GRAFFITI 365: TERROR 161/JSON X EZO Cukillz PT.1
Posted by Megadriel | Filed under BOOKS, DRAWINGS, MUSIC, NEWS, PAINTINGS, SHOWS, STREET ACTION
E: Jay, You were a Bomber, initially a Writer on the 1 line. You Created the crew THE MOB.,which I’ve always thought was a great name for a crew, a great acronym that works either way.
The people you wrote with AMMO, SEEN, CAP, T.KID ,a great line up of folks, but you were initially out before, from the early to mid seventies when this movement happens, then you take a break and you come back. Hitting trains again going into the highways and then doing some street bombing as well in the mid to late 80′s with newer cats who were just starting out like JA, VEN, SMITH and SANE.
Now you got this dope book “GRAFFITI 365″ coming out, tell me what is the your motivation for this, I’ve looked through it and I gotta tell you that it’s a visually beautiful book. You did a fantastic job. I’m not just saying that because you’re my boy, but you really visually cover the whole scope and spectrum between Street Art and Graffiti and all the areas in between and you pulled out some gems in terms of imagery for the book. I haven’t yet read the content like the foreword by Zephyr and intro by yourself. I am just going by what I saw leafing thru it, like some great cars by Billy 167, someone whose work unfortunately I missed seeing because he pre-dated me but is considered a very influential writer and has been described in legendary terms. Rare images like the Silver Tips car and the Blade and Billy car and Even a Slave/ Lee window down car, which you don’t often see. Lee is known more for his conceptual whole cars and top to bottoms. You brought out these beautiful representations of this genre. So tell us what are you trying to say with this book.
Jay: Well what has always motivated me in the post train era is that I am a bitter old school writer type dude. Right? And I get very mad when I see newer cats (and at this stage of my life that’s just about everyone) repping a culture that they didn’t live thru. So rather than being a guy sitting on my couch saying” Fuck this guy’s book, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, they got this wrong, who the fuck is he? I got an opportunity to be a spokesperson and ran with it. It happened when my boy Zephyr got a book deal from Abrams and approached me to see if I’d be interested in doing a book with him. Unfortunately, some complications arose that caused Zephyr to drop out of the project and I subsequently took it over. The publisher, Abrams, Thank God , had faith in me, allowing me to continue on in his absence.
We chose the concept Graffiti 365 because it is part of a series of over 25 books that have nothing to do with Graffiti that Abrams has sold over the years, ranging in topics such as the Yankees, The Grateful Dead, Andy Warhol, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones ETC. I liked the idea of being on a shelf with that company. I’m like “Yeah I’m good” put me in between the Beatles and the Stones and I’m a happy camper. We decided not to take on just a graffiti book, but a book that was a dichotomy between Graffiti and Street Art. The title is misleading in that sense. Some cats hate the terminology graffiti. They prefer instead writing or aerosol art.
I’m alright with the terminology “Graffiti” but Street Art is clearly a different animal, not something that I would think from the title “Graffiti 365″. But the vast majority of the populace everybody lumps it all together anyway, so hence the title, It’s quick. It’s simple “GRAFFITI 365″.
So once Zephyr dropped out of the project, I went and consulted with and put people on who did a Street Art magazine, these really talented girls who are half my age. But street art’s a lot younger than me any way, and let them pretty much tackle that component of the book. We tried to get two separate books into one. Covering Street art from its begining until now and covering graffiti, which I know like the back of my hand ,especially the early part from my own experiences. When I attacked the graffiti segment of the book, I wanted to make sure I got pictures that I knew existed, considered amazing but had never been published. Some of the photos come from my own collection and other gems coming from underground heroes
like THINK FLINT… Gennari who, in my opinion, is the greatest graffiti writer/photographer ever. His beautiful early 70′s black and white shots of people like LSD OM, FDT 56 and DIME 139 in action, wearing the clothes of the era. capture the essence of a movement. I included crews like IND’s, Ex Vandals and The Death Squad, stuff that I appreciate as a graffiti purist. And as a graffiti purist there is nothing that drives me crazier than some dude coming out 30 years after a crew was relevant on the trains and trying to rep it on walls.
