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BOMBIN' Magazine interview with Craig Dershowitz

Throughout your history, you have demonstrated a recognition and appreciation for graffiti. In fact, you often refer to your hummingbirds as your tag. So, we will start this interview off with a real softball question - Care to try and define the difference between "street art" and "graffiti?"

Definitely not. That's way too broad of a question. It requires definitions-which always end up as limitations. If pressed though, I'd say there's probably little difference in the big picture. We're all pretty much cave painters in the end. From slightly different caves maybe.

If that question is too easy, feel free to stand on one leg, while driving a Harley and juggling while answering.

How about this. What is the difference from a historical, artistic point of view? From the perspective of a collector? A police officer?

Again, these kind of distinctions are not my thing. There's people who want to stay up all night talking about art theory. Let them. Reminds me of the tell-me-don't-show-me types in art school. Dry. Deadly. But useful.

Now the police-there's a subject I think about a lot. Ok. I'm probably going to get in trouble here--everyone please don't get excited--but I have to confess: I suspect the reason I've never been arrested might not be as much about the kind of art I'm doing but more because I'm white. When the cops are in their cars scanning for trouble, I don't fit the profile, they don't see me. A black street artist friend of mine agrees with this. He's been arrested several times. On the other hand though, he pointed out that he gets to travel and work in more interesting neighborhoods than me.

Last year I put some of my Do Not Enter Signs up in London. Because of time limitations I had to do it in the middle of the day. And I wanted them on busy, crowded Brick Lane. My friend D-Face lent me one of his fluorescent workmen's vests. Apparently in England, once you put one of these vests on you become completely invisible. One of the mud people. It was kind of surreal actually. Cops walked by, shop owners saw me up on the ladder. Not a word. Until I went to a semi-posh organic pizza place to get lunch. No Service. I shit you not. They apparently didn't want lowly 'workmen' in there. And we think we've institutionalized racism over here? Thie class thing they have over there is fucking cold. I literally could not get waited on. I left. When I told my friends there about it they weren't at all surprised.

What about from a gallery attendant?

The difference between street art and Graffiti to art gallery people? Again, not my area. I will say that a lot of the people who work in art galleries, the interns and up and coming front desk types are often very hip to whatever's new and groundbreaking that's going on in art. Lately a lot of them are totally open to street art and graffiti and know the players and seem to "get it". The art dealers though, the ones that sell the art, they see it from a different perspective. How can they sell something that you can't own? To give them credit, some of them try, but in my case it never works out too well.

Honestly, I've never felt too comfortable showing my street art in galleries. Integrity's not the problem, the stuff just looks weird and subdued on a clean well-lit interior wall. Aesthetically It doesn't work. Doing street art and gallery work isn't a conflict for me. I know this is a contentious subject for a lot of people but I don't see the problem. I know that a younger angrier me used to like to accuse other creative types of selling out, as if I knew the correct code of conduct for how all artists should act. But after awhile it got pretty obvious that that kind of narrow minded church lady bullshit, that art school knowing what's best for everyone crap, is a dead end and a real creative channel closer. By the way, that's pretty much the story of my education-unlearning a lot of really lame predjudices.

I've always wondered how people will walk right past street art to go into a gallery...to see street art.

Yeah it's funny. Or unnerving. I never realized how deeply people were sleepwalking until this year when I put up the fake ventilator grates on the new condo buildings. These pieces were glaringly obvious but it was amazing how long they lasted-how little they were noticed (and removed). More than once I watched the condo people somnambulate right by, oblivious, usually absorbed in their cell phones.

I was particularly drawn to this quote of yours: "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." Increasingly, graffiti artists feel as if street artists lack this very respect. Are graff guys too sensitive or is there genuine cause for such a complaint?

I don't like being told how to behave. Part of the beauty of this kind of work is the freedom from other people's rules. No filters. We've all seen how such cool and original things can happen out of this anarchy. But lousy things happen too. I guess the deal is that for the good you've got to put up with a lot of the bad.

Being respectful of other artists is practical. I don't go over people's work because I don't want anyone going over my stuff. If someone does tag over my stuff (which happens a lot less that you'd expect), I can say, "that sucks." But I don't dwell on it because I know it's random and not payback or karmic retribution.

With the amount of attention being paid to illegal work, street space is at a premium. Has New York become one giant gallery? Are there still unexplored spaces?

Yeah it's getting kind of cluttered out there. Especially in the hipster zones. That's why I hit The Ugly New Buildings. I have to say I've always had reservations about putting up street art in bohemian neighborhoods--it's preaching to the converted. To be fair though, it's mostly a matter of necessity. Most graffiti and street artists in NYC don't have cars.

Your work exists in two planes, both illegal pieces on the street and well-respected fine art in the gallery. Are the two mutually exclusive or beneficial?

The two things stay pretty separate. But probably my long running career as a street artist has gotten my name a bit known. That's handy in the gallery world. People who buy art like to have heard of the person they're about to spend money on. Even if they're not sure where.

Similarly, your history is one of existing in two dimensions. You attended Cooper Union but got booted for doing...um...art. You were marking up the streets in the era of Basquiat and Haring, yet were not part of their circle. You come from the Midwest, yet lived in the Lower East Side in the worst parts of New York's history. What gives?

