Dan Witz

This excerpt from an interview with Dan Witz by Marc and Sara Schiller of The Wooster Collective took place in August of 2007. The full text will be included in Dan Witz. In Plain View. 30 years of artworks illegal and otherwise. To be published by Gingko Press in the Fall of 08. With an introduction by Carlo McCormick.

When you were a kid did you have a black sketchbook?

I did! It went everywhere with me, along with my rapidograph pen. I drew compulsively in styles shamelessly derivative of R. Crumb and Raw Comix. Nothing special. I don't remember being very impressed with myself as a prodigy or anything, but I was the class artist by default. My dream was to move to New York City to be poor and find my dark side and meet the right people and make a career out of my suffering.

You've said your creativity's connected to your rebelliousness.

Well... I had this really normal, healthy childhood. Nice parents, safe home, supported. A nightmare. The worst background possible for an avant-garde artist. Starting around fourteen, I began rebelling, I sought out extreme situations -- the stranger the better. I thought you had to have felt real pain to be authentic. So I cultivated my dark side in the hopes of making me a more interesting person, and a more interesting artist-and, maybe, attract some dark, interesting women. It wasn't until much later though that I actually did my Robert Johnson going-down-to-the-crossroads thing.

I guess I was afraid of being too ordinary. Too well adjusted. Too susceptible to the traps of comfort and security. In the early 70's that kind of apathy was widely perceived as the cause of the world's problems. It was how the Vietnam war got started, what made people sleepwalk through life and why the world was so fucked up. Art, being an artist, being awake, was going to be my rebellion against this state of affairs.

(I thought) I needed to burn that middle class midwestern programming out of me. Scorched earth policy. Drugs and drink. Romanticizing debauchery. I read Bukowski and Kerouac, William Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, and listened to Jim Morrison and the Velvet Underground; I idolized dead and dissipated rock stars (Jimi, Janis...), devoured movies like Clockwork Orange and Apocalypse Now. Anything nihilistic or anarchic appealed to me. I wore black. My hair-everything about me was annoying to older people.

Also, during this time -- this is embarrassing -- my friends and I adopted a motto taken from a beer ad: "You only go around once in life, so grab for all the gusto you can." Schlitz, I think it was. Embarassing, not just because of that word, Åegusto', but because that's basically how I made all my decisions for the next 20 years.

When did you get your first tattoo?

17.

What was it?

A star.

A star? Does that have any meaning?

It meant I had a tattoo. In 1974 having a tattoo-even a tiny little star--was unusual. At least where I came from.

What was the influence RISD had on you?

Coming from suburban Chicago, it was a shock. The Eastern private- school culture was very intimidating. Everything midwestern about me was wrong --my hair, my shoes, my taste. Eager, wide-eyed me, I liked Magritte and The Grateful Dead. I wore hiking boots. Brown hiking boots. Every kid growing up in America deals with taste snobbery, but this was combative. But eventually I had to admit they had a point. The Sex Pistols and Andy Warhol were more relevant; hippie times were over. I began to understand that style wasn't necessarily a bad thing. And rebellion was sexy. So it was quick: I got my hair cut, got some black boots, and adjusted my taste in music.

Art students should know everything new that's happening. That's their job. In such a world, nothing is worse than having the wrong opinions or being uninformed. Their scorn, or the mere risk of it, was a formative experience for me.

Was art school still something you were rebelling against or a place you could express yourself?

Both. Art schools back then were more anti-establishment, less explicitly about careers. Being a loser was considered acceptable, even interesting. Art was still [viewed as] an essential part of the social fabric, an agent for change. Artists had a social responsibility. There was this almost religious belief that Cubism and Modernism had changed the world, painting had freed something; art was a potent force,capable of influencing the public. It sounds quaint now but pictures on a wall could actually change the way people thought.

The big discovery during this period was that there were things hidden below the surface, forces of subtle power. It was an artist's job to bring these to light, and these universal truths would re-connect us with ourselves and help the world become a better place. Anyway, I bought it.

Besides the politics, did you learn drawing and the basics?

Definitely. And photography. And carpentry. And oil painting technique . And color theory. And anatomy. A lot of useful things.

So, if this was the era of conceptual art, how did your influence move from R. Crumb and Raw Comix to painterly realism? How and why did your technique get so realistic, so technical?

This was later, after I moved to New York: I was at Cooper Union but spending more time exploring the city, in bars and clubs, hanging around the art-punk scene. That group despised successful artists. "Posers", they called them. Personally, still wanting to be successful, I tried to keep an open mind. I did my time in museums and video rooms. Mostly, though, I found conceptual art unrewarding and dull. Apparently the goal was to be removed from ordinary life, to be beyond regular people's access, and if you wanted the entrance code you had to work really hard to get it. Why? I understood reductionism but what was wrong with letting people in? What good is art that makes people feel unworthy and left out? I still don't know. This was the beginning of a life-long aversion to anything exclusionary. Or boring. Especially boring. For me, that was the worst thing art could be. If you couldn't dance to it (metaphorically, I mean) then fuck it.

And, since that was the mono-movement of the times, I was happy to rebel against it. Realism, accessability seemed really seditious at the time. That suited me fine.

Mostly, I just wanted to make the kind of art I wanted to see. I look back and see that developing my own style had a lot to do with rejection Å| rebelling against the status quo, a reaction...Mostly I defined myself by what I didn't want to be.

When did the street start influencing you?

Back then, Providence was the costume jewelry capital of the world. Walking around I'd find all this tiny metal stuff laying on the ground--fittings, ball bearings, odd, tiny, inscrutable things--robot flotsam. When my pockets got full, I'd set up these ordered displays on window ledges or other flat surfaces. Carefully, like in a museum cabinet or store window, I'd line the objects up or make a regimented little circle or something and leave it behind. I don't think it ever occurred to me to photograph it. I liked thinking about people coming upon them and being mildly puzzled. This was also the first street art I made in New York when I transferred to Cooper Union. I still do this by the way. The stuff is mostly plastic now, which although more colorful, isn't as much fun.

Right. So you moved to New York. When was this?

1978.

What were your first impressions of New York?

Terror. The black-out and riots had just happened. If you lived outside NYC back then, you thought you'd be mugged the minute you got to town, that they'd steal the gold fillings from your teeth before you got out of Port Authority.

How was Cooper Union?

Ok. Good, I guess. Free. You've got to like that.

It's very prestigious-

Yeah, which is a dangerous idea. For awhile after I graduated I kept an updated a resume until I realized no one looked at those things. Interesting group of kids there, though. That was valuable. It was kind of a prep program for the art business, a mini-microcosm of what was waiting for us out there. These were ambitious, knowledgeable, savvy careerists. Way out of my league.

Did it push you more? No. Or, yes, in a reactive way. I mean, I was intimidated by all the New Yorkers with their big vocabularies and cold shoulders. This was before the days when tolerance was fashionable in the art world. Or pluralism. In the painting department, you were either in their club--by then it was macho neo-expressionism-or you were locked out, invisible. Naturally, me being me, I became the opposite of a macho expressionist, painting with tiny brushes and Flemish detail. I joked at the time that I couldn't help it: I was genetically cursed with good small-motor control.

There were so many amazing things about being in New York though. A few weeks after I arrived, a girl from school invited me over to her loft in Soho. I'd never seen one of these before and instantly decided that was how I wanted to live. She put on Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians and this just totally blew me away. One of the strangest, most beautiful things I'd ever heard. A real goosebump experience. Totally opened something in me.

What else was inspiring you at the time? How did you get into the punk scene?

In the galleries, the ruling cabal at the time was still the minimalists, a bunch of older white dudes, Carl Andre, Donald Judd-

You didn't respect that stuff?

I tried to. Robert Ryman, Agnes Martin, Richard Serra. If nothing else, they're extreme, which I tried to like, but for the most part the minimal corporate art of the time left me cold. I'd go up to the Whitney or someplace and the only thing I'd really enjoy was looking out the window at the city. I did admire Brice Marden a bit but none of that dry reductionist stuff reflected anything that was going on in our lives. The Lower East Side, the dying city, the crime and drugs, the homeless people screaming their heads off, the graffiteed trains careening by, the kids break-dancing, spinning on their heads, the vacant eyed punks walking around all strung out. I mean, torn fishnet stockings, trash fires, black eyes, rubble -- all this seemed more relevant to my life. And definitely more fun.

You've mentioned that the cold post modern architecture of Cooper Union inspired you-

Yes, but not in a positive way... Cooper Union was not an especially warm and welcoming place. Painters were kept on one floor, graphic designers on another. Photographers, architects, really interesting folks, all stayed on their own turfs, no one really hung out. I was new to the city and everyone seemed so stiff and wary of each other. Also, the school itself had just been renovated in the highest post modern manner. A show piece... Blazing fluorescent lights, intense angles, dehumanizing grids...theoretical architecture at its most sterile and alienating. No surprise but it was impossible to feel comfortable there. In art school, you should feel free to make a mess, to make mistakes, to be un-self conscious. But not in those studios. It was deadly.

Also I was pretty sure nobody liked me and I began to get resentful. I was living in an unheated loft with a couple of punk bands, and-it's such a garret clicheÅL-but I was perpetually broke, cold, and lonely.

One night, I was in my studio drinking, smoking, angry, thinking, "Fuck this place, fuck these people. They're all such dicks-

Were you getting more tattoos?

No, but I had a motorcycle, which seemed to annoy everyone. And I was semi-punk, which was Å|hard to believe-threatening. It was ironic. I mean, the school was on St. Marks Place. CBGB's, the Mudd Club, the No New York bands -- history was being made all around them, but they were stuck in their Neo whatever-it-was-ism: I don't know, Jism-ism...Julian Schnabel was big, the 80's uber-egos ruled, and since I didn't paint that way, -- the way everyone should paint -- I was out, invisible, so I just said, "Fuck it, I'm gonna set this place on fire and everyone, all the stuck up New York assholes will go running out and maybe they'll finally talk to each other." So I got a palette with big blobs of yellow, orange, and red acrylic paint on it and I went up and down the back stairs painting these fast, loosely brushstroked fires. To be honest, by the time I was finished I was pretty drunk and I don't remember much about it except someone told on me and I got caught. I came into school the next day and found out I'd been expelled. At first the school officials wanted me to personally paint it out but then they decided better and had the maintenance crew do it. Which gave every one at the school an extra few days to see it.