I also feel like if somebody took something that was an idea that PHASE 2 or RIFF 170 generated in 1974 or 5 and took it to a whole new level it’s not as interesting to me. I was out to capture the root not the extension of the root. I really don’t care if some dude does a beautiful DONDI inspired piece, taking it to the next level with characters out the wazoo while having the luxury of time, standing at a wall with a permission slip mimicking a style and then refining it. To me thats not as interesting as seeing the first guy. I also realize that there’s a slew of books on graffiti out now. You search Amazon.com and there’s 50 to 100 books out there, when there used to be only Subway Art. The ones I consider the most important are first and foremost The Faith of Graffiti then of course Subway Art. I also like the Jack Stewart book even though it came out much later.
E: What about “Getting Up”?
J: I thought “Getting Up” had some moments but was not that important. A lot of people like “Spray Can Art” . But for me those 3 for me cover the entire spectrum.
E: So for you it’s The Faith of Graffiti, Subway Art and The Stewart book that cover all the bases.
J: Right. You have the Single hit era, you have the development of hand writing into letter forms and then you have the taking and refining of those letter forms in Subway Art into a higher art form incorporating scenery and characters .
E: which leads to the begining of the walls and Handball courts…
J: Yes,The walls to me are great , I also wanted to rep countries throughout the world. It’s been a long time since graffiti went overseas and those cats have done some amazing shit and I wanted to include the whole world. Graffiti and Street Art are global.
E: I like how you got guy’s like BLU in there. Who i think is amazing.
J: And who did not want to be in there..
E: Yeah, You told me that story that he did not want to be included, Thats probably because he’s looking to be a bigger fish in the Art world and doesn’t want to be seen with us lowly Graffiti Writers like some other cats I won’t mention.
J: I think he feels he doesn’t want other people to commercialize on his stuff. My feeling is the guy had a bad experience and raised holy hell, rightfully so and alot of people had his back. When Jeffrey Deitch covered up his Mural…
E: Was he commisioned to do that?
J: Yes, He was. But I’m wondering if you’re painting these big beautiful paintings in public spaces for everyone to look at, you know, public domain. Why would you say someone can’t put it in a book? That’s censorship to me. I never asked anyone for permission to go paint in a yard or whatever and I am not responsible for BLU being BLU, but I feel guys like me and my predecessors, set the wheels in motion to just take unsanctioned public spaces to paint on.
E: I think he is talking out of both sides of his mouth in this regard..I like his work though, thought provoking and original.
J: I love his work and his animation is brilliant. Concepts. He has it all .
E: But if it’s okay for him to do a commission for Deitch which you can say is the establishment, the commercialization of our genre and then turn around and not want to be in a book by a person who is considered by everyone in this game, friends and haters alike, a graff original. It kind of makes him a bit of a hypocrite. I mean there’s been Street Art all along. There’s been posters and street painting as far back as you can remember. People have been doing all kinds of shit in the street forever. It isn’t like it just happened recently. But you can definitely say that the Modern Street art Movement, the one we are looking at from the last 35 years, has its roots in New York City Graffiti.
People like Keith Haring and Jean Michel Basquiat were looking at it and were influenced by it and benefitted from their association with it.
Then guys from the late 80′s and 90′s like Shepard Fairey, like Barry Mcgee, like Bansky and Kaws, who have become art stars ,started out as street bombers. They were looking at guys like COST and REVS and SMITH and SANE who initially were train bombers who later jump started the whole Paint Roller Movement and guys like TESS and D.J NO from the X-MEN Crew who were doing wheat pastes early, but also started out as train and street bombers. These cats in my opinion were key in the early Modern Street art Movement. So I think he and others are talking out of both sides of their mouths when they want to distance themselves from the graffiti connotation after they get a little street cred out of it. It’s okay to go for the fat check from Deitch but here he isn’t gonna get paid and you’ll get what? A couple of dollars?
J: You know what? There are 365 subjects in the book, He makes up 1/365 th of why that book is being purchased, if it’s lucky enough to be purchased– so do the math. $21 bucks divided by 365. What’s he worth ? 6 cents?
E: I think it’s some kind of career motivated move that he doesn’t want to be lumped in a pile within the genre that ironically helps pay his bills. I guess he wants to be special…
J: He’s great. He’s a very original cat in a very derivitive world.
E: No doubt!
J: Now what I realized was when I took this project on was that my thinking mirrored other graffiti writer’s. That Street art is bullshit. All of these cats do the majority of their stuff in the safety of their studios and take very little risk. I had a very egocentric attitude, like most graffiti writers who feel what we did is all that counts, trains are where it’s at. I still feel that way to a degree but the word “art” is a general and far reaching term. So, I didn’t want to dismiss Street Art because it’s not subway letter based, ego driven graffiti ,but rather a more white bread, art school genre with its eye firmly cast toward the Art world.
