I was asked to write a pice for a forht coming book about how I became a sculptor and while considering this I had to really trace back how it all came about and here is my history in brief. Enjoy-
Regarding how I got to sculpture-
I can now point to how I specifically arrived at graffiti sculpture before actually realizing it was my destiny to be a sculptor. It was 1981 as a Fashion Design major at the High School of Art and Design in NYC. I was interested at the time in pursuing the application of graffiti on fashion design with a couture interest, I was doing silk batiking as a side job and realized that my designs could take fluid form through garments. It was ambitious and I was distracted by the possibility and pursued it during my pattern making and draping classes where I would learn to cut and shape muslin fabric on a mannequin. I used to cut arrow shapes and weave them around the mannequin, my initial interest was fashion not sculpture and although this was far ahead of its time my teacher didnt see it this way so she failed me. My second interest was to pursue Jewelry design when I got to university. While at Parsons School of Design, the graff culture was in full steam, writers were painting canvases and traversing the globe, I had been a part of the initial push of artist to do shows but didnt have a clearly identified ‘commercial’ style. While getting educated in art history at Parsons I found relevance and purpose with what my culture was producing and soon a deep conflict was to develop that clearly and decisively pushed me into sculpture. At the time many of my peers and friends where starting to paint very commercial and non related graffiti style writing paintings. This was to be the catalyst for me to challenge the best of my group for abandoning traditional wild style graffiti, at the time there were no examples of what graffiti sculpture could be other than True 222 (Phase2) breakthrough sculpture in steel, I looked at the new works of my closest friends and peers as an affront to the art and challenged them with the creation of true wild style lettering sculptures that where painted and folded out into space. It was my way of competing, being relevant and honoring them and those pioneers before us. This was 1985, I abandoned university, and soon after I laid down the ground work for graffiti style sculpture I moved on to more progressive and innovative approaches to the art form with more consideration and challenge to the history of constructed sculpture, no longer was my competition Noc167, Dondi or Kel1st, it became Picasso, Julio Gonzales, Frank Stella, Valdimir Tatin and a whole new culture of sculpture makers.
Posted on January 27, 2008 at 05:53 PM