I've got a restless streak that's always left me chronically dissatisfied. I suppose it's where my art comes from. Not belonging. Discontented. Keeping myself outside. The truth is I've always wanted to be happy and loved and accepted-to relax--but it never seems to quite work out. The one good thing, the one absolutely truly dependable constant in my life is painting. Whatever happens during the day, however hard life is closing in, if I've made something in the studio or on the street, I'm gonna be okay.

Tell us more about the art school scene? Our readers kind of imagine it to be this big hipster pillow fight. Any truth to that?

Beats me. The truth is I hated art school. I wasn't part of the social life there. I was in bands. When I was at Cooper Union in the late seventies and early eighties people didn't have the option of making it-getting rich and famous young. Back then you had to be a white man in his 40's to even get a show. This crazy-making idea of art as a way to rock-star fame wasn't a problem we had. Our way of coping with our lack of a future was scorning ambition, thinking it a sure sign of shallowness and superficiality. For better or worse I've held onto a lot of my old punk attitudes--which probably helps to explain my general lack of financial success to this day.

How much more open was the graffiti scene in the late 70s or early 80s? Was the mentality similar to that of today?

I really can't say. I never knew anyone who was doing street art back then. I mean I'd meet people now and then but we didn't hang out. It wasn't until the internet and the Wooster Collective that I had any contact with the group mentality.

Can you give us a little description of the Punk and live music scene? Even the drug scene - similar to what is going on today?

Musicianship is way better these days but originality seems to be a lower priority. Rock and roll has become an interpretive art, like classical music. If you're looking to be cracked open, beaten awake, it's available though. Amazing stuff is out there.

Drugs seem to be more under control now. People seem to have gotten a bit smarter about that.

Is there anyone you look up to in their abandon or recklessness?

Iggy Pop. Animal Collective. Rembrandt. Goya. Bukowski.

What was the Lower East Side like in the early 80s? Is there any current day comparison?

The thing I remember is that violence, or the fear of it, was a daily worry. There's plenty of neighborhoods in NYC that still compare.

Please tell us the craziest thing you ever witnessed downtown? Doing street art? ? Or just crazy...there's so much. I mean I spent most of my twenties on the art punk-band circuit. Every night journeying to the end of the night. I must have seen a lot except those were my drinking days...Even if I could remember I'm not sure I'd want to...

Just the other day I was telling a friend a story about how cool it was back when the city was broke and a mess, how you used to be able to drive out on these falling down piers on the west side and sit there and watch the river go by. Cops were too busy to care, weird possibly predatorial people were lurking around but it was great place to hang out on a hot summer's night. Once I was sitting there with a girl-I think we were breaking up--and this old car drove up and this middle aged New Jersey couple got out and started having sex right in front of us. Like 10 feet away. Buck naked. Apparently they'd been driving around (naked!) looking for a place to do this. We were dumbfounded-and definitely scared. The couple was very methodical about it, very serious, almost national geographic. After they were finished, without a word they got in their car and drove away.

It is said you have a story for every street in the city. Can I test you? Give me a story about 2nd avenue, between 11th and 12th.

Yes! Finally! Thank you for asking that. Usually they're embarrassing or bad things though. Stories featuring me as a loser. Ok, whatever. This is another one from the eighties... A close friend of mine lived on that block. We were kind of competitive painter buddies from our Cooper Union days. A few years after graduation I went over to his place for his birthday party. It was a big deal because we were all going to finally meet his boyfriend. I remember I wasn't feeling well and wouldn't eat any of the special cake the boyfriend had made and I had to leave early. Everything seemed nice and friendly but I heard later that his boyfriend thought I left because I was homophobic. My friend, who knew better, out of loyalty to his boyfriend, said he agreed. About a month later, late one night, drunk, I crashed my bike on 12th and Second. Right in front of their door. Nothing serious but the cops came. I'm pretty sure I caught a glimpse of the boyfriend peeking out at me thru the curtains.

Does the time and your setting influence your art? For instance, I am thinking about the Hoodies and the Bowery.

Location is sometimes the initial trigger for an idea. Some things transplant well though. Last year I did the Do Not Enter Series in NYC then brought it to London and Copenhagen. Generally I like that 'Think globally, act locally concept. The hoodies were the most specifically localized thing I'd done until this year's Ugly New Buildings.

So, what is the motivation for the Gates work?

It's the last installment in the "Kilroy Variations" series. It's been about a 3 year run riffing on the Kilroy was here image, This is really old school. Started back in WW II. it's the first graffiti I remember being aware of as a kid and it still blows my mind...

This summer I hit the Ugly The New Buildings in the neighborhood.

In the past few years much of my part of Brooklyn has been torn down to make way for luxury housing. For better or worse it's a totally new street-scape out here. Personally, I don't much care for the style of modern architecture they've put up: it's sterile and so arrogantly disconnected with the neignborhood it seems like giant alien space ships have landed in the night. But gentrification is a fact of life here, a force of nature, and at least there's some interesting new surfaces to work with. These are photo-based, heavily re-painted stickers, mounted on plastic and glued to the walls of the Ugly New Buildings. I hit the Lower East Side and East Village in Manhattan, Long Island City in Queens, and Bushwick, Dumbo, Greenpoint and Williamsburg out here in Brooklyn.