It probably would've blown over but the guy who was acting director of the whole school was also the Dean of the Architecture Department -- this very famous architectural theorist. One of those academic types who'd never had anything built. Except the renovation of Cooper Union. And he flipped out that I was desecrating his creation. Apparently, others had been grumbling about the de-humanizing effect of the building and my little stunt was the last straw, the final insult, and he lost his temper.

On this particular day I had my critical theory class, the Åean-aesthetics of boredom' I called it, where we dissected the most tedious hidden subtext of anything anyone was calling art that day. Hungover, freaked out, and, as usual, having nothing art-smart or conceptual to offer, just realist paintings, I decided to make the fires my piece for the "crit". The class dutifullly trooped out into the stairwell and, to my surprise, everyone was into it. Suddenly, hidden subtexts I'd never thought of, and definitely hadn't planned, were getting gushing reviews. I got all this attention. Girls started noticing me. And since my expulsion was threatening to become a cause that other people dissatisfied with the working environment could rally around, I was quickly re-instated. Lucky coincidences I know, but the attention was a real revelation to me.

This was the early 80's?

Yeah. After I got out of school I pretty much concentrated on survival and starting a band.

Did you go see a band at that time that was so memorable, so inspiring that you decided to get up and do it yourself?

Yeah, at the time the No New York bands were starting to peak. Mars, DNA, the Contortions, Static, The Lounge Lizards. Theoretical Girls. Their ruling aesthetic was to be completely original, to never do anything anyone had ever heard or seen before. Also, since there was no chance any of them would ever get rich or famous, since there was no product being sold other than the moment, it was largely incorruptible, and very liberating to someone like me. That scene really helped me to see past my middle-class programming, especially the need to make good, and please the people in charge.

Rauschenberg once said he wanted his stuff to be somewhere in the space between art and life. These bands were actually doing that. And I wanted to get in on it.

What was the name of your band? I was in a few. The first, Civil Defense, played out only once, at a loft party. We knew someone so our picture ended up on the cover of the East Village Eye, which totally freaked us out. We immediately started arguing and broke up. Later, my main project was EQ'd with my wife and friends of ours.

In the downtown scene back then, there were these big guns--Rhys Chatham, Laurie Anderson, Elliot Sharp, and Glenn Branca--who used the local bands as a talent pool-or, in my case, considering my lack of musical talent, more of a labor pool. Anyway, they tapped the scene for musicians to play in their various ensembles and projects. Sometimes it even payed. Most of my friends played with someone. The guy who I admired the most was Glenn Branca. I ended up playing in a couple of his ensembles.

And painting the whole time?

Yes. That's right after I did the first big street project, the hummingbirds.

How did that develop?

I'd been doing those little ledge accumulations, the found objects. Walking for hours every day to save subway fare. Somewhere along the way I decided I wanted a tag.

Was working on the street illegal back then?

Definitely.

So there was still the risk and excitement?

For sure. Probably less the danger of getting arrested and more about getting roughed up or mugged. Random violence was common back then. Something we don't have to deal with as much today.

Did you ever get messed with by street people?

No. Close. Stuff was often happening nearby but I always managed to avoid getting involved.

How?

I'm not sure. Maybe because I've always been a kind of grungy guy. Muggers don't seem to pick me. Also, I'd travel to painting locations on my motorcycle and sit on my helmet while painting. Believe it or not, I mean I'm clearly not like this, but having a bike, being a Åebiker', is an effective deterrent to predators.

And the cops? They wouldn't arrest you?

I suppose they would if they were in the mood. If you were in their face too brazen or defacing city property they'd haul you in. But, back then, they'd prioritize, they'd make judgement calls. A white guy painting a hummingbird on an acceptably decrepit surface wasn't usually important enough to make them get out of the car. I learned to show them pictures of birds I'd done, and a lot of times they'd even be, like, "cool, keep going". That really taught me a lot. How to find the outer limit of what I can get away with. I've worked that way ever since and somehow I've never been arrested.

You were doing them downtown?

Yes. Basically in a circle around Soho. That was where the galleries were so I didn't put any there. I wanted them to be in regular neighborhoods so real people would see them. Art types in Soho not being real people.

Were any of your friends doing street art?

Not really. Except for punk band posters. That was a big influence on me. Graffiti was getting talked about a lot. I liked it but was never really interested in trying it-the tagging concept was interesting though. I thought of my hummingbirds as an anti-tag. This was something that was three inches square and took two hours to finish; like portraits they were unbelievably difficult to pull off, to bring to life, and hardly anyone would see them-and the people who would see them probably wouldn't be useful to my "career". That twisted kind of dynamic really satisfied me.

And what did the hummingbird represent?

Well, most importantly it hovered. It had a formal reason to hover. That was why I initially chose it. But then I found out more about them and it became a creature I could identify with. Fierce, elusive, high metabolisms...Also, my hummingbirds were anatomically correct but the color was a total improvisation, a response to the environment, which was a very satisfying painterly experience for me sitting out there. Also, it's kind of-if not exactly corny-then definitely anti-hip. I mean, little hummingbirds? They're so likeable, they're actually pretty--which had to be the most offensive thing art could be at that time. (Maybe, still?) In any case, the little birds fulfilled my need to be in reaction against the art establishment of the time.

How many hummingbirds did you do?

Around 50.

And did people notice them?

Yes. To my amazement. It became a kind of a word of mouth thing, but the Village Voice ran a thing, and so did NY magazine, so people knew about it.

Who else was doing stuff outside then? This is before Keith Haring?

Yes. The only street art I knew about was Charles Simonds' Little People Villages on the Lower East Side. That's an underknown piece. Basquiat was doing Samo stuff around the same time but he was considered more of a graffiti artist. I wasn't aware of John Ahearn, Rigoberto Torres, and John Fekner, older guys working up in the Bronx, until a few years after I painted the birds. I'd definitely seen the aphorism posters by Jenny Holzer; and I was very aware of Gordon Matta Clark's abandoned building interventions.. This isn't street art but I had postcards up on my wall of Sandy Skoglund's Radioactive Cats and Donald Lipski's Gathering Dust piece, which I'd seen at Artist's Space. Two pieces that influenced me a lot.

So the birds were the first thing you actually painted out doors?

The first thing of mine. IÅed worked for a billboard painter before this. So I already knew how much I enjoyed being outside painting. Working as a sign painter's helper was as important a part of my art schooling as Cooper Union. My boss, Gonzalez, was probably the best technical draftsman I ever met. A natural eye. A genius. Way beyond me or anyone I've met since. To him art was silly. Effete. Realistic painting was something you figured out how to do fast and efficiently, to get the maximum effect. Time was money. A lesson I consolidated later by copying Crananch and Bosch and other 15th and 16th century masters. Not to be too precious. Not to let me get in front of the effect the painting's supposed to have. When I get that way I can still feel Gonzalez smirking over my shoulder.

And these pranks, these one-off pieces, you were doing these all along?

Yes. That was when I was touring with Branca. I couldn't sustain big projects so I'd go out and do small intervention type things. I was just beginning to understand that I was making photographs, so I would go out with a camera, careful not to be a "photographer" though. Making objects for consumption felt inappropriate, hypocritical. The photgraphs were, and still are, souvenirs of the real piece.

Tell us about your first show.

My first show was at an alternative performance space my band played at a lot. Inroads. I knew the guy who booked the bands so he let me put up my Birds of Manhattan photographs in the lobby. The first show of my paintings was at a bar on Avenue A. The hand portraits. A kid I knew from Club 57, Carlo McCormick, came to the opening and brought an art dealer he was working for, Barry Blinderman, who was this reputable art dealer by day but a rock club dude by night. He'd seen me play. We hit it off and eventually he offerred me a show in his Soho gallery, Semaphore.

So what was the significance of the hands?

When I was touring Europe, as crazy as it was, I used to slip away to the art museums, the pre 20th century ones. I began private relationships with the old masters, a mental museum which I keep to this day. Maybe it had something to do with the contrast of my death-noise life style by night, but the light, the space, the astonishing quietude and duration of reality in those paintings...even hung over and sleep deprived as I was (or maybe because)--it was a revelation to me. I became convinced that the truth for me lay somewhere in the fusion of the two worlds.

Giotto, I remember in Florence, really affected me. The hand portraits came from that. Simple gestural, architectonic. For my portraits, I used artist's hands, my friends who were artists posed for the photos I worked from. Portraits because I think people look exactly like their hands. (And their shoes. The worn-in ones.)

And the old white guys with their shirts off?

Yeah. Still fucking hilarious. Not one of my better selling series.

Were you still rebelling at this point?

Yes. Well, I think I was hoping to outsmart my self-sabotaging ways by making objects that were both rebellious and consumable. Something I've never had much luck at.

How did the shows go?

Okay. Nothing stellar. I did ok. Not enough to quit my day job. I never really hit it too big in the East Village scene. Even though it was pluralism personified, somehow I managed to stay on the fringe. The real story behind the East Village era was that it was more a social phenomenon than anything else, and I think my personality was a problem. Arrogant and thin skinned. Fearing the people I most wanted acceptance from, resenting them because of their power over me.

So your street art was mainly pranks at this point?

Yes. I was so overwhelmed with the bands and the full time job and getting evicted again and the shows and the paintings, I'd go out a couple times a summer and do some pranks.

Were Keith Haring and those guys doing stuff by then?

Yes. One day I was painting uptown and this woman walked by and kinda huffily asked me, ÅeWho do you think you are, Keith Haring?" My first reaction was not to paint uptown, then I began to wonder if my days of doing street art might be over.