I see street art as an inside out museum,like taking a Museum and turning it inside out so the walls are out on the street.
Another reason graffiti writers don’t like Street Artists is because their goals are completely different. Our goal was to be kings, go over people you had beef with, or do the best pieces to burn somebody. Their goal largely, I feel is to short circuit the gallery system by putting their work in public spaces without having to audition or have some gallerist look at slides of their work and say,” Sorry you’re not good enough.” They could be a “D” minus art student and just put their shit up and if it captures the public’s mind then well that’s it, they could become an Art Star.
E: They want to circumvent the Gallery system process, well “D” students do gotta eat, ya know?
J: You know , in our world we had LEE Quinones, BLADE, TRACY 168. Those were our heroes. Later on DONDI, NOC 167, BILLY 167 emerged, but we were’nt looking at them and saying “WOW” they made a Million dollars selling their paintings, I wanna be like them. No, we were like their shit was straight up nasty I wanna paint like that. Look at what SEEN just put up, Yo I’m gonna try and bite that shit and be just as good. No paycheck, just trespassing, braving the cops, other writers trying to take your paint, electric shit, the third rail. No promise of any greater glory. Then in the 80′s galleries started to take an interest in graffiti.
E: Let me stop you right there for one second because we’re at a point that I think serves as a good point to express what I think makes graffiti, graffiti. We have spoken before about graffiti in a lot of ways particularly its uniqueness and its being a multi- faceted sub-criminal genre that slips into Performance Art /Extreme sports. Involving the many processes that have to occur for a piece or a throw-up to even exist. In other words a piece is just a marker for a series of events that have to occur. You have to rack up the paint and after that comes the sketching or blueprinting of what you are planning to do, the breaking into a yard or tunnel or overall trespass procedure. Braving those dangers and then the added element of police, beef and so forth and finish your piece and maybe be successful in taking a picture and document it and get the fuck out. I always saw graffiti in those terms, beyond the actual piece , more of a total event, a performance more than straight painting.
Painting has existed for thousands of years and in all that time each movement represents its own time with specific characteristics adding to that visual dialogue. Now this new genre named “Graffiti” the name used by the Media in the 70′s, pops up using industrial materials and using the surface of a moving train as a medium.
It’s as representative of its time as it gets. Post modern decay meets popular culture and it was a Children’s Revolution , created by a bunch of kids outside the influence of the art world.
So it was a Big Fuck you to all authority starting with the MTA, the cops, parents and even The Art World which I still believe resents us quite a bit for it along with all of the aforementioned reasons.
Now here’s my argumentative scenarios, you have some cats now who continue to bomb and also do canvases and graphics and so forth that are trying to remain in both worlds, adhering to what Graffiti initially calls for and also going for an Art Career . You also have cats who have been around a long time painting canvases and say they don’t have to do that shit anymore. I did it back then and have nothing left to prove, okay? Now you have this 3rd group who hasn’t done anything at all in 30 years and pops out of some toilet wanting to get some props and a perceived paycheck all of a sudden. What’s your view of this?
J: It’s deeper than that. It’s a desired paycheck stemming from a sense of entitlement because they were king of the line 30 to 35 years ago and feel that nostalgia should translate into their coming off with a big pot of gold.
E: So what’s your position on that?
J: My position is that the way the Art world accepts graffiti writers is when they modify or eliminate what got them famous in the first place- letters. The majority of them do not even put solely graffiti on a canvas and if they do it’s a letter here or a letter there, almost as filler or as a reminder of who they once were. When they make the transition, when they decide to evolve as they would view it into fine artists, as you said the other day they are going against 5000 years of painting and the greatest artists of all time, and they become as a minnow to a whale in art’s ocean. Images have been around forever. Cats who were great in the domain we all created often become insignificant in the cross-over. Not me I certainly wasn’t one of the first but the Graffiti Movement was created and it’s a fairly new one, differing from what DaVinci or Michelangelo were doing for sure. So once you extricate yourself from the realm where you were that big fish, you become a small fish and 9 times out of 10, get lost in the shuffle.
I understand from talking to a lot of my friends who have art careers and are successful that Graffiti is a very restrictive medium on canvas. Doing the same letter forms over and over again bores the shit out of them. They can draw and they have a lot more to say than just a letter can express. I get it, but love the letter forms. They are the foundation of the genre and what makes graffiti unique.