Why did we not see more Anti-Bush art?

Good question. Anti Depressants? Idiocracy?

What has become of the artist as militant? Or, artist as voice for political change?

I don't know if they're doing stuff that's not getting seen or just not doing it. Me, myself, I still believe in art as an agent for change. But in my own narratives, ideas that are too specifically targeted always fail. In 2006, when the extent of the Bush Administration's war crimes were being revealed I did my "Man of Sorrows" series. For myself. To help me deal with the vast heartache of it all. You probably wouldn't know the piece was about that though unless I told you.

It seems as if the subject of street art is getting more local - individuals. Is there a term for this?

Not sure. DIY? Acting Locally thinking globally?

Would you define graffiti as low-brow art?

No.

Finally, the questions we always ask:

Ever been arrested?

Not for doing street art.

And Any graff artists that you respect?

Absolutely. Everyone who bombed a subway train in NYC from 1978 on, my eternal respect admiration and gratitude to you. Forever. You blew my mind and opened my eyes and permanently ruined my life. Thank you.

Doski (Russian skater) magazine 10/08

1. How did you come about using photography in your street and gallery art? Why did you paint over it and what is the technique? Are you enjoying photography as it is?

I've always told myself that if it was possible that the real object or experience would express what I wanted to say, then I'd do it. Failing that I always believed that if a photo would work-if pure photography would satisfy my needs, I'd gladly use a photo. I've come close but it hasn't happened. I guess I'm really a painter at heart. I need to add something handmade and human, to tweak the image, to add expression and depth or my stuff doesn't come to life. It's true most of my images are photography dependent but I don't consider myself a photographer. Photography's just another tool for me.

2. What was the reaction of people when the art was so precise almost like optical illusion?

Well, usually I'm not around to witness it. But the other day I was putting up one of the vent pieces on an Ugly New Luxury Buildings in my neighborhood. The superintendent of the building came out to see what I was up to. We talked for quite a while, the whole time I was waiting for him to freak out when he saw how I'd defaced his clean brand new wall. But even though he was looking right at the piece he didn't even notice the creature staring back at him from behind the vent. To him it was static, invisible, just more of the ambient imagery of the street.

3. How did art critics react to that?

Crickets.

4. What other art techniques you are using? What is your favorite materials and media to work with?

I use whatever's necessary. Oil, acrylic, markers, crayons, ball point pen, fairy dust...I really like the airbrush. I suspect it of having magic powers.

5. I understand it is a minor part of all the art in the streets that you were doing but I have to ask you about skate series. What urged you to do those? Were you inspired by any artists involved in skate graphics?

No. I'm inspired by the skaters themselves. The series was called "Skateboarders are Graffiti", because to me, skaters are living graffiti: rebellious, curvilinear, dissonant, unrepentedly in your face... Every significant art movement has it's music, dance and visual components. Skaters seem like graffiti's dance form to me. Love them. I plan to use them again.

6. What kind of feedback you get from what you are doing?

It's been very satisfying. No obscure garret suffering for this artist. With the internet, it's an almost daily bounceback. It can be a bit overwhelming at times but I can't complain.

7. What do you think is the mission of street art?

I'm not a spokesperson for street art. But I like it because it's not for sale, no one can own it, it can exist independently of the compromises of consumer capitalism. The idea of an art form not being dependent on the market place is a truly revolutionary concept these days. It's free, so it sets you free. That said, when people find out I do street art, almost universally the reaction is something like, "wow, that's cool-but how do you make money?"

8. You have a book coming out. Tell us about it and what's going to be in it?

It's called Dan Witz In Plain View 30 Years of Artworks Illegal and Otherwise, published by Gingko Press. Hopefully it'll be out in the spring in time for some enlightened art patron types to invite me to Moscow to deface your city.

9. What is your attitude towards commercial projects? Are there any that you enjoy doing?

No. I don't do that.

10. What is the balance between doing art for yourself and making money? All my art I do for myself. Not that I'm some noble ascetic or something, I like money, but everytime I've thought something should sell I've been wrong. To be honest, the whole topic is a mind-fuck to me so I don't bother anymore. Somehow I manage to make enough street art to satisfy me and enough money selling paintings and prints to keep me going. For the most part it works out. The truth is I'll never be satisfied and I've gotten used to that.

11. What are your plans for the future. Do you have any ambitious projects you would like to accomplish?

Totally. Everything's going to get bigger and bigger in ever higher scarier resolutions. And in far flung places. I don't like to get into it too much, especially late at night (like now) because I get too worked up and then I can't fall asleep.

From streetscapes to portraiture, Dan Witz brings a gritty realism to all of his works. Within this framework, he seeks to push the envelope, experimenting with various digital and photographic aids. "I employ new technologies and blend the with old master techniques," Witz tells TORO columnist Louise Bak in a wide-ranging interview about his work. And of his method he asks: "Isn't this what we're supposed to be doing - pushing on to new forms?"