So what kept you painting through all that? It seems like you were doing really well at music. Why didn't you just become a musician? I sucked. Admittedly this was an asset in that scene, but it became pretty clear I was in danger of becoming the thing I resented most in the art world: mediocre but well connected. Knowing I was really a painter and this was a fodder phase or something, I accepted it. I remember playing somewhere, Pyramid Club on a Saturday night I think it was, and it dawned on me that I was an entertainer, I was in show business. Honestly, maybe if there was more of a living in it, I would've stuck with it like a day job, but, fortunately, there wasn't. The truth is, I wasn't interested in music in the overall sense, in the obsessive way I was with art and art history. People I've met who are really good at what they do often seem to posess an encyclopedic knowledge of everything about their medium, they see themselves as the logical continuum of that time line, they know and are constantly gathering more information about every aspect of their field of choice. The canon, the anti-canon, trivia, anecdotes, etc. A couple of guys I played with in Branca's band were like that about music, dedicated, obsessed: they ended up forming Sonic Youth. I'm naturally that way about painting and visual art. But not music. For me being a musician was mostly about fun. I will say, performing on stage is still one of the most intense experiences I've ever had.

So then you started putting the words into the hot tar. The Poem Down Broadway. How did this idea come about?

Walking. Most of my ideas come when I'm walking around the city. After 30 years I've got a story for every street in Manhattan. I'm serious. Every street. Strangely though, whenever I'm walking along with someone and tell them this, they never ask me the story about where we are... Anyway, having a dog and walking her three times each day has been a huge help to my thinking.

For that piece the idea was to make a kind of automatic writing poem on Broadway from 96th Street to the Battery. I think I was interested in DuChamp's or John Cage's modernistic rejection strategies. Allowing chance to cancel critical intervention. Whatever. I was trying to be hip. Maybe I'd been reading art magazines. It's funny. Even though I fancied myself some kind of art terrorist, using beauty and poetry as rebellion etc. I see how I secretly wanted to be accepted, to be allowed at the party. These days, I realize how lucky I was that no one was interested and that I was allowed to keep developing on my own.

What happened to the poem?

I lost it. Probably cause it wasn't very good. Suspending critical intervention can be pretty dull it turns out. What did happen, the unforeseen thing, the Åelucky' surprise about the whole project, wasn't my original concept, but the documentation photos. Since my pieces were meant to be experienced on the street I'd always tried to underplay the aesthetic object of the photos. Another received notion from art magazines, probably. But I noticed that every time I went to pick up my slides I'd get really nervous. There was no way of avoiding it. These were photographs. Like nothing I'd ever seen either, like these images were really mine.

Unintended results are always a good sign, I think. Every project I've done that's been successful has had this element of accidental revelation: a change of course that, looking back, totally feels like a lucky break. I know that platitude about the harder you work the luckier you get probably applies, but it feels more like something random and fragile, some slippery, elusive x-factor like "inspiration". I know artists who allow room for this in their conceptual process; they'll trust that more will be revealed by the process. I can't. I just try not to fear it won't happen.

A lot of your work is centered around projects. Do you have one-offs that failed, that never became projects or do you usually conceive of things as projects?

The one-offs or Pranks fail or succeed. Sometimes a one off succeeds and becomes a series, usually not. I think for every project you see there's one or two that fail, or never get off the ground. It's getting better now. I've learned to be suspicious of myself when I get really clever ideas--especially after going to art shows. It wasn't always that way though. That's why I like to work in series. From start to finish things shake down and change. Sometimes the early stuff is good and fresh and the later ones mannered and contrived, and sometimes the early stuff is crude and the later ones develop and acquire that grace/luck thing...it's maddening cause I never know. Even while I'm in the process I don't know. I need to get some time away from it, some distance. The best I can do managing this dilemma is with another artist's clicheÅL, "Heart on fire, Mind of Ice". Balance. That's the only way I know to survive the hellish doubts and second guessing that inevitably starts about half way into any project. The heart on fire part's easy, a given, it's the discipline though, the stick to it voice that I've had to cultivate. For me though, failure's so disheartening, so cruelly depressing, it's got the potential to shut me down completely. It's absolutely crucial that I maintain this cold calculating side, this paranoid technical overseer that keeps the whole contraption on track.

Were there any back then that failed?

God, yeah. The early sticker pieces... It took about 2 years to get that working. Lots of bad pieces back then: I must've cut out thousands of bright yellow American cheese food slices. Nothing from that series made it. I remember a batcave thing, with dozens of bats, sleeping upside down. Stupid. Sophomoric. Took weeks to paint. I don't think I even kept any photos.

I totally lose interest in my work after it's finished. After the actual installation or painting phase is done I'm over it, out of love, they're dead to me. It becomes an administrative problem then (photographing, archiving, etc.). Maybe editing 50 pieces down to 10 to 12 usable images each year takes its toll. Too many little deaths. So much hope, so many near misses. It's brutal. I think I protect myself by investing my self-worth in what's next. For me, the new work's always the thing. If you meet me and ask me how I am, sooner or later I'm gonna start telling you about My Next Big Thing.

So there's a gap here in the early 90's. Set that up for us.

Ok. New York had been bottoming out for awhile by the early 90's. Especially on the Lower East Side, my neighborhood, things were pretty desperate. Crime, homelessness, addiction, HIV, it was unbelievably dismal. I had a little saying that the street was a bad dog and if you got too close to it, sooner or later it would bite you. It did. I'd found the dark side I'd naively been hoping for as a teenager. I'd had a very serious motorcycle crash in 1990; there'd been some bad relationship stuff, the end-game of my own addiction problems; my last show at Semaphore had bombed and I'd pretty much detached from the gallery scene. I was still doing street art but it was haphazard. This was a dark time for me, my trip down to the crossroads, and frankly, with all my life problems, art just seemed superfluous. A self indulgence. I mean people were dying, you know? Downtown was decimated. Every week it seemed you'd hear about another drug overdose or suicide, or some other sweet helpless soul fading away with AIDS.

I was doing paintings as well, developing what would be my mosh pit style, but in the face of all that was going on, and my financial independence (due to the insurance settlement from the motorcycle crash), I drew inward, avoiding attention and becoming increasingly uncomfortable with my role in life and the artist's secret-that mostly what we're doing is making products for consumption by wealthy people.

Around this time, a friend of mine, Walter Robinson, the art critic, said something, an off-hand remark, which he claims not to remember, about, "artists being lackeys, making shiny baubles for rich people." This really stuck with me. My first joking response was something like, "yeah, if you're lucky," but eventually the awful truth of it really began to depress me.

Which brings us to the hoodys. How did that come about?

Yeah, well, after all that, the question became if you can't sell your soul, what can you do to keep your soul alive? I knew that I was always happiest, most at ease with my creative self when I was working out on the street. It's uncomplicated, there's no ulterior motives, no critical static; maybe people see it, probably they don't. No big deal. I could handle that. I did some prankish pieces, then the hoodys.

It's not an anti drug thing or anti drug dealer message, which is what some people thought -

Cause you put it up in drug cop spots-

Right. I think the working title was "The Plague Angel". I likened it to deer crossing signs or the X'es they painted on houses that had the plague in the Middle Ages. I know I intended it as an elegy of the times and the place, an archetypal high sign.

Is it painted on the wall?

These are photo silkscreens wheat pasted on the wall. My last analog piece. The digital era is dawning...

Did this get you a lot of attention?

Yes.

How?

Magazines, newspapers... I'd really blanketed the East Side below 14th Street so most people couldn't help but be aware of them. Also, I'd put them up high with a ladder so they weren't easily removed. Getting those up was insane. Me and a friend would go out at three in the morning; we'd be creeping around these very sketchy neighborhoods, me up on a ladder obviously up to no good. Not cool. Very risky. This was when I first learned about choreographing installations, shaving seconds off the time I was exposed, regulating everything down to the smallest detail to minimize the risk. Somehow I was lucky with the cops, but even more lucky that no local vigilante saw me on the ladder and thought I was breaking and entering.

How many did you do?

Around 70, I think.

This, at a time, when, thinking about street art, people talk about Keith Haring and Jenny Holzer, but they were long past. So this was totally unique, right?

I'm trying to think... but not much was going on back then. Revs and Cost xeroxes were everywhere. Stuff like that. This is still before the cheap sticker revolution.

So, are you showing in galleries at this time?

Not really. No one was interested. At that time the whole topic of my career was very disheartening. I was struggling. You know though, all the problems I had back then, as bad as it was, now I can see how it was a good thing, how in the end it worked out to my advantage. Anyway, it forced me to figure out what made me happy creatively, to find the joy in it again.

Some artists thrive on career pressure, not me. And I have to say, having had that experience of making art purely for myself--from then on it's been easier for me to deal with the career crap, to not let it make me crazy or take the fun out of being an artist. Ambition's inevitable I think, but it's a lot simpler, cleaner, to be ambitious with the bigger picture, with art history.

The Hoodys were a turning point. Not only did it re-ignite my interest in street art, it re-set all my intentions about making art. Starting in Åe95, the digital era, I began doing hundreds of pieces a year. I went nuts.

Were these getting photographed, were you associated with these as well?

Oh yeah, I'm a compulsive archivist. But I didn't have a web site; the internet wasn't really a common thing in our lives yet. For the most part the work was purely anonymous. I'd show the photos in galleries and alternative spaces if I could but the response was always pretty tepid. No one seemed to get it. Commercial gallery types would be sympathetic but avoid eye contact, like I had toilet paper stuck to my shoe or something. I think they assumed I put my stuff on the street because I wanted attention and couldn't get anyone to show me. Again, I just had to let go of that, or any need for approval. Which was a lot easier than it sounds because I was having such a good time. The stickers were so labor intensive and the photos were so bizarre and surprising, I barely registered that people didn't care.

So in Åe96 you started adding the shadows?

Yes. A big moment for me. The whole thing broke open when I started doing that. Remember this kind of middle brow art movement in the 70's, abstract illusionism? It's a cheesy cousin of photo realism. Abstract gestural backgrounds with little blobs of paint magically floating above airbrush shadows?

Sure.

My dermatologist had one of these paintings in her waiting room. One day I was staring at it, kind of liking it actually, and I had a real honest to God epiphany. Like a lot of my generation I'd been a big fan of 60's custom car culture-especially the airbrush artists and pin stripers. Similarally I'd always admired tattoo artists and skater graphics, underground cartoons, Big Daddy Roth, Robert Williams, Raw Comix, all these fantastically gifted artists we'd later refer to as the inspiration for the Low-Brow movement. Anyway, it must've been one of those zeitgeist visitations or something because I went straight from the dermatolgist and bought an airbrush and started getting busy with a huge new bag of trompe l'oeil-fool the eye-techniques. Kitschy maybe, but jamming with the urban backdrops, it really made sense to me.