E: Okay, now here we go into part 2 of the argument. It’s all about the letter form. I won’t even argue that point, but are we also talking about all the other processes? You got a guy who does letters on a canvas, in the safety of his home or studio, has a cup of coffee, takes a break, goes into the other room, bangs his girlfriend, watches T.V, then shuffles back and finishes his canvas. Now he has extricated himself out of that whole initial process that gave the genre its true meaning, that grace under pressure, that poetry in motion. The illegal part of it, the action, the adrenaline, because you gotta admit Jay, we all are started out as adrenaline junkies in this game, and that action is a key factor to the genre regardless of what anybody says.
J: Yeah
E: And it’s a very big part of what Graffiti and Street Art are about and that’s where I feel the connection is.
J: That’s true man, climbing up the sides of buildings. You go to Williamsburg you see this guy READ, he’s up on all the high spots. In graff ,cats like Revok and JA, to name but two, do some death defying shit to get their name high in the heavens.
E: How about REVS and his 250 plus train tunnels, telling his life story on 20 by 20 foot painted pages, you want to read that story? You better be ready to walk into a dark tunnel, pal.
J: Right REVS, there’s nobody in the history of either culture like him. Dudes in graff liked the term “all city” to define the process of getting up on all subway divisions. REVS is “all media”. He has painted in the manner of traditional graffiti artists, wheat pasted with Cost, done giant paint roller tags, affixed metal sculptures to some of the most remote public spaces in the city and destroyed the cities tunnels not only with tags but by executing an autobiographical odyssey that covered over 200 tunnel walls. No comp!
E: He’s a good amalgam of the 2 mediums, like a mutant evolving out of the two genres
J: He’s a Hybrid and he’s made that quite clear and demonstrated that he is not out for the money.
E: I understand his process totally and his philosophy. He is trying to remain true to what Graffiti was initially about and keep it as pure as possible. – this, fuck the establishment attitude, this is our thing let’s keep it as real as possible. It’s all about the perm spot, lives in the street and cannot be bought at any price.
J: That’s what drew me in. When people think of Graffiti, they think of a black or Hispanic dude coming from the hood, who felt disenfranchised wanted to have a voice, found the trains and cultivated some self taught innate artistic ability and rocked it. I wasn’t that dude.
I grew up in a pretty safe middle class white neighborhood. Nobody in my neighborhood wrote Graffiti. I went to a school in Manhattan, rode the bus through the South Bronx every day and saw what was happening. Didn’t have a clue on how to immerse myself into it but knew I wanted in even though there was nobody in my neighborhood to show me the ropes. I had to figure it out myself. As a kid I felt powerless. I hated the school I was in and having to go to religious instruction. The Vietnam War was going on. The Civil Rights movement was happening and sports also was a big part of my life.
My two biggest heroes at the time were Muhammad Ali and Walt Frazier from the Knicks. One exhibited ” I’m not taking No shit from the White World Attitude” and spoke his mind, “I’m not going to your War, I’ll go to jail instead and The Other (Clyde) was like the coolest dude on the court and Mister Style off of it.
The Knicks, my team, were World Champions in 1969. That year almost every New York team won championships. The Knicks, Jets and Mets. It was a great time. Then TAKI 183 who was this Greek kid from Washington Heights which I didn’t know then, was the first name and number writer that I became aware off and triggered my curiosity.
Wow! Who were these people? How do these kids get away with putting their names up all over the place? I never saw anybody do it. My wack pussy existence growing up in isolated white alabaster Riverdale was boring and limiting. I wanted to know what Graffiti was about and I wanted to hang in the neighborhoods where these dudes were doing it and I wanted to discover how to get down. It took me years until I would figure it out. But in the meantime I just destroyed my neighborhood, which nobody saw except me and my little friends and gradually branched out to the trains.
E: How does that happen? How does Little Jayson become TERROR 161 and create The Masters of Broadway AKA The MOB?
J: Well, it was a slow and gradual process. At first I went out with my friends who didn’t write Graffiti on a big level. Like these two kids from my building who would look out for me and hold my cans. One guy wrote Lee 182 biting the LEE 163rd stacked “E”s but with no style. We did not venture out of the neighborhood. Maybe a 3 mile radius. The only real writers who may have seen our shit were probably bused in to the local public schools from outside the neighborhood. At that point i was writing TARANTULA 235. I’d seen an “A” from SNAKE an “R” from some other name and put it together.