: LOUISE BAK POSTED ON: OCTOBER 23, 2008

Dan Witz is an active mixed-media artist with a longstanding love affair with the spaces of New York and its illuminated nightscapes. He's developed a store of sexual figurative painting that also shine with light. In his most recent painting series, Witz's figures are transfixed by the beams of their cellphones and suggestive of what possible intimacies are radiated in the depths of night.

Q: You've been working with street art since the late '70s. How did you approach working with figurative forms?

A: I've always been what they call a realist. Early in my education I discovered that disciplined figurative study was the common starting point for artists I admired - even modernist or avant garde ones like Picasso and [Marcel] Duchamp. The usual path is to use this classical education as a jumping-off point to more expressive or less literal approaches to making art. I stuck with the realism though. I've never gotten over how cool it is to make space and light and time occur on a flat surface.

These days, my jumping-off point is about trying to make my stuff even more realistic - past the point of what's been possible in the past. I mean isn't this what we're supposed to be doing - pushing on to new forms? To this end, I experiment with various digital and photographic aids; I employ new technologies and blend them with old master techniques. In fact a lot of my street works are more Photoshop than paint. To me this isn't heresy or a contradiction (although it's definitely contrarian). Different times demand different approaches. Q: I'm curious about about the mosh pit images.

A: A lot of my themes come from my early experiences living in downtown NYC and playing in art-punk bands. The group figure paintings definitely come out of that and a lifelong interest in baroque forms - how astonishing it is that a flat composition of shapes and colours can evoke such noise and chaos, even danger. The baroque painter I admire most is Jackson Pollock.

Q: What led you to depict dogs as a moshing group?

A: I love dogs.

Q: I'm curious about some of your sexualized paintings and your depictions of young females. There's a playfulness it seems in an image like girls putting on makeup.

A: Yes. Watching a girl paint her face has always held multiple fascinations for me.

Q: There's a striking image titled Old man and young girl. What inspired this?

A: Another lifelong fascination for me has been how oil paint can describe flesh. Not just the colour and texture, but the actual sensual presence of it. The contrast between the two figures seemed a good way to play with this.

Q: There's a social emphasis on the beauty of young bodies. How do you see your images of girls?

A: To me these girls' poses are awkward and almost ridiculous. They're caricatures of how the media fetishizes them. Innocence exploited. Also, I love the idea of a painting flirting with us.

Q: There are qualities of portraiture in some of your work, specifically the figures with their cellphones where there is a subtle intimacy.

A: They're friends of mine. When I was doing the painting I imagined I was the one calling (or texting). While the idea for the cellphone paintings was gestating, I happened to be looking at some 17th century Dutch interior paintings by [Gerard] ter Borch. In these tiny interior pieces the light source was emanating from us, the viewer, as if we'd opened a door onto the scene. I love the idea of the observer's presence actually bringing illumination - an apt role for the painter (me) and the person looking at the painting (you).

Q: It would seem you've developed relationships with various areas of New York. I'm curious how you developed your night paintings of illuminated spaces. Are they spaces that you are acquainted with?

A: Definitely. Most of my work is about New York City, my never-ending love for this place.

Q: Do you feel some emotion or some conceptual revelation with your street images that differs from your figurative work?

A: They serve different functions for me. It's too complicated and layered to go into but I will say that the two disciplines balance me. I wouldn't feel right doing just one and not the other.

Q: I find it interesting when some figurative elements enter your street work. There's an image of a sensuous female leg in your ongoing work. Do you find there are sculptural qualities of the female leg that are interesting?

A: Not especially. Hands, I find interesting. They're very sculptural, and gestural, and expressive of personal narratives. I think hands resemble their owners in a profound way. Once I did a series of portraits of my friends' hands. The likeness to their owners was eerie. Even gloves that have been worn-in can assume the personality of the wearer. Shoes too.

Q: How do you see the streetscapes of New York now? You've experienced street dynamics and spatial ecologies over time as the city has become so commodified and sterile in some ways.

A: In most neighbourhoods 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.

"When I was a little kid, there was a stream that came down from the hill at our place and would have cut across our yard, but years before, somebody went out there and covered this stream with stone, mortared the stone together so that it left a hump down through the middle of the yard, as if it were left there by a seven hundred pound mole. And when the stream dried up, my brother and I--he was in the third grade and I was in the fifth--we went down to the end of that tunnel and walked through it, lighting our way with torches. We found an old accordion under there. It was a great find, and we brought it home and tried to play it. But it wouldn't play, and we found we could get into it by opening and opening this screw and lifting the top off. We got into all the valves and bellows and everything, and there, stuck in a corner, we found a piece of paper, a sign, and it said WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU LOOKING IN HERE FOR, DAISY MAE?"

Ken Kesey interviewed by Chip Brown. Esquire September 1992

Juxtapoz interview 1/09 with Louis Gropman

You have a new book coming out this spring-In Plain View- spanning thirty years of your artwork, "illegal and otherwise". Tell us about the title.

I like the title because it sounds like a real Barnes and Noble type book, very professional; and since most people haven't heard of me, and my street art's been out there in plain view for 30 years, which I guess is an intriguing idea, it kind of sets the hook to reel you in and give you the show.