By 95, 96, the city's getting cleaned up, gentrified. Were you feeling the pressure from the police and property owners?

Definitely. And in response my installation tactics were evolving. Not only am I spending less time exposed, but this is helping me choose where I put my work. In most neighborhoods there's an area or two that, because of location, neglect, and some mysterious village social dynamic, attracts the graffiti. These were my walls. Actually, it was after seeing the black-and-white hoody pictures that I realized how bizarrely beautiful these walls were--especially the really old surfaces with long uninterrupted accumulations of tagging. Maybe because the hoody photos were in black and white, I could really see the graffiti; I didn't take it for granted like I usually do. I was amazed by how much energy there was in it, how fresh it seemed. The gestural confidence, the swooping bravery of the writing; the way the spray paint fizzes, it's like a flare, or a sparkler--it actually glows! And the drips! Such gravity--like a force of nature. And, incredibly, this is going on everywhere in the city; it's in our faces every day, shouting. But, even me, a street artist, I hardly noticed it. Until I started integrating my trompe l'oeils with it. Then things really started acting up. The walls came alive. Layers of tagging became weirdly spatial, the walls transformed, became six feet deep.

Ok. I love these guys but maybe three years of Jackson Pollock's entire career, two years of De Kooning's and some Franz Kline's come close to the uncanny perfection of these surfaces. Rothko got the palimpsest part, but no human artist could produce such marks. "Force of nature" is the term for it: I mean it's like erosion, or a coral reef, or randon mutations in evolution. Leonardo Da aVinci has a famous quote on this, I'll look it up and send it to you:

[QUOTE AS SIDEBAR]

With the trompe l'oeils was it still a rebellious theme?

Inasmuch as I was doing art on the street, yes. But, aesthetically, except for the low-brow factor, not so much. This was still my private rebellion, my pocket realms, the weird secret art I made. There was even some guilt involved, like I shouldn't be devoting so much time and resource to something so clearly obscure. I was hooked though.

So at the same time as this you were painting the mosh pit paintings?

Yes. I work in the studio during the cold weather and on the street when it's warm.

So you went to concerts and stood in the mosh pits and photographed and made the paintings from the photos?

Yeah. I went for weeks actually and took hundreds of pictures. All the group paintings are like that-massive research. I love it-shooting the pictures, waiting, being still. It's supremely fulfilling in some kind of hunter-gatherer way. For these I had the camera on a long pole and I stood on the outside of the mosh pit and held it over the center. After awhile I got to know the music and could hit the timer and count down to the climatic moment. Very thrilling when I nailed it right. I've always loved this part of my work, the chasing down and dragging home of source material. Instantly gratifying. Much more so than painting. The first of these are composed with a slide projector, then I got into scanning the pictures and working in Photoshop and that made a lot more interesting things possible.

In 2000 you painted more hummingbirds-

Yes. My farewell to Lower Manhattan. I've always wanted to develop a thesis or riff on how the greatest single influence on the development of my street art has been New York City Real Estate. I could make a graph. One vector would be real estate value and as it climbs, the other one, my time spent on site, declines.

The Birds...?

Oh yeah-- that year, as the eviction notices began arriving, I was so busy with lawyers etc. trying to hang onto my loft on Ludlow Street that I didn't have the time or the heart to get involved with one of my big projects. But, when the weather got warmer I couldn't help it, I had to go outside and do something. I figured it would be apt to finish my Manhattan years where I started-to close the circle with some hummingbirds.

These window paintings are from the same time?

Yeah. The Home Sweet Home Windows. When I started that series I don't think I really understood the full story of why I was so drawn to these warmly lit windows. For awhile I was working some anti-Clement Greenberg rap about how paintings really are windows (duh!), but it wasn't until I'd painted four or five of them that it dawned on me that I was so attracted to the image because of my own impending homelessness.

And that led to the World Trade Center shrines?

Right. I'd been learning how to paint light--that was my Next Big Thing--and I'd been thinking a lot about shrines, how art often functions as secular shrines, as objects that promote that kind of reverie. The week before September 11th I was actually up in the Bronx at a housing project, photographing the shrine neighbors left at the doorstep of a murdered nine year old girlÝ (balloons, flowers, stuffed animals, photographs). I wasn't sure what I wanted to do exactly, it was just my way of researching or sketching.

Tell us about September 11th.

For about a week after September 11th every night I lugged my large format photo equipment to Union Square Park and photographed the shrines people had left there. I wasn't sure why, I didn't have a clear idea or project in mind. I guess I was just groping in the dark, doing my best to deal with the shock like everyone else. One thing I did know: every time I put the hood on and those tiny flickering candles came into focus, I felt something eerie, a moment of communion with all those poor extinguished souls.

I started out by making some paintings of the candle fields, warming up, then, gradually, I came up with the street component of it all-putting the trompe l'oeil shrines on the bases of the light poles. Getting those made was complicated and absurdly technical; there were so many steps, so many new ideas, and oddly, nothing went wrong. Every phase went as planned; it all worked, no struggle, no false turns, no frustration or drama...it was spooky. Usually, for me, there's gotta be some horrible 11th hour obstacle to overcome, but this was the most trouble free series I've ever done.Very strange.

And you put these up emanating from the World Trade Center?

Yes. A star pattern. I'd wanted to do something like that for awhile, enforce an arbitrary structure, obey a grid on a map, but it always felt too self conscious or art-smart. But for this project, I could do no wrong, it totally made sense.

And so that set me onto painting light. By this point, with my fluency at digital sampling this is getting possible. My work has always been about trying to utulize what's unique about oil paint on canvas, what paintings can do that no other visual media can. I love paint's ability to create light-it's extraordinay-paint doesn't just evoke or suggest light, it actually produces the experience of light. Miraculous.

Since the early Renaissance, painters in oil have known that light, entering a painting, traveling through the magnifying lens of transparent color glazes, gathers strength then bounces off the bright white ground making their canvasses seem to glow. Oddly, this technology's been mostly lost or forgotten.

This was the first time I think we were introduced to your work. The shrines. This is when we realized there was a whole other level to street art. For us it's why we became so interested in it, it had an emotional depth that we didn't know street art could have. Because at the time there were a lot of stickers, there was some really great work, but nothing that you looked at and your breath was taken away.

When did you get a digital camera?

I'd had one for awhile but the 9/11 Shrine Series was the first of the purely digital documentations. A lot of the inspiration to get busy in the digital world came from the music I was listening to. Sampling was changing everything. Things I'd been wanting to do for years were suddenly possible with the click of a mouse. And for free. And I could do it at home. I've only really had any success sampling my own photos though.

Originally you said you were taking pictures as documentation not as art but then, starting in the 90s, you said you were selling the photos, the documents as art.

The goal is to be self supporting. I think people buy the photos to be connected, to support the concept as much as for their aesthetic value as photographs. I mean it's like the experience of the art itself. It's got to be best on the street, that's the true piece -- but it's important too that there's layers and subtexts, that there's something that will walk away and stay with you. Worlds within worlds...The photograph and all the internet incarnations of the piece are just supporting that. I agree that my photographs are art objects-but with an asterisk.

When I see a movie or read something or see a band or some art that cracks me open, it stays with me. I get to carry that open feeling around with me--for awhile. Unfortunately life takes over and it fades. The blinders go back on. I've often wished I could carry around some talisman of that experience, a souvenir to remind me. People put art up in their homes for that reason. Maybe that's why I get tattooed.

When did you start getting tattoos?

I really started getting covered about 15 years ago.

Are any of them your own designs?

A few but mostly I'm collecting the tattoo artists. I find an artist I like, we discuss what I'm thinking about and I pretty much let them do the rest. I like thinking of my tattoos as permanent notes to self. That I hardly ever read. But somehow it's very liberating.

Do you think there's an element of it where you're not in control of the outcome? I think it's very interesting that an artist would let another artist do art on their body permanently.

I believe that Tennesee Williams thing: for artists security is death. I'm vulnerable to the seductions of security. I guess I seek outside help to keep me uncomfortable. Every now and then I gotta get someone to to stick a needle in me and deflate me-to poke me and keep me awake.

I used to say that art should be an agent for change. I wanted my work to wake people up, but as time went by I realized that it's useless trying to anticipate how people will think. Now I'm content to let doing my stuff help keep me awake-to be an agent for my own inner change. Which is, admittedly, a lot to ask, but a healthy thing to aspire to.

When are you the happiest?

Hmmm...when I was a little kid, me and my brother used to draw together, we'd have these battles, complete with sound effects, we'd lay on the floor and draw these battle scenes and hours would go by without me knowing it. Today, before I came over here, I went out and put up some of those Do Not Enter signs. Two hours went by and I was gone like that, utterly out of my body. I'm driving around, just a big roving eye-ball, calculating risk, marshalling my forces, planning my attack, it's dirty, I'm hot-

You're in the zone-

Yes. I'm so absorbed, I'm totally relieved of my self. Very happy.

Do you see this period of time as a culmination of all the time spent working on the street? Obviously now there's all this attention to street art, the media's certainly been writing about it in a different way than they have in the past. Where do you see yourself now in that continuum that started when you were a kid in Chicago?

To me this is just an interesting phase in it all. Our 15 minutes. To be honest, I've never been very good at analyzing my (so called) career. I'm trying for this conversation but in real life I know better than to get too involved. I mean, if this is a culmination then what comes next--you know? I guess if anything, all the media attention's a bit problematic.

In what way?

It adds pressure, self consciousness. I've been through it before so I recognize the pitfalls and have some ideas on how to deal with it. But on the plus side, now that there's some familiarity with what we're all doing, there's more freedom. My subject matter can be more personal, less mediated for mass consumption. Like doing a redux of the hummingbirds in 2000. Or the Man of Sorrows, or Lonesome Boats. I never would've done something as personal and obscure as that in the 80's.

The internet must have changed a lot for you. Now you can see what other people are doing, keep connected in a whole new way.

Yes. And it's so much more fair than when I started. It's not like you have to know the right people to get your work out there anymore. An artist has a chance now that if they do good work people will get to see it. You don't have to go to the right dinner parties or be charming or good looking; it doesn't matter where you went to school and who's Åetaken you up'. I'm not naiÅNve. I know that stuff still matters. I know the art busine$$ still rules. But, thanks to sites like Wooster, not with such overwhelming hegemony.

What's next?

I'm excited about working globally. The 2007 project, the signs, I can send anywhere and even have people put them up for me. Anywhere in the world. That's a radical departure. I was working in Manhattan today and I have to say I wasn't really feeling it. The city's been locked down, sanitized, a lot of what inspired my love affair with this place is gone--gentrified away. I'm not giving up though. My feeling is that I should be able to make art out of anything, anywhere. The Manhattan Mall is just another new environment, another opportunity. As a matter of fact, my next series is going to hit the Ugly New Buildings, the sterile condos sprouting up everywhere in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side. Should be a blast.

Do you still work alone?

Usually. I had help in Copenhagen last week, but I really didn't need it. I like working alone. It's easier to get into that zone-

It's meditative.-

Totally. There's a lot of similarities between doing street art and performing. You have to be very present, very in the moment. Focus is crucial. I've got some kind of minor A.D.D. or something which makes it hard for me to concentrate with too much roof brain chatter going on. When I'm working alone it's no problem.

One summer though it actually helped to have someone along. I had a girlfriend, Lisa From Norway, who would ride on the back of the bike and help me. That would be our weekend fun, which we both preferred to going to the beach or whatever couples normally do on the weekend. She'd watch for cops and peel stickers and hand them to me then clean the airbrush while I was photographing. We were a team. With her there my focus was actually enhanced, it was probably the best it's ever been. Talk about happiness! I could be in the zone for hours. A few times lately, IÅeve brought photographers along. They're careful not to interfere but I feel their presence. I make unbelievably stupid mistakes, I'm not in the zone.

Was there ever any one moment that stands out for you as a moment of creative bliss, an epiphany, that zen samadhi moment.

All the time! Take, for instance in that period doing the trompe l'oeils, I'd be out with Lisa in Sheepshead Bay or wherever, someplace desolate and beautiful. I'd put up a piece, some intricate highly rehearsed arrangement I'd been fretting about all week. I'd airbrush the shadows, and we'd both stand back and just kind of shake our heads, go Åeyeah' then she'd clean the airbrush and I'd take the picture. Since I was the one creating the illusion I was too close to it and never could tell if it was successful--if in fact the modules looked like they were floating or sticking out of the wall or whatever they were supposed to be doing. It wasn't until I'd put the hood on the 4x5 camera and focused the glass and saw the image upside down that I could get an idea what I'd done. That moment there-if the piece worked-BOOM!--I think I know what you mean.

Who are the other artists on the street that you like?

I don't want to get in trouble by forgetting anyone, so I won't get specific but I'm interested in the ones who are pushing it, doing something new.

Also, for selfish reasons I'm interested in street artists who evolve, whose work is changing and keeps on being surprising. I get a lot of energy out of that. It helps me to keep pushing.

Did you see this coming? That there'd be a lot of artists working on the street?

Yes and no. Actually, back in the 80's and 90's I always wondered why more people weren't doing it. It's so obvious...such fun. The fact that it's happening these days makes perfect sense.

In what way?

Well, let's face it: most art's been locked down. Museums and galleries are gated communities. There's cool stuff going on there but, in the age of the easy-access internet, it's just too ghetto-ized, too difficult and intimidating for the larger public to find. I think another reason why street art is so popular these days, besides the obvious easy attention and alt.fame thing, is that since it's not for sale, it can't be owned, it's not tainted, it's an alternative to Art and Culture that's become just another commodity. That gives it authenticity, credibility to anyone who's had to grow up soul-starved in the consumer wasteland. So goodbye monolithic record companies and pretentious art magazines; put your band on Myspace and stick your art up on a lamp post.

The phrase street art polarizes people. As street art gets more popular and the friction between graffiti and street art worlds ramps up, how do you feel about the word street art?

I'm staying out of that one. I haven't heard another phrase that works better. It's fine with me.

People ask us all the time, if there is a common theme in street art. Are the artists motivated by similar things?. We've always felt that street artists are so accepting of so many different people and styles and methods and processes that it's really hard to find one motivation that umbrellas everybody. One thing that we hear a lot about is a sense of street art re-claiming public space and looking at how advertising has become so pervasive in our lives. Do you see your work as a reaction to any of that? Do you think of yourself as reclaiming public space when you work?

Of course. For one of my only public-art commissions I put up huge trompe l'oeil sharpened sticks on a wall. The aim was to physically keep those vinyl banner billboards away. IÅem definitely in the lineage of situationist philosophy and I'm a big believer in culture jamming and billboard liberation. I get the connections there with what I do, but it's always been kind of retroactive or below thought or intention. It wasn't until I started hanging around with you guys and heard the phrase, "corporate vandalism" that I fully understood that aspect of what I was reacting against.

How do you pick your spots? What draws you to say that's where I'm going to put a piece?

Different projects have different criteria. The hoodys needed to be local. The WTC shrines needed to span the entire metropolitan area. Sometimes it's just something aesthetic I'm attracted to, like the graffiti palimpsests I used with the trompe l'oeils or the horizontal line that becomes the top of a wall in the Kilroy Variations. With the "Floating..." series, to counteract preciousness, I put pieces on dumpsters, tractor trailers, bulldozers, freight trains-anything that would be gone the next day. I needed to let go, to send the work out into the world on its own.

The second part of the answer is: "What can I get away with". That changes with the local economy, the weather, the time of day, the day of the week, what I'm putting up, adhesion issues, how long it takes to put up, and a dozen other variables I can't think of right now. It's a problem I enjoy. Installation strategies from just five years ago would be insanely risky these days. This need to outwit the authorities has been such an important influence on my work. ItÝ keeps me innovating and changing, it keeps my work fresh and stimulating to me. I sometimes wonder if, without the danger, I would have gotten bored years ago and quit.Ý

I've always wondered, how do you deal with the temporality, with the fact that the artwork's ephemeral? How do you deal with the fact that 5 minutes later someone could come along and paint over one of your pieces? How do you reconcile that?

I take a picture immediately. Then say good-bye. It can be hard but you get used to it. I suppose it raises the stakes, it's part of the tension of this kind of art. And there's ways to minimize the stress. My favorite, I got from a nature show on Sea Turtles. Once a year female sea turtles lay hundreds of eggs in a hole on the beach. Amazingly though, only one or two of these survive long enough to mate and lay eggs themselves. Some don't hatch, half or more of the hatchlings get eaten by birds before they can even make it to the shoreline. In the first five minutes in the water, another half of them get killed by other predators; in their first month at sea, another half of those don't make it. By the time they mature to the age where they can reproduce, with luck, maybe only one or two survive. My solution is that the more pieces I do each year, the greater the odds are that some will survive long enough to ensure the continuation of the species.

How do you decide how much creative energy to devote to street art vs fine art. Is it instinctual or are there dollars you want to earn-

Whenever I make careful thoughtful decisions based on financial considerations it always goes terribly wrong.

So it's an emotional balance and not financial?

Yes. It's not that I'm some kind of anti-materialist. I've got my feet in both worlds like you said, I just have a black thumb when it comes to the business side of art. If I could do things I knew would sell I might be tempted to try. Fortunately, I know better, I mean, I know myself well enough by now to know it wouldn't work.

Each of those baroque style group paintings takes about six months to paint. This is not a smart financial move. Obviously I could care less, I'm gonna do them anyway, except working on one painting every day for six months drives me crazy. Absolutely insane. My back goes out, my skin gets bad, my dog won't even come up to the studio because of the tense atmosphere up there. As it turns out, this problem actually works in my favor. To save my sanity, to feel better, I need to finish something. So I take a week or two off and work on the less complicated but very fulfilling night paintings. Now it happens that if I work on enough of the baroque style group paintings I end up producing enough of the night paintings each year to support myself. And my other bad habits like street art. So it works out. Sort of.

It's still early in your career but when you hear about artists or read about their careers there's certain years, periods they go through, that they're best known for. What do you feel your best years have been?

Honestly, I'm still getting used to the idea that people I've never met know about my work. But the first answer that comes to mind is now. Now is the best time. I've never been more productive and more focused. But-and I know that I'm probably the last person to know the real answer to this, and I've dealt with enough good art dealers by now to accept that I'm not the best judge of my own work, but, I have to say, undoubtedly, the time after I did the hoodies, back when no one knew who I was, the three or four years I did the trompe l'oeils, before street art was fashionable, that's the time that comes to mind as my most innovative and productive. I'm aware by the way that that's the least discussed or reproduced of my stuff. So, yeah, clearly, you're asking the wrong person.

What is influencing you now? What's inspiring you?

Bob Dylan. Brian Eno. Joe Strummer. I know. It's wrong. You were probably hoping for something cutting edge. Or at least visual. Sorry.

Something I think a lot about now, is how creative people I admire -- artists, rock stars, writers, comedians -- how do they survive and have long productive careers? Especially ones that are very successful. With that kind of pressure how do they stay sane enough to keep making new and surprising work? I'm really interested in what happens to them after they get successful, how they survive psychically and manage to keep making good work with that new set of problems. So many people I respect get famous and their work starts to suck. I'm curious about the instances where that's not happening.

Is that what's fueling you? The next level?

God no. I don't think I'll ever have to worry about being so successful I start to suck.

What's to come? Are there more goals, things you want to achieve?

I've never been very goal oriented. Except to have a living situation that allows me to paint every day. Having a book like this made is good. Ummm...I'd like to make bigger paintings, maybe one day have a cool big studio? Funny. I don't know if this is good or bad, but that's probably the same answer I would've given 30 years ago.

Lights in the Dark

Interview by Nicole Pasulka in The Morning News.

Why have you painted all these lights in the dark?

I look at the world and I see a million things I want to paint every day but I keep coming back to light as a subject. I don't know exactly why. It would probably be pretentious ifI guess it goes all the way back to art school. Ever since then one of my main interests as a painter has been in the power of paintówhat oil paint on canvas can do that no other visual media can. In past work I've investigated trompe l'oeil, illusionism, hoping to question--or at least suggest paint's ability to question reality. Lately though it's light. The old masters, using this beautiful arcane science, found a way for oil paint to create light. Pictures actually glow. Things aren't just luminous, they actually seem to emanate light. In Western painting, this phenomena is often used to manifest some kind of quasi spiritual event, a bit of assumed piety I co-opt gladly, but I've also found the technique useful in my own personal narratives.

We've all looked into lit windows at night and imagined the life inside. Why are we so drawn to glowing windows and warm lighting?

I guess it's primal. Atavistic. The primitive longing we all have for shelter and warmth. Especially if you live in New York City, where unless you're very wealthy, chances are good you're feeling some kind of housing insecurity. As an early loft pioneer I know that feeling well, but I guess it's pretty universal. Like loneliness. Another rich veinóanother mother lode for narrative artists of my type.

The late night bodegas always seemed so forlorn to me, even when they were open.

You painted homes in Highland Park, Ill., where you grew up. Are there any other personal experiences represented in these paintings?

Yeah, for this last show I went back to the suburban town I grew up in, where it all beganówhere the outsider, nose to the glass thing got started. An apt metaphor for an artist. Visually I love houses at night, a topic I'd already explored, so for these I needed more sub-text, more narrative to entertain me through the process of making the paintings. Being there instantly brought it back. Me and my friends driving around and driving around, bored, hating where we wereóyou know, suburban angst.

I did the Home Sweet Home window painting series around the time I was getting evicted from my loft on Ludlow Street [on the Lower East Side of Manhattan] where I'd lived for 15 years.

You're well known as a street artist. Why is your gallery work so different in style and theme from your street work?

Funny. To me they don't seem so different. The way I look at it, most traditional painters in my lineage do something else besides their painting: Usually it's something faster and more graphic. Rembrandt and Goya did etchings; Degas did pastels. Street art for me is like that, my instant gratification.

For me, it usually doesn't work to bring my street art into galleries. Those pieces are meant to be seen in person, on location. I'm aware that a legitimate souvenir of that work are the photographs but for some reason they don't seem to function too well in galleries. They work ok on the internet though. And in print.

My gallery work satisfies a different side of me. The museum rat. Western painting from the 15th to 19th century, the use of oil paint, the way it makes space and light, the phenomenal potential of simple paint on canvas: to me it's magic. I'm as fascinated by this as I ever was. Sometimes people assume I make the paintings to support myself but, the way it works with me, if that were true, I'd never sell one.

I guess it's all about balance. I'd go crazy doing just one and not the other.

Has your street work influenced your paintings?

With street art, I get to run through dozens of ideas a year. Usually, with my gallery work, I keep to one line of inquiry; exploring it as thoroughly as I can before moving on. One of the biggest frustrations of being an artist is you have all these ideas and plans but there's never enough time. Street art lets me reduce at least some of that backlog. I can experiment on the street; I can make mistakes, try different techniques, be wrong. If it doesn't work, it's not like my whole year's wasted.

Your oil paintings look in from outside. As a street artist who also shows in galleries, what's your relationship to the art world?

It's odd now because I'm not such an outsider like I used to be. Gallery types are nicer to me now: they don't forget that they've met me like they used to. I still wear the same clothes, and I look the pretty much the same, my work is absolutely the same, but I'm perceived differently and that's actually kind of enjoyable. I'm not an art world guy, I never will be, but it's definitely a relief not to be thought of as such a loser.

So, how does it feel to finally be invited to the party?

I suspect that the reason I'm getting a little bit of attention these daysóand this isn't false modesty, I sincerely believe thisóis simply because I'm still at itóI'm still standing. Perseverence. My worst character defect, my stubborness, my absolute inability--despite all evidence to the contrary--to admit defeat, turns out to actually has an upside. Hilarious.

I don't have much patience for art that seems intentionally difficult or exclusive--or boring. Especially boring. I came up through punk rock so my mindset is to be the outsider--anti-elitist, anti-intellectual. I'm aware that my work probably errors the other way, over compensating, and I tend to make things a little too easy and accessible. But I started out like that and every time I've tried to fit in, to make my work more "art smart" it's been a failure. Now, with the rise in so called "lowbrow" artists, people seem to be eagerly embracing art that's easily understood. My guess is that like me, it's a reaction against all that dry, dense, intellectual stuff of the '80s and '90s. Anyway, people suddenly are interested in what I'm doing, but for years [the attitude was], "if I can get it right away, it can't be good, I don't like it."

The following is an excerpt from a roundtable discussion on street art published in the online journal, The Morning News. The other artists were: Swoon, Michael DeFeo, Patrick of Faile, and The Wooster Collective. The interviewer was Pitchaya Sudanthbad.

In the interest of brevity I've included just my answers to the questions. To view the entire article, go to: http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/personalities/roundtable_street_art.php

Roundtable: Street Art

By night and by day, invisible hands are reclaiming the walls of New York City. They work quickly and are gone before anyone can notice. What they leave behind is art, if not, an artful message. The prints, stencils, stickers and other objects wait for discovery by a passing pedestrian-perhaps a woman walking a dog, perhaps a sales clerk on his way to night school-but unlike everything else that decorates our public space, these communications are not hawking the latest shoes or the newest low-carb beer.

Street art is many things. It is a resistance against the notion that only paid-for corporate advertising can take hold in our visual commons. It is pubic playfulness. It is a gift, a knowing nod, to those who notice.

Street Art is often confused with graffiti, but street artists often use mechanical reproduction methods from formal art-school training -- printmaking, silk-screening, even sculpting-- to carpet bomb walls, in contrast to the immediate, almost painterly methods of spray-can based graffiti artists. In this way, street art has survived and proliferated in the face of police crackdowns. It has adopted the mechanisms of advertising culture to remain elusive, widespread, and relevant.

The street art movement has reached a point where it has entered global popular culture. More and more people now participate in street art, not just in New York, but in places like London, Berlin, Tokyo, and Rio de Janeiro, just to name a few cities. There are magazines and art galleries devoted to street art. Even some large corporations have noticed, and are looking at using street art as a way to reach a young and design-conscious demographic.

Question 1
In the touchstone book Taking the Train, Joe Austin described how in the booming years of graffiti, the word "street" had become associated with urban crisis: crime, poverty, and disorder. What does the word "street" in street art mean to you right now?

Street art for me has always meant freedom from my artist's game--galleries, the career machine, all that frustrating, soul sucking bullshit. Going out on a street mission is my unsupervised playtime--no responsibility, no expectations, no need to worry about the artwork's life outside that moment.

Question 2
The Wooster Collective brought up a good point about the availability of information in street art circles, especially in light of the internet. What have been some effects of this connectivity, considering cultural, political, and economic differences around the world? Is there also a negative side effect? What has your international experience been like?

I've made lots of international contacts through my web site. There's no question that the internet is why street art's the huge rockin' scene it is today. And full credit goes to the Wooster Collective for doing a tireless and magnificent job of shepherding us all along. They light a fire daily.

Street art and graffiti has its roots in rebellion; it's a medium for the marginalized; by nature it threatens the status quo. With the advent of the internet and cheap digital sampling technology, and with parallel developments in music and skater-low brow culture, and then, with George Bush ramming his fascist agenda down the world's throats...street artists are speaking up. Or so it seems--if you believe what you see on the internet.

Anyway, God bless the internet. It may be our only hope.

The negative side effect of all this is that now that street art is so in fashion, I gotta say it (sorry, folks), it's inevitably got to go out of fashion.

Question 3
One thing about street art is that its images have entered popular consciousness and have become pretty market-friendly. I recently talked to the street artist Abe Lincoln Jr., who pointed out that street art has roots not only in graffiti, but also in the wheat paste posters and stickers of punk and skateboarding culture. We've seen what has happened with these cultures as commercial interests take hold. Still, artists have to make a living. How are you balancing this? Can artists really separate the art that's in the street and the art that's on a coffee mug?

I've never had much luck making a living from my street art. Usually I just about break even. I have to admit I still have a deep-seated prejudice that if I did hit the cash and prizes the quality of the work would suffer. But that's me. Early on, in my formative art school/noise band years, the rebellion of the day was punk, a kind of knee-jerk/fuck-off/no-sell-out programming that's been a hard mind-set for me to break out of. Back then, aggressively merchandising something like your nihilist noise band or your high risk street art was considered suspect. Commercial success was by definition compromising and signaled a lack of integrity. With my easel paintings, it's always been clear, they're products, they come from the heart and if I'm lucky they're gonna be sold to rich people. No conflict. It pays for my street stuff.

This is what I think: Making a living off your art's about the coolest thing a person can do in this culture. These days I'm totally at ease with the idea of artists making any kind of art and merchandising it or whatever and making their living off of it. If art is a mirror to ourselves, our society, and the artists who market themselves successfully are the ones that survive and are the most influential, then that seems like a pretty honest reflection of our times--of what we value.

Let's face it: the history of art, the canon of great artists isn't about the very best artists, it's about the ones who were best at adapting and surviving. For better or worse, it's the ones who make the great work AND who get it out there AND who can negotiate success AND can survive success AND can still make original work...etc., these are the artists that make it into the popular consciousness. The incredible and lovely thing about the internet revolution is that it makes networking so much easier, so much more about the quality of the work than the quality of your connections.

Question 4
Lastly, where do you think street art is heading? Not that I expect anyone to have a crystal ball, but how might you imagine your own work in ten years or more?

If you'd asked me ten years ago if I thought I'd still be doing street art, I problably would have answered no, or I doubt it. For most of the artists I started out with-Basquiat, Haring, et al-street art was a rebellious phase they went through on their way to other things--which, honestly, was how I assumed I'd proceed. I mean, it's a pretty standard career transition. It's not just that graffiti and street art are traditionally a younger person's game, but also it's hard work, it's dangerous, and one needs to maintain a precarious kind of punk optimism to keep going back out there year after year. If it's not the cops or other bad guys chasing you, there's the dirt and squalor. If the low to no compensation doesn't bother you, then there's always the sad reality that your work is so damned vulnerable--that it's so instantly perishable.

But I keep going back out there for a lot of reasons, but mostly because I love it (especially the squalor). The point, though, is that ten years ago I would have been wrong about assuming that I'd have quit. So I'm not even going to try and answer about ten years from now.

