At middle school age I started sketching faces off of pictures and painting with water colors.
In high school art was one of my best classes. It was the only class where even if I had 20+ absences I still got an A. High school is also where I learned (from friends) that spray paint was another medium.
Graffiti is something most people have done at least once or twice in their lives. If you've ever wrote a "jeff wuz here" sort of thing or scratched something on a tree (i.e. jeff love marti) then you've created graffiti.
Growing up in the big city you couldn't help but get used to seeing it everywhere. I lived in a Hispanic populated part of town so I saw lots of "cholo" type tags everywhere.
I was fascinated with how the art (if you want to call it that) was so spontaneous and public but it wasn't until I wrote my first tag that I felt the adrenaline rush that came with every stroke.
One night in '86 I decided to go into a neighborhood school to practice painting "throwups" (small, two-color paintings) of my name and other miscellaneous words. I did this for about two weeks.
The prinicpal of the school started telling the students that if they knew who was doing the paintings to have him come in to talk to her. At first I thought it was a sure setup so I sent one of my friends as decoy. She was legit, she wanted to have murals done. Long story short, she took me to hardware stores to buy paint and gave me all the walls on the back side of the school!
I visited the school in 2003 and saw that they had left the last mural I painted. It was a mural with the word "Respect" in big letters.
Although I don't condone vandalism, I can say I understand why it is young people do graffiti. Whenever I can, I try to use my experience to sway taggers from being vandals to being artists.
I'm forever greatful to that principal, and to my friends Eric-Spy, Calvin-UB, and others for "getting up" with me.
Have a spontaneous week!
Jeff
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