Three decades of work places you starting out in NYC in '78. Where were you from and what brought you to New York?

I was born in Chicago and grew up north of the city in a nice Ferris Bueller suburb . After a year at RISD I moved to NYC to go to Cooper Union.

Describe the city as you found it.

Totally fucked up. A mess. Burnt out buildings. Burnt out cars. Absolutely unsupervised too. The cops were simply not around. Going for a walk anywhere below 14th St. was an adventure. In a way it was great-the freedom-but it was also kind of stressful, watching your back all the time.

What had the greatest impact on you when you arrived?

Probably the glaring contrast of how boring the establishment art was (white male minimalists in white galleries) and how awesome and sexy the punk and street culture was-

What or who were your early influences? What did they inspire in you?

Most of my childhood art heroes were self destructive types, dark horses, drunks, addicts; most of them seemed to burn for a couple years of intense genius then flame out dramatically. I really admired that back then. The world's a fucked up place, suffering's the only honest response to that, so burn bright, then out. I'm not saying I was planning an early exit exactly, but I did think that the only worthwhile art came from 'the edge', a precarious place, so my teens and early twenties were pretty extreme.

But you can see how primed I was to move to NYC in '78 when punk was peaking. Seeing the Clash, the Ramones, Devo, the kids breakdancing, the graffiti bombed trains, the punks on St. Marks-in comparison art school seemed kind of whitebread and out of touch.

And most art in the galleries turned out to be a huge let down-a gated community, a private club for old white people designed to maintain the value of their investments and keep the riff raff (like me) out. From what I could tell, to make a career in that world, it didn't seem to matter how good or original your work was, most importantly you needed to curry favor, be 'taken up', and meet and impress the right people. Often there was a predatory sexual element involved (well, among my young depraved friends at least). In any case this was not my idea of burning bright. I began doing street art, and me and my artist friends, we all started bands, which, between shitty jobs, is what I did for the next 7 or 8 years.

What was your band called?

I was in a few of my own that hopefully no one will remember but, like a lot of downtown musicians at the time I played in a couple of Glenn Branca's ensembles. A very intense experience. Branca was someone I really admired .

How did music and art interact in the downtown scene during the late '70s and '80s?

Since we all lived in shitholes we went out every night. Before the East Village gallery scene got going the only place to show our work was in bars and clubs. Often the same places our bands played in. As I recall the artwork rarely sold but we got in free and exhibiting artists got drink tickets. Drink tickets were a extremely significant factor crucial to the development of the downtown scene of the late '70s and 'early 80's.

And how did the anti establishment punk rock ethos permeate your approach to art?

By the time I got here punk rock had already become the establishment. Our little downtown bubble came after that, influenced more by the NO New York bands DNA, Lydia Lunch, Theoretical Girls etc. Officially we were known as "noise" bands, the apotheosis of which was the Noise Fest of 1981. In that scene making it or getting signed wasn't really an option; originality was the goal. Anyone trying to be marketable or having rock star ambitions seemed bizarre and embarrassing.

Since no one was buying, there was no temptation to compromise or please anyone but ourselves. When my band played I'm pretty sure the people who enjoyed themselves the most were the musicians. So I got the experience of living as an artist for the pure fun of it. Eventually I was able to let go of much of my success programming, to see beyond that, and get the first glimmerings of how radical it would be if art weren't just a product to market and sell.

Rejection was the overreaching attitude-rebelling against whatever you had. But mostly of course we were rejecting people who didn't want us. In this case, not so much the music industry, which was an alien planet, but rejection of our future as artists, serving art dealers, curators and critics.

Is that what led you to graffiti?

My friends and I idolized the artists that were bombing the subway trains. I thought it would be funny if I could tell girls in bars I was a graffiti artist-which would have been really strange back then because I was white and not from that world-and then when they asked what my tag was I'd show them these tiny hyperrealistic paintings of hummingbirds. Contrarian humor...umm...I guess you had to be there. But I began to paint life sized very detailed hummingbirds on walls below 14th St.

How did you come up with hummingbirds?

At first the reason I chose the hummingbird was because it hovered, which made visual sense, but then, after doing a couple I began to realize what I'd stumbled upon, a monster-load of possibilities I'm still mining.

The piece was called "The Birds of Manhattan", but the working title in the beginning was, "Love in the Ruins". I've always been attracted to situations of sustained simultaneous opposites, like in portraits when the person has sad eyes and a happy mouth, or Dharma Punx (Namaste, motherfucker).

What was the response from passersby? From the police? From other graffiti writers?

Each bird took a couple of hours to paint so I had a lot of interaction with passersby. People were almost always supportive. Excited even. Often there'd be a small crowd watching and commenting. The cops, when they'd bother to stop, would usually let me finish painting. Remember, this is 1979.

I've always had good respectful relations with graffiti writers, never going over their work and whenever possible gratefully acknowledging their influence. I never could have done the kind of work I do if it wasn't for them.

How did the hoodies come about, and what kind of course did that series set you on?