E: TARANTULA? That’s a big ass Name, Jesus.
J: 9 letters, plus I drew a spider with it
E: Back then Riverdale was pretty quiet, still is. You can get away with a 9 letter name.
J: Yeah and eventually after a couple of years of toiling in obscurity as a solo act, I would meet other dudes like BLUE TURK who became TANX 2 and LOCUST 2 who became TRAIL. USE2 a younger kid from the neighborhood joined us later. He kinged the one line in 76 and 77. UNI, who I knew since from the time I was 3 years old was also a later addition to The MOB. By 1973 graffiti exploded and everybody was doing it. It was hard to come up with an original name by then. In1973 I was 14 years old and getting a little bigger and bolder. The 1 yard at 242nd and Broadway was right in my neighborhood and I finally decided to brave it. We learned how to rack, but still didn’t know where to get marker supplies. I was using a dri-mark skinny tip entry level special-still very much a toy. but I was ready to take it to the next level.
END OF PART 1
Photo credits: Martha Cooper, Henry Chalfant, Zomboider @flickr.com, WhatyouWrite.com, Subwayoutlaws.com, Aerosol planet.com, Flint Gennari, Tracy 168, Freshpaintnyc.com
Tags: 365, Abrams Books, Aerosol planet.com, BANSKY, Blu, BOMBING, BOOKS, BOOKS ON MAGIC, CUKILLZ, Dondi, EZO.SHEPARD FAIREY, EZO.WIPPLER, Flint Gennari, Freshpaintnyc.com, GRAFFITI, Graffiti 365, GRAFFITTI, Henry Chalfant, Jay " J.son "Edlin, Json, Kase2, KEITH HARING, Martha Cooper, MIGENE GONZALEZ WIPPLER, Noc 167, OBEY, PAINTING, POP ART, SEEN, SEEN UA, STREET ART, STREETART, Subwayoutlaws.com, Terror 161, Tracy 168, whatyouwrite.com, WIPPLER, Zephyr, Zomboider @flickr.com
September 22nd, 2011 2:54 am
Be sure to check out the official website for Graffiti 365 at:
http://www.Graffiti365.com
awesome interview man
September 22nd, 2011 11:06 am
Once again, you have managed to captivate my mind with another great post. I find it all highly intriguing. Please keep up with more of the amazing posts I look forward to your next one.
September 26th, 2011 12:18 am
Thanks for this post, I am a big big fan of this web site would like to go along updated.
October 9th, 2011 3:20 am
Love it!
November 24th, 2011 9:55 pm
Sup , I am forming a new site almost like wikipedia and your articles would really fit in well. Would you let me link back to your article?
December 8th, 2011 8:46 am
yes
December 29th, 2011 3:53 am
keep up the great work on the site. I love it. Could use some more frequent updates, but i am sure you have got more or better stuff to do like we all have to do unfortunately.
January 20th, 2012 12:06 pm
what snake did you get the A FROM? snake1 UGA or Snake1 POG GSA SSB,3YB SALSA NCB,AKA KRAZY SNAKE KS3,?
January 20th, 2012 4:23 pm
Snake UGA and Stitch 1 were from Washington Heights and when I started writing they were huge near my area on streets buses and trains and were amongst the first names after Taki 183 that I vividly remember. I never saw the Brooklyn Snake’s name until around 1975 when I’d take trips out to Brooklyn to visit my grandmother. He was no influence on me at all since I had been writing Tarantula 235 since 73 , before I ever saw KS 3 up. By the time I started writing Jayson in 1980 , both Snakes were long retired and neither influenced me. I am an IRT cat, exclusively Broadway during the 70′s and never saw KS 3 up on my line or the IRT’s in general. He was king of some letter line though. Possibly the B’s . Remember some cemetery had a lay-up across the street near Bishop Ford HS that the BK Snake had lots of tags around and I assumed that was one of his lay-ups. There was a bacci court not far from it , which was very cool to catch glimpses of as we’d drive by. The BK cats who influenced me were earlier than snake and included, MICO , PISTOL , Super Strut , Spin, A Train , Killer, Savage, Flint 707, Stop 700. For tags I liked Flint…, Casper, Tero, Aim 1. Later it was Stim, Tee, Herb 99, Lama , Dash and of course the TOP crew .Most of these cats (not all) had a presence on IRT’s which is why I was aware of them. Scooter and Lazar also had very distinctive tag styles.
JAYSON The Mobb