that is not always present in stuff

that I’ve done legally, with all the time in the world

and with relatively few restrictions. You lose

something on one hand and gain something on another.

They’re almost two different things for me although

many of the same considerations go into legal pieces

as went into illegal ones.

> From what I’ve seen of your work, most of it tends

> to be yellow or

> white, like the lines on the streets, has it ever

> crossed your mind to

> use different color? Would that distract too much

> from its

> incorporation into the urban landscape?

Yeah I have thought of using different colours and I

already have when it comes to legally sanctioned,

commissioned work. One of the reasons for the limited

palate when it comes to what I paint on asphalt is

simply the fact that there is generally a limited

range of colours of street paint that can be obtained

“over the counter” as it were. But I also think that

the use of yellow and white maintains a certain

minimalism that blends nicely with street markings. I

find limitations are important when it comes to

creating in general. It forces you to find solutions

that you might not find otherwise if you had all the

time, colour etc… at your disposal. It’s those

solutions wherein lie the “art” in my opinion.

> Does the fact that your are painting on the streets

> lend the art a

> more communal and public air? Is that your

> intention?

Sure. I think the public space is extremely important

in so far as it is the space wherein a community, a

people, a society expresses itself as a whole. People

always throw around the notion of “freedom of

expression” as though it’s this wonderful thing that

we are blessed with but what does it really mean?

Thankfully I don’t live in a society where I will get

hanged for example for speaking out against the

president (alhtough this seems to be less and less

reassuring. one does risk losing his career however in

some cases) but expression isn’t as “free” as people

like to think. And even if you think it’s simply a

qestion of purchasing power then ask Ron English or

Adbusters for example who were denied the possibility

of renting billboard space despite having the

sufficient dinero to do so. If public space, the

messages that occupy it and the laws that govern their

propagation are an expression of who we are as a

people then we are predominantly people that

communicate via buying and selling. And wether this is

a result of such an environment or vice versa this is

probably true. We seem to communicate primarily

through the buying and selling of goods. Not that this

is a bad thing but I feel that there is a much wider

range of human expression that needs to be reflected

in the public space.

> What are the challenges with working on the streets?

I think I aswered this question in large part above.

To state the obvious, the illegal nature of painting

the streets is simulaneously a motivating factor and a

challenge. The physical nature of painting the streets

-staying up all night, covering large distances on

bike or on foot, carrying stencils and paint around-

is also a challenging aspect.

> You use the street, it seems to me, as a vehicle to

> comment on urban

> society by incorporating sly winks at consumerism or

> capitalism or big

> brother, etc; do you have any ideas for how to use

> the streets in a

> different way?

Although I bring up what people consider “politics”

when talking about my work it’s not just about making

a statement all the time. Often, I’ll do something and

I’m not even sure myself what I mean by it. There may

be certain allusions going on but sometimes it’s just

about being playful and/or doing something unexpected.

I want people to have their own interpretations of

things. I think that’s the beauty of art. It’s open to

interpretaion. I find that certain issues get

categorized as being “political” and there are many

people that have an aversion to politics probably

because they associate the word with all the mumbo

jumbo that gets spouted by politicians, the media

etc… But wehter you like it or not, we are political

beings in so far as we are subject to the demands

inherent to sharing a planet with other people. I

think we make political decisions every day wehter we

know it or not. The lifestyle you live affects other

people and their’s affects you. To deny politics of

any kind is to assume you’re an isolated being who has

no influence on others and is not influenced by

others. This is particularly the case in the city. A

street artist or graffiti artist makes a political

statement simply by virtue of the fact that he is

breaking the law wether he writes “Fuck Bush” , his

own name or a giant cock on the wall. As I said, I’m

not necessarily always commenting about Big Brother,

consumerism or capitalism,, although these are themes

that have come up but what I do (and I don’t

necessarily have a problem with it) often gets

interpreted that way.

> Finally, do you have any intention of moving beyond

> the streets?

Yeah I do and I already have.

>