Before I did the hoodies in 1994 I did street art every summer, but was either touring or too pre-occupied with survival issues to sustain any kind of series. Then in the summer of 1994 I put up about 70 of these hoody characters on the lower east side of NYC. They're retouched photo silk screens, the last of my analog projects. A lot of people assumed it's an anti-drug message because I put them up in the drug selling areas, but my intention was much different. At that time New York City was a pretty sad place. Crime, homelessness, rampant drug dealing and addiction were running the streets; alarming numbers of people were fading away with AIDS. To me it seemed like the end days, the plague years. I conceived of that character as a high sign of the times, an archetype of despair. Actually, the working title for that piece was "Plague Angels".

I have to say here that most of the theoretical side of my work gets figured out after I see what I've been doing. I mean I had an instinct about that image. I understood its possibilities but came up with the embellishments and fancy talk afterwards.

Anyway, it was such a satisfying project that it totally re-ignited my desire to do street art in a serious way. After '94 street art became my focus. The next year, after seeing how amazing the graffitied walls looked in the hoody documentation pictures, I started experimenting with homemade stickers that interacted with the layers of faded tagging.

In 1996 after seeing how spatial and surreal the wall environments became when I put a few stickers up, I hit on the airbrush idea, and started on the Trompe L'Oeil (fool the eye) series. Around this same time I spent some time in Europe at the old master museums and started developing my mosh pit style and making large heavily baroque studio paintings.

By 2000 I was getting pushed out of my lower east side loft by gentrification so I decided to do a hummingbirds redux as a way of closing the circle on my Manhattan days.

What brought you to explore different situations with light playing off darkness, from your portraits of lamps to nightscapes to World Trade Center shrines?

In 2002, the summer after the 9/11 attacks I did a series of trompe l'oeil votive shrines installed on light poles, all emanating from ground zero. From this experience I'd become interested in different old master techniques used to paint light. It was amazing to me how they could not just simulate light in paintings, but actually create it. Their canvasses glow. Some even seem to produce light. This became the main topic of my studio work. It wasn't until years later that I understood how my youthful obsession with darkness and self-destruction had finally brought me around to this attraction to light.

There's this fascinating link between your subject matter and medium; like in the gritty realism of your mosh pits rendered in baroque style and then the beautifully detailed hummingbirds painted on decrepit doorways. How has the connection between art tradition and contemporary artistic avenues coalesced in your work?

I've always been a realist. Early in my education I discovered that figurative study was the common starting point for artists that I admired-even modernist or avant-garde ones like Picasso and Duchamp. The usual path is to use this classical education as a jumping off point to more expressive or less literal approaches to making art. I stuck with the realism though. I've never gotten over how cool it is to make space and light and time occur on a flat surface.

These days, my jumping off point is about trying to make my stuff even more realistic-past the point of what's been possible in the past. I mean isn't this what we're supposed to be doing-pushing on to new forms? To this end I experiment with various digital and photographic aids; I experiment with new technologies and blend them with old master techniques. In fact a lot of my street works are more photoshop than paint. To me this isn't heresy or a contradiction (although it's definitely contrarian). Different times demand different approaches.

I've always told myself that if it were possible that the real object or experience would express what I wanted to say, then I'd use it. Failing that I always believed that if a photo would work-if pure photography would satisfy my needs-I'd gladly use a photo. I've come close, but it hasn't happened. I guess I'm really a painter at heart. I need to add something handmade and human, to tweak the image, to add expression and depth or my stuff doesn't come to life.

How has your use of location changed over the years?

In 2002 I moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn and have been blanketing this and surrounding neighborhoods ever since. A few years ago it began to seem a bit saturated here so I've taken my work on the road. LA, San Francisco, London, Copenhagen, wherever I am, I put up work. I just got back from a drive-about down south and put up stuff all along the way. My hope is that even if you never get to see one of my pieces, wherever you are, you'll keep an eye open just in case.

At what point did you start putting tromp l'oeiles on Ugly New Buildings?

2008. In the past couple of years my Brooklyn working class neighborhood has been basically torn down and cheesy moderne luxury condo buildings have been thrown up everywhere. Four on my block alone. It's kind of fucked up if you live here, but on the bright side these new surfaces and settings have been fun to work with. And that old disenfranchisement theme's always a fertile one for me.

Do you lament how the city's cleaned up? Is there nostalgia for the New York you were first introduced to?

Not really. I'm glad the environment here isn't static. It keeps us awake. And lean. Some people miss the old days here, but not me. I especially don't miss the fear, the violence. Ok, the squalor was fun but I'm fine with that getting re-zoned to the outer boroughs. Seriously, the sanitizing of the city and the subsequent increase in police presence has probably been the single most important influence on my work. Every year, as real estate values climb and the police get more aggressive, I have to change my strategies, adjust my technique so I spend less time exposed. Which gets me thinking in new ways. So it's a challenge that's kept me evolving and forces me to lift my game.

While the penalties for graffiti have become more severe, its acceptance has only strengthened as street art has made its move into the museum. Has your relationship with the formal art world changed with this shift?

Not really. My relationships with the formal art world have always been pretty distant. Cordial, but neither side has yet to really feel the love.

What music are you listening to these days?

