How long have you been doing art?
I was a pretty creative kid growing up. That was always something I found interesting, drawing and painting. I got into aerosol spray type artwork when I was 13 or 14, kind of when I got into hip hop music too.
What would you say is your primary medium?
I definitely work with spray paint, and I work with acrylics, and a combination of those two. A lot of the designs are ideas that are digitized and then executed on a wall or canvas with spray paint and acrylic stuff.
What got you into doing graffiti?
My main influence was definitely hip hop culture, hip hop music, underground stuff. Coming from Boise, that was weird because there wasn't a lot of that. And the little amount I did see I kind of picked up on from skateboarding. That was what sucked me into that culture. And then from there, it was like each day was a new page of learning stuff and doing research on the internet, you know, because no one at the time was really doing graf whole lot. There were some writers here in town, but you didn't see a lot of graffiti at all, you saw it more in skate videos and skate magazines and I thought it was a really cool way to capture the culture. If you have a skateboarder going down some stairs or ledge or something and you see the graf in the background, it just adds a nice touch to the piece. I don't know stuff like that got me influenced. So it's been a long journey. Yeah, probably 15 years-ish, and add another 5 on there of just straight fucking up (laughs). Taking it more seriously, yeah, in that range. I've been painting full time for over 9 years and painting more of the realism stuff so it's been a big chunk of what I'm trying to learn how to do better. Yeah, always evolving.
Why is art important to you?
To me, it's important to express yourself. And that I feel is where I gravitate towards mural work or painting my name on something, you know, it just adds a touch to something that might not be there. There might be some boring gray blank wall, you know, but if I can find a way to flip it, I will. So Yeah, that's what I strive for.
What's it like being able to earn a living off of your art?
It's surreal, for sure, because of my background, you know? I went to Boise State out of high school for three semesters trying to study art. I had some inspiring moments in those three semesters. In high school, my art teacher was pretty influential in what I was trying to do, but it's pretty crazy to think, back then I would not have thought I would be where I am now by any means. Because after a few semesters at Boise State, I had a kid, I started plumbing, went to plumbing school for some years, got into the whole trades thing and just thought that was where I wanted to roll. Always at the same time in the background, man, I was painting stuff and getting little commission projects on the side and I was like, okay, this is cool, a little bit of extra dough. And then it just kind of just became an obsession. Like, alright, I don't want to fucking plumb houses anymore or deliver beer anymore, because I was doing that for a long time, and it was moments like those where I knew my value was more important to me than it was to someone else. There is that liberating moment where I quit my job and just basically hit reset and then started to do art full time. At that moment, I had a pretty decent amount of projects lined up. And I'd say that lasted for six months, and then I had to get a job again, which was humbling. But I knew what I had to do to fine tune the approach next time and so I did that and I've been coasting on it for over eight years. It's been a wild journey, like super crazy, taking projects to make ends meet and you have to sacrifice a lot of your artistic freedoms to pay bills sometimes. But I'd rather do that than have to go back to plumb houses, you know, crawl in crawl spaces and get sawdust all over your face when you're drilling holes and stuff. That's not fun to me. But I learned a lot in tradesman school. And that kind of stuff applies to building my own canvases and panels and understanding the logistics of how to execute a project that's in a good size space, you know. But yeah, it's been a whole melting pot of experiences to get me to where I'm at right now.
Where do you get your inspiration?
I would say I get a lot of my inspiration from hip hop music and definitely my family, my fiancé, my two daughters, my friends as well, like all of those things influence me. My parents are a huge influence as well. My mom and dad have always really supported what I've done. And it may not have been what they wanted me to do when I got out of high school, but I like to take the unorthodox path, basically something that is less traveled. I feel like when you're putting in all that work, you get to where you want as a goal and you look back and you're like, Alright, give yourself a pat on the back and then set the next goal.
What's it like creating art for someone else’s vision?
It's like the more I think about where I'm at now, the more I wish I would have said no to projects, but I couldn't because of the financial assistance I needed from those projects. You have to humble yourself and really just do the best that you can for those people because they can't execute it themselves, you know, so if someone wants a logo painted, I'll do it if the price is right, but it's not what I want to do. If I can talk them out of doing a logo by influencing them more towards artwork, or a mural, or a cool concept that might be related to what they do for a business, who their clients are, how to appeal to them, then I will. That to me is being an artist as well. Trying to hustle what you do in a positive way. It's been a crazy journey trying to fine tune all that stuff and make it work.
What's it like translating an image from a piece of paper to a wall?
It's become natural now. I think it mainly started when I was trying to paint my name on a wall and make it look balanced. It's really difficult to go from a sketchbook, in graffiti, you should start in a sketchbook, develop your style, and then figure out color schemes that you like and appeal to other people and then paint those but you learn scaling is the hardest part because you're going from an 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper to a wall and you want your letters to all be balanced and the symmetry is there. For me, it's geometry and angles and stuff. That's how I scale stuff on a piece of paper to a wall is really just checking the angles and it's a weird process. Artwork wise, I haven't had to tap into using a projector quite yet. I just hold the reference up to the wall, make sure it fits in the corners, and then just find points to plot and start going to town. There's crazy ways to do that. Some people use a grid, some people use projectors, some people chalk the design on. I mean, there's all sorts of approaches, and in my opinion, there's no wrong way to do it. But what works for me and what I take pride in is being able to show up to a space if I have an image I want to work on and just doing it. That to me is what I learned in graffiti too, is just doing it, whether that's legal or illegal, you can figure out how to paint your name on that space and make it look tasteful. It's like okay, this is just gonna be positioned here. You want to create balance too. Putting those designs onto bigger walls, it’s almost easier to paint bigger really because you aren't trying to focus so much detail on something small. If you can magnify something small to where it's literally just this big huge area, the amount of detail you have to put in that space isn't as much as if you're trying to shrink down work on a small small scale. So yeah, I guess my approach is pretty freestyle-ish.
Do people give you a hard time for painting “graffiti”?.
Not so much in Boise. I know that is the case in some other bigger cities where the presence of graffiti and the scene is way more dense and it's something to the community. Here it's a very clean city. There's not a lot of people that are coming up and saying “yo that's not graf” because I don't claim what I do is graffiti. I mean, what I do is mural work and graffiti is, to me, something that you do at night when no one's watching. But that's different. I guess to classify it, some people might call what we do street art, but I don't like to call it that. Just because it's done with a certain medium doesn't mean its street art. Street art is still to me, like illegal shit. You're doing wheat paste, you're doing stencils, stickers tags, marker stuff. Graffiti is like straight up bombing with paint and putting your name somewhere in a certain style and in a certain fashion. So yeah, I mean, if people talk shit, I think that's totally fine. It doesn't ever bother me. Try to build a thicker skin so when people critique your work it's totally fine. If they have something to say I'll be like well then you can try it if you want and see what your take is and then they might realize it's not as easy as it looks. There is something to be said about using spray paint, the cool thing is it dries fast, but you have to know angles, you have to know tips, different nozzles and how to blend colors and how to paint to where you aren't leaving a bunch of shaky stroke cans unless you're trying to go for that effect. Whatever they’ve got to say about it, say your peace.
Is art something you'll ever stop doing?
I don't plan on it. I just hope I don't get burned out on it. I've been doing this full time for a long time now and it's like when I first started doing it, I loved it so much, but you know, