Dan Witz

Lights in the Dark

Interview by Nicole Pasulka in The Morning News.

As a street artist, Dan Witz lends wit, color, and grace to New York City. As an oil painter, he seduces outsiders into warm homes and lit storefronts. Though different from the hoodies and skaters he paints onto public space, these paintings are a gentle reminder that, once in a while, everyone needs to come inside.

In the 1980s, Witz was also a musician involved in the downtown art-punk scene. He currently lives in Brooklyn and splits his time between making gallery paintings and street art. All images are copyright Dan Witz, all rights reserved, and appear courtesy of DFN Gallery.

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 if I tried to describe it. I do know that paintings can do certain things that nothing else can. One thing oil paint on canvas can do can do is make light seem real. Things glow. They're warm and they're welcomingÅ\I think there's a primal attraction to that. In Western painting, light gives spiritual significance. The Old Master technique is all about producing light and evoking whatever phenomenon of light they want.

For me, light painted is almost a spiritual clicheÅ\like a beam of light or a glowing halo. But, it works on me, it tips me past normal thinking and [I feel] that my eyes are open. I love paintings that instigate a type of revelry in me. [This revelry] opens my mind to things.

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?

There's a longing we all have for home and security, hearth and warmth; especially if you live in New York City where we're all kind of homeless. The window is an access point for me to get to that "home sweet home." I know that feeling and I think we all respond to that. Loneliness is another thing that everyone responds to. The bodegas also have a wandering, lonesome, late-at-night [feeling].

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

I started doing paintings of windows from the outside when I was getting kicked out of my loft on Ludlow Street [on the Lower East Side of Manhattan]. That was where I'd lived for 15 years, and I didn't have a home anymore, so I'd drive out into the suburbs and do paintings of windows with curtains inside. Home sweet home.

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

For me, it wouldn't make sense to bring my street art into galleries. Even photographs of street art to me look kind of uncomfortable. It looks like it's been tamed or housebroken. With street art, I get to run through a thousand ideas a year. Usually, with my gallery work, I keep to one line of inquiry. Being an artist you have all these ideas and there's never enough time. It's frustrating. Street art lets me release all the frustration and pent-up ideas. I can experiment on the street; I can make mistakes and try different techniques. If it doesn't work, it doesn't matter.

Has your street work influenced your paintings?

I use a lot [of techniques] in my paintings that I've learned from doing street artÅ\especially digital technology. I've started working over photographs so that I could make stickers, and now I've adapted that technology to the canvas. It's been a huge [help] to my work.

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 an outsider like I used to be. I'm kind of well known. It's much easier to travel through society in New York without being this kind of loser street artist, 'cause now people are like, "Wow, you're a street artist." I know it's false and bullshit and mostly about fashion. I still wear the same clothes, and I look the exactly 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 more fun for me than it used to be.

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

I never really wanted to be at the party. I don't like that a lot of art you see is devoted to not connecting with people. I came up as sort of punk rock. I was anti-elitist and anti-intellectual and anti-academic. I err the other way and make things a little too easy and accessible. I started out like that and I haven't been able to make my work more "art smart." Now, people like work that's not art smart because it's a reaction against all the dense and politically sensitive work of the '80s and '90s. People are interested in what I'm doing, but for years [the attitude was], "I get it, 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

Site redesigned by John Hawkins Gordon