Shuffle. To me Ipod shuffle is the most interesting development in music to come along since sampling. we're all listening to these chance playlists, these random collisions in our music collections, skipping through eras and genres in often weirdly prescient ways. I say, "Obey Shuffle. It is Wise.

Do you feel like having this book come out closes the chapters of your work since '78?
God no. Why do you say that? Is it supposed to? I mean I hope not; I'm having a total blast doing this stuff. Actually, I'm using the book promotion trips as a chance to expand my horizons, to hit Europe hard, and vandalize whatever city anyone wants to bring me to.

Good to hear. What other chapters will the release of this book open for you?

Overspray Magazine Interview by Ali Gitman

--In your mind, are the fires you painted inside Cooper Union in the late '70s your first foray into public art? Did this experience open the possibility of working on the street to you, or was that something else?

Yeah that was my first. It got me a lot of attention and definitely got my attention.

--Why do you usually work in series' on the street? I guess that's my way of keeping things under control. Even though I've been at this for years, I never get used to how chaotic and unpredictable it all is. Every project I do starts one way, with what I think it's going to look like, then one thing leads to another, all sorts of accidents happen and invariably I end up with something totally unexpected. To be honest, the lack of control can be kind of nerve wracking. I mean it's exciting but it's like my life is lived in a state of constant emergency.

This year I started with what I thought was going to be the last of my Kilroy variations, with the hands in classic Kilroy was Here positions in the vents on the Ugly New Buildings. After about a month of working that, so many cool new possibilities emerged that the original Kilroy concept became just the overture, the prelude to a much larger Ugly New Buildings project. By the end of the summer things got so out of control it morphed into this coming year's project, "In Plain View". I mean I'm not complaining, I'm glad I've hit such a fertile vein, but I need some kind of organizational framework or it'd just turn into complete insanity..

--How did you decide to paint your hummingbirds in the street in the late 70s? Were you inspired by graffiti art? Were you at all concerned with advancing your fine art career?

I was an art school punk: you know, terminally dissatisfied, full of hubris, extreme. Opinions were my identity. To me, the word 'career', next to the word, 'artist', automatically meant compromising--selling out. To be fair, even if I wanted to sell out back then, nobody was buying. You had to be in your forties and preferably white and know the right people to get a show in most galleries.

The real truth is I started painting on the street because in the summer I like being outdoors. I was dimly aware of how strange an art-move this was, but at the time I was too pre-occupied with how intense (and dangerous) the whole painting process was and how much fun I was having to think it through too much.

Those first bombed subway trains really cracked me open and got me thinking though. True, by 1978, graffiti had already become an art movement: there were stars and hierarchies and rules, but it was still mind blowing and illegal and I loved it. These artists definitely inspired me to work outdoors and be in people's faces. Stylistically though, I've always been a realist, my pull has always been towards representational painting. I called my tiny, anonymous hyper-real hummingbirds an anti-tag.

--What were some early reactions people had to your work?

Very positive. Especially non art people. I really liked that.

--It's awesome that you felt the need to photograph your street work right from the beginning. How do you see the relationship between street art and photography?

It really depends on the street art. Like most street artists I keep the photos on the down-low aesthetically so as not to interfere with the documentation. But sometimes, with some of my projects, I can see how the photograph itself can be an art object. Unfortunately I seem to be pretty much the only one who thinks this. It'd be nice to sell the photos to support the work but that hasn't really worked out.

--How do you think your acrylic street pieces changed once you began incorporating vinyl stickers into the mix?

I started using stickers in the early 90's, when I began using photoshop. At the time, for me, the new digital techniques were a form of sampling, which with the kind of music I was listening to really made sense. In any case the new technology really freed me, especially financially. Up until then my chief criteria for what I could do was if I could afford it. Which usually meant I couldn't do what I wanted to.

--How important is placement to your work? Do you scout locations a lot beforehand, or do you make in-the-moment decisions?

Again, it depends on the project. Some things need to be in exact locations; others I have no idea, I just go out and let it happen. Usually I use my motorcycle for installations which gives me a freedom and flexibility that's been a great advantage. Good for fast getaways too. But when the stuff is actually going up it's always very in the moment, always an improvisation.

--The contrast between the super-bombed train interiors at the start of the '80s and your minimalist imagery placed within is really staggering. How did you feel about the proliferation of graffiti at the time, and how did you see your work interacting with it?

I've always had the greatest respect for graffiti writers. Ever since the beginning I'm super conscious of never stepping on theirs or any other street artists' toes. I'm glad to say it's mostly been reciprocated. The early 80's subway pieces you're referring to were definitely me riffing on the crazy noise of the tagging, but it wasn't until the mid-nineties that I started actually interacting with the graffiti-with the way the layers of tagging made the walls so vibrant and deeply spatial.

--I saw a photo on your website of a piece you did in 1980 where you stuck some colorful toys into dog shit on the road. This was a series, correct? And how did you come up with the idea for it? Also, I assume you've seen the Sprinkle Brigade's work. Have you ever spoken to them?

A series yes. Bunny heads grouped patriotically around an American flag. Or conversing under cocktail umbrellas...All along I've had a side practice of pranks. Mostly they're one-offs, occasionally some turn into multiples. It was a long time ago but I'm pretty sure I did that whole series in one day.