As for the future of street art--or anything else for that matter--I have to say, this also isn't really my topic. I'm trying to force myself to come up with something worthwhile, but to be honest, I rely on others for insight on these things. It seems obvious that cheap easy digital printing is going to have an impact on the volume of stuff people put out, and I'm hoping that the continuing disenfranchisement of growing numbers of creative types throughout the world's gonna get them mobilized, but how they're gonna be doing it, how it's gonna manifest itself out there, is something that my poor brain, so addled by years of sustaining that precarious punk optimism, isn't capable of predicting.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn - Summer, 1997

"My Summer Vacation" by Dan Witz. Posted on the Wooster collective's website

http://www.woostercollective.com

"for me summer's a window, a brief envelope, time for serious street art. This year I started out all focussed and motivated and full of winter smart projects and carefully thought out artsy schemes at which I dutifully worked and toiled; I fought the good fight, not givin' in to the ghosts of self doubt, but then sometime around July realized I wasn't havin' much fun and the work although sincere was startin' to show it, so I sat back a bit and did a quick fun mini-series or two and finally, today, I finished with this piece."... Dan

See more of Dan's pranks.

Interview by Brian Katz. From Bozack Nation Issue #002. April, 2003

http://www.bozacknation.com/magazines/002/index.html

--What made you take your art to the streets in the first place? (what year, etc.) Is this while you were at Cooper Union?

Okay, The story goes...I started making street art back in the late 70's at Cooper Union. I'd recently arrived in NYC from the midwest; I'd spent a year at RISD but the east coast and the city were still intimidating. It didn't take me

Williamsburg, Brooklyn - Summer, 1997

very long though to become pretty much underwhelmed by what I was seeing in the commercial art world. Gallery art then was cool and minimal, dominated by middle aged white men showing inscrutable, intellectually pedigreed oblects in pristine white rooms. Plus, most of my art school colleagues were fashionably dogmatic--under the spell of various elitist theory texts which seemed to me obviously exclusionary, and worse, dull.

At the same time, New York City was spinning totally out of control. In the clubs and alternative spaces there was all this howling punk music and edgy performance art going on. On the streets, train bombing and break dancing were hitting their peak. Being a kid, being a typical art student, naturally favoring anarchy and rebellion over the status quo, for me, going the art school routeógrad school, teaching etc.--seemed absurd. A future being a Serious Artist gossiping and networking and merchandizing art works that would "dialogue" successfully with other competing neo-whatever types, who, let's face it, didn't much like me and my spiky haired realist painting ways anyway, was clearly not even an option. Ya gotta go where it's warm, so I moved outside and me and my friends all started bands and I began experimenting with street art.

--How does using the street as your canvas influence your art (or vice versa)?

Each influences the other, but in the end it all comes out pretty much even. True, certain technical advances in the digital realm brought on by the needs of some of my outdoor projects have had an impact on my studio work. And no doubt things I've learned at the easel have enhanced my street stuff. Each feeds the other--makes the other grow I think, which is crucial for maintaining and sustaining not merely a sense of progress, but that all-important-momentum. We've all seen so many others go stale.

Also, I think working out doors for so long, especially in the "non-permissional" realm, lends me a certain outsider status, an attitude of defiance and independence which shows up elsewhere in my life, creative and otherwise.

--How important is location and placement? And how do you go about choosing spots?

Location is influenced by several factors. If there's a target audience or neighborhood like I wanted for the Hoody's or the Hummingbirds, then there's that; if there are particular textural requirements, like the graffiti and psychedelic surfaces the trompe l'oeil series interacted with, I'll pursue that--wherever it is. Choosing a target can be purely self serving as well. For a couple of years, knowing I was headed out here to live, I made a ring around Brooklyn: exploring different neighborhoods.

One common factor I'm consistently attracted to is the idea of non art types being exposed to my work. With this in mind I've avoided most artsy neighborhoods, or the artsy parts of artsy neighborhoods. The critical factor in all this is the motorcycle. Except for the hoodies (because I needed a ladder), I cruise everywhere on my bike with whatever equipment--airbrush, airtank, 4x5 camera, whatever, in the saddle bags. I can see more on a bike, park it anywhere, make quick getaways. Sometimes I think people leave me alone cause they're intimidated by the bike (even though it's an old and humble BMW), and even though I'm hardly a "biker", I've accumulated a good number of tattoos over the years.

In the WTC shrines that obviously had to be where it was. The star vectors just seemed to resonate. Originally I wanted all the installations to be on actual site-lines from ground zero but in the end that wasn't practical. Also, after the Brooklyn Ring, to ratchet up the challenge, I wanted to more specifically explore letting a map (a random structure) dictate the rules of play.

Another criteria for location scouting is how much I can get away with. Although, over the years, I've developed almost Ninja like invisibility, I'm mindful to minimize the risk from police and doormen. Being white helps here. Another choice I make is not to hit spots that look like it might bug someone too personally--a clean door to someone's house etc. Also, I don't ever touch any other artist's work. I'll go over territorial tagging but only if it's sunk inóif it feels like I'm not stepping on anyone. Mostly, other artists extend me the same courtesy.

--You continue to paint traditional canvasses as well. Do you still exhibit in galleries? If so, are they 2 seperate universes (ie. does that world recognize your street projects)?

Yeah. I exhibit, make my living. The two universes are pretty separate. Artists name's can have something called a "buzz". Apparently the buzz crosses the line but that's about it. Buyers rarely do. And my friends and support network usually divide between the street and easel camps. Galleries don't seem to know what to make of my street photos. They try occasionally but in the end it just seems puzzling to them. I'm usually lucky to break even on my street art projects.

--A lot of your art seems to be fun or have a sense of humor. Aside from the obvious, what was the inspiration behind the rather poignant WTC candles? Anything specific?

For about a week after September 11th, every night I lugged my large format photo equipment to Union Square Park and photographed the shrines. I wasn't sure why, I didn't have a clear idea or project in mind, I guess I was just groping in the dark, doing my best to process the unimaginable like everyone else. One thing I did know: every time I put the hood on and the tiny flickering candles materialized on the glass, I felt something, some kind of a connection to all those poor extinguished souls.

Like all my projects, the inspiration was a complicated intermingling of hunches and timing. I look back and marvel at the luck I had at resisting some very tempting bad decisions. This piece is definitely my favorite. It's the cleanest, and by far and away the most effective (for me). Sept. 11th re-set my thinkingóit reminded me that making art and especially making street art is not all about me.

As far as the humor goes--I personally am repelled by Serious, and especially inscrutable hi-art public art. I think any art-works in public should be publically accessible. Period. Things that don't--and there's a lot of them--are a nuisance and alienating and cause the public to (rightly) blanket condemn all art and ignore it out of hand. Humor, realism, whimsy, are techniques I use to provide access. Illusionism (that parlor trick with the airbrush shadow) is my current favorite. Any kid, any person, can get some level of access if you let them. It doesn't mean that you're dumbing down your work for some dullest common denominator. The pieces of mine that succeed have levels way beyond the entrance access. Meanings I couldn't have predicted. That's why I think the WTC piece is successful.

--My personal favorite project is the "hoodies". Were you really trying to call attention to heroin spots with those?

Not so much as call attention, or seek awareness from the outside, but to leverage a...a...what?--a poetic cipher? I don't really knowóactually, I have to confess, I still don't know. It was the early nineties, the lower east side was a messóstreet-life was chaotic and brutal and there was no recovery in sight. The hoody image was abstract to me. An instinct.

And it wasn't just about drugs. HIV, crime, intolerance...a plague of hopelessness and despair. Big time grim reaper stuff. A tough time in my own life too.

--Which of your projects is your personal favorite? And would you say you are still most strongly identified by the "birds" project?

The WTC shrines is my favorite. Absolute grace throughout that entire incredibly complicated process. Like a dream it was. I still can't touch it.

The birds got the most attention. Which when you consider that was my first big project, and my exposure has pretty much dwindled down since then, you might consider it ain't exactly an accident. Don't get me wrong: I like attention. I like people to know about these things, and it helps my name when I make a rare stab at a public commissions, but I'm definitely wary of the corrupting influence too much publicity can have on me. Yes. I'm probably most known for "The Birds of Manhattan".

--Any thoughts on how street art has changed in the time you have been active? Any other street artists that stand out or have made an impression on you?

Street art's the same. Technology has amped up the noise a bit, especially sticker-wise, but the attitude's been remarkably consistent this past 20 odd years. I've always loved the risk takers--starting with bombing trains, to these days, the big breaking and entering climb a roof stunt roller pieces. To me that's so extreme, so over the top, that it pushes me to keep topping myself. Unfortunately, danger, or risk, seems to be compulsively attractive to me.

--What should we look out for next from Dan Witz? Do you see yourself retiring from the streets anytime soon?

Not sure what's next (or not sayin'). Definitely not retiring. In the end here it's just like the beginning--it's all about listening for what's gonna ring true. Still though, just being out there, doing the deed (and getting away with it), there's still no better feelingóI can't imagine I'll ever feel more fulfilled making art.

5 Tips

from the Wooster Collective. March, 2003

http://www.woostercollective.com/

Luckily I've never been arrested. I've had many run-ins with the cops but they've always let me go. More than once they've even let me finish my piece. Some things I've learned: Be honest. Cops hate getting hustled. And never be angry or defensive--or unctuous. Having a pretty girl along also seems to help.

Avoid doormen. These palace guard lackeys have no soul. I've never run into a sane doorman. They're not even worthy adversaries.

Cultivate ninja like invisibility. I'm not sure how you acquire this except over time. It becomes an instinct--like being a successful shop-lifter (I imagine).

Be wary of self promotion. In my experience, if this isn't done carefullyómindfully--it can be corrupting. For me, the work will suck if it doesn't come from a deeper place than wanting attention.

Never go over someone else's work--unless it's expired posters or bygone territorial tagging. This is the cardinal sin of street art. It's as bad as sleeping with your friend's ex. You'll immediately go into extreme mojo arrears.

Wooster: How did you get started in creating art for the street?