I came up mostly through the music scene of the early 80's in downtown New York. For most of my 20's I was in bands, and one of the most serious rules of that world is that rock and roll should never take itself too seriously. As for others working with piles of dog shit, we haven't been I touch but I'm not surprised. It seems like such an obvious target. Not too long ago I saw someone out here in Williamsburg was spray painting it gold.

--You began the Hoodies project in the mid-90s as a reaction to lots of folks getting addicted to heroin. Why did you decide to put up stickers of similar imagery in 2005?

I was tagging my new neighborhood in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. This was just when the whole demolition and gentrification thing was getting started out here. The original hoody character was about a lot more than drugs. It's kind of a danger sign, an archetype (for me) of disenfranchisement and loss.

--Have you ever had a bad run-in with the cops?

Yes. Never been arrested though.

--How do you view the relationship between your street and gallery work? Has this changed over the years?

Each side has benefitted from the other. Some technical innovations like using digital media to make stickers I've adapted for studio use. Most of my paintings now have digital photos as underpaintings. I'll admit I have a fantasy that one day it'll all be the same: I'll have one uncomplicated means of production (in a huge clean studio with mute leotarded assistants), but knowing me, that wouldn't work out, I'd get bored. Right now, it's the dead of winter and I'm working on a huge epic painting, which is in its inevitable struggle-phase and making me crazy, so all I really want to do is put up some street art-to get me some of that instant gratification. I've got stuff ready to go but it's like 10 degrees here right now. I don't think my adhesive will work.

--Tell me a bit about the series of paintings you did depicting women with cell phones. What inspired these?

It's so beautiful. Every time I see someone in a dark place looking at their cell phone it takes my breath away. For years my main subject to paint was people. Then, a few years ago, after 9/11 I did some shrine paintings (and street art) which got me interested in techniques of painting light. That became the main subject for my easel paintings. The cell phone people are a combination.

--Gentrification and the creation of massive, homogeneous buildings has been a major theme you've tackled. How do you see the state of affairs right now?

I'm not against gentrification. If you live in New York City that would be like saying you're against other unstoppable forces of urban nature like noise or bad smells. But, that said, these new corporate condo towers they've plopped down in my working class Brooklyn neighborhood are so arrogantly out of step with their surroundings that I had to do something. And I have to say I'm loving the new surfaces, and, weirdly, because it's totally new to me, I'm really enjoying working with the clean lines and symetry. The truth is, for better or worse, I'm glad this place keeps changing, it keeps me changing-and awake.

--Do you ever listen to music while painting indoors, and if so, what is it usually? What about when putting up work outdoors?

Yeah, I listen to music while I work in the studio. My favorite new form of music is Shuffle. It's all I can listen to anymore. I can't imagine hearing two songs in a row from the same artist, much less the same era or genre. Although, I have to say, last night I saw Animal Collective for like the 5th time. They are unbelievable.

While working outside, I have to be so in touch with my surroundings, so focused, that music or even conversation would be a disaster. I don't even really like friends along watching me (or photographing-which is why there's next to no pictures of me doing street art).

--Who are some street artists, from the past or currently active, who have inspired you, and why?

The whole Wooster Collective scene has been amazing. The energy I get from that site and those artists and Marc and Sara Schiller has been hugely important to me. When the definitive book's been written on this scene (which they're doing now) the Wooster Collective will be our Armory Show, our Salon des Refuses.

--Is the Gingko book finished, have you seen it, and are you pleased.

It should be finished soon. I haven't seen it but it's supposed to be on the streets in April.

--Are you still into the punk scene at all?

No. But I seem to know a few Suicide Girls...and a lot of my friends have been through Dharma Punx. Tattooed miscreant buddhists. The music though, no.

-- What cities have you hit besides New York, and are there any dream places you'd like to visit? What sort of work would you want to put up there?

I've put up work in London, Paris and Copenhagen. LA, San Francisco, a few other places. I'm having a show in Amsterdam in a couple of months so I'll definitely be leaving something behind there.

I usually work wherever I go (or, preferably, am brought). I just made a roadtrip south and did the first of my In Plain View pieces up and down the east coast. The plan hasn''t really coalesced yet but right now the starting concept involves installing these occupied vents in high traffic locations like airports and bus terminals; I'll be putting them up in plain view, in places where hundreds of people a day will pass by. My hope is that absolutely no one will see them. That's my goal. To have something right out there in plain view that no one will see.

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, egusto', 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 | 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 cliche�-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 �|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 ean-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 biker', 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. I�'d 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, "Who 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 �'lucky' 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 cliche�, "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 '95, 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 '96 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 girl (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 'taken you up'. I'm not naive. 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, I�eve 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 'yeah' 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. I'm 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. It 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.

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 paint-what 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 vein-another 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 began-where 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 were-you 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 days-and this isn't false modesty, I sincerely believe this-is simply because I'm still at it-I'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 route-grad 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 in-if 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 thinking-it 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 know-actually, I have to confess, I still don't know. It was the early nineties, the lower east side was a mess-street-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 feeling-I 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 carefully-mindfully--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

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