I started in art school. At Cooper Union on the Lower East Side in the late 70's. I did it out of typical art student rebellion really. Drunk one night, appalled at the cold elitist atmosphere of the school--the post modern architecture, the chilly art snob students--I went and painted fires up and down the back stairway of the school. I got expelled and after much debate and furor (and attention), was re-instated . Amazed at the power to reach all sorts of people I'd stumbled over, I've never looked back.

Wooster: What originally inspired you to do WTC, Hoodie, and Birds?

The WTC piece is a series of votive shrines--my version of the offerings that all those people put up in the days after 9/11. This was my way of mourning, processing the tragedy. Strangely, it was the most trouble free full series piece I've ever done. Complete Grace.

The Hoodys came from a dark period in the early nineties. Drugs, HIV, poverty/despair/danger were like a pall of doom over the lower east side (my neighborhood). The grim reaper hoody posters were inspired by plague attitudes from the middle ages and deer x-ing signs--the way the hi way dept. puts up those yellow diamond with black deer silhouettes as warning signs.

The hummingbirds were pure street art. Pure 'what the fuck is this?' and my version of a tag. I do remember having a concept that I'd put them everywhere below 14th street except Soho. Cause back then Soho was for the gallery types who I didn't like (probably cause they didn't like me).

Wooster: What other street artists do you most admire and why?

Back when I got started, Gordon Matta Clark, Charles Simonds, Jenny Holzer, and all the kids bombing trains really opened my eyes and got me thinking. A guy I've always admired a lot, although he's not technically a street artist, is Andy Goldsworthy. Those pictures you had up on your site this week--the posters made from the snapshots of everyday people in Baghdad, that really kicked my legs out. It's straightforward and subtle--it used all the power, every level; those pieces do brilliantly every thing I admire about good art on the street.

I'd like to see other works by this artist.

Wooster: What's your favorite city, neighborhood, or block, to post and/or to see street art?

I've just moved to Greenpoint/East Williamsburg. This neighborhood's got it coming. Big time. Best energy in the city now. By far. Some extraordinary graffiti pieces over on Morgan. State of the art. I've worked this zone before, and I will again.

Wooster: What inspires you now?

At this moment it's got to be the war. The war criminals running this country. There's nothing else.

Thanks!

Without Feathers.

New York Magazine. February, 1982

Surely there are hummingbirds in Manhattan, at least the occasional blur in Central Park's Ramble. But Dan Witz's painted hummingbirds are better in one way: They hold still to be admired. The 24 year old Witz has been letting his birds light on anonymous walls and doors downtown for the past couple of years, and while time and fresh coats of paint have obliterated some, others can still be seen in their very unnatural habitat. Good birding locations are the west side of Lafayette Street near Canal, near the southwest corner of Baxter and Centre Streets, and on the south side of Howard Street near Broadway. But, Witz warns, people aren't prepared for how small a hummingbird is. You have to be really determined to locate one.:For the not-so-determined, there's also a photo show of Witz's birds past and present.

-Nancy Mckeon

The Birds of Manhattan
Street paintings by DanWitz
(Review of the book.)
Sites Magazine
December, 1984

Spotting a live hummingbird in Manhattan is not impossible although I believe that at the locations Dan Witz chose for his paintings the occurrence would be very rare. And, today, if the live bird is scarce, so too are the Witz birds. Nearly five years after he undertook the project, many of Witz's paintings have

Lower East Side, NYC Summer, 1996

disappeared. Last winter, when any live hummingbird would have been thousands of miles from New York, avoiding the freezing temperature, I took The Birds of Manhattan and began a walking tour--guided by its rather vague map keyed to the photographs. At the six locations I searched out, only one surviving bird rewarded me. On Lafayette, just north of Canal Street, there perpetually fluttering, was a hummingbird. Slightly subdued by the splatters of melting ice, dimmed by city grime, the Witz bird nonetheless shimmered. Beautiful. The life sized painterly bird of muted and pastel colors was irridescent.

If the birds relate to other city graffiti tenously, because of their style and execution, they are nevertheless painted on pirated spaces--and illegal. Yet to my eyes, the Witz birds, like the Haring babies and Hamilton splatter-men, are a welcome misdemeanor. In graffiti lingo, these birds tag their locations and inform the viewer that Witz is getting up.

If you're not in Manhattan, or if you don't care to try hunting down these birds, Witz's book will still provide you with a document of the year long project. The 20 photographs, 11 in color, capture the delicate birds in flight, surrounded by spray-painted graffiti, hovering behind chain link fences, perched in mid-air above mail slots or trash. One picture shows a bird respectfully "caged" after its wall was painted with a new coat of bright yellow that frames the tiny flyer. The Witz birds are accompanied by William Zimmer's imformative forward that gives details of the project and a bit of biographical data about Dan Witz. Bill Mutter designed this ruby throated hummer of a book ,which was beautifully printed by Open Studio.

-Dennis Donaghue

Hoodys
"The Headless Horsemen"
New York Magazine
February 6, 1995

"This is just wonderful," he says, pointing at a Lower East Side wall layered with decades of graffiti. "Cy Twombly, Franz Kline, this shames them. Just the mess, the space." As Dan Witz points out Chinese characters here, Hebrew lettering there, the eye is drawn to the top of the collage, a poster of a figure in a hooded sweatshirt, seemingly

Applying sticker to a wall

looking down but without a face. "Some people think the Hoodys are about AIDS," Witz says. "Some think they're muggers. But dope is the thing down here."

Witz and his jittery mixed breed, Camille, continue their walk down Allen Street; at every block, the 37 year-old artist points out another of the 75 Hoodys he has plastered on abandoned buildings and other heroin hot spots betwen 14th and Canal Streets.

Wheat pasted across from shooting galleries and methadone clinics, the Hoodys preside over dismal stoops where flesh-and-blood dealers in real hooded sweatwhirts cooly call out the latest brands: Hellraiser, Looney Tunes, D-Nitro, and Gucci. "But it's public art," Witz emphasizes, pausing in a light rain at Norfolk Street to light up another Barclays cigarette. "It's not meant to police anything."

During the day, Witz, a graduate of Cooper Union as well as of the early eighties East Village punk scene, paints in oils; his recent gallery work includes chiaroscuro renderings of a woman using eyedrops and a ring of lawyers doing handstands. His first foray into street art was sixteen years ago, when he peppered downtown buildings with a widely noted but discreet series of small acrylics of hummingbirds.

About three years ago, Witz began noticing the sudden demise of cocaine and explosion of heroin in his circle. Fashionable sculptors, bass players, grunge kids, all started talking about "chasing the dragon." Many copped in his Ludlow Street neighborhood. Three friends contracted HIV from needles, another died from an overdose. "I don't write. I don't march," Witz says. Instead, last summer he took a black and white photograph, made it into a silk screen, and retouched it with some printers ink. From the start, the missions required military-style reconnaissance. "I hear things from a friend who works at a needle exchange, or from people in the art world," Witz says. "Sometimes I just ride around on my motorcycle looking for dealers. They're not that hard to spot." On a wall in his studio, Witz keeps a map marked with Hoody pins.

On his chosen nights, he straps a sixteen-foot ladder to the roof of his 1962 Plymouth Valiant. Around 2 a.m., he skulks out (sometimes with a friend). He can finish a job in 60 seconds. "You just hope people don't look out and wonder why you're climbing up to the second story in the middle of the night."

Witz and Camille pause near the corner of 2nd Street and Avenue A. Three hoodys emerge from the visual chaos, one over the doorway of an unmarked methadone clinic. "This is ground zero," he says. "On the border of the East Village scene and the Lower East Side Supply." The rain increases. Witz calls off the rest of the tour.

"There's no public awareness of heroin," he says before departing. "It's cold now, and I haven't been going out, so even I forget it's out here. But my friend died, and he was a great guy."

-Alex Williams

"Sending a message through Hummingbirds and Hoodies"
Public Art Review Spring/Summer, 1995

It's been estimated that there are over 60,000 artists living in New York City. That's almost twice as many people as the town where I grew up. Add the legions of art professionals, art students and various dilettantes, and you've truly got a self-contained art universe here without historical precedent.

Airbrushing the shadows

One might reasonably presume that such an enlightened environment would provide a nurturing habitat for artists with a public agenda. Not so. Fundamentalism reigns here, special interests rule. Careerism and self-seeking have ghettoized the goings-on, kept the creative flow sealed tightly within this art world's walls.

Yet as much as it seems that forces have conspired to keep all this creativity bottled up, some of it thankfully breaks out into the street and into the pedestrian flow of city life. That's where the fringe malcontent characters like me come in. Every year, typically in the warmer months, I perpetrate some kind of mild misdemeanor street art project. Usually I'm satisfied if my pieces make passersby stop just for a moment, stalling the busy forward momentum of their lives. My small goal is to give pause, to say art is around, that it is a possibility. I want ordinary people to know that places like this street aren't always what they seem; all sorts of surprises wait below the surface of everyday life if you're willing to look.

Some projects have sub-issues to address. A few years ago I painted more than 40 life-sized, realistic hummingbirds hovering on exterior locations in just about every place in lower Manhattan I could reach--except Soho. Besides giving simple aesthetic "pause", I wanted to address my pet peeve, the art world's ghetto wall syndrome. Last summer I postered the Lower East Side where I live with a series of faceless sweatshirt-hooded grim reaper figures. Lately heroin trafficing down here has reached epidemic proportions.

Several of my close friends and colleagues have died from overdoses or HIV infections from dirty needles. Late at night, in an operation resembling a guerilla raid, I installed the Hoody posters on the perimeters of the drug copping zones. Besides the ominous "pause" given passersby, I intended the Hoody posters as warning signs, promoting awareness about a deepening problem in my own neighborhood.

I make my living, such as it is, within the art world's ghetto walls. It's when I break out though, when I participate in the unpredictable flow of real life on the street, that I feel I'm approaching something truly revealing. I suppose my ultimate goal is to merge these two worlds, to force a small window through the ghetto walls. Or if that's as naive and futile as it seems, to at least continue challenging my own possibilities as an artist.

-Dan Witz

Photos of Dan Witz by Rebecca Sharp, Lisa Gregersen and Karen Monahan.
All other photos by the artist.
E-mail: danwitz@bway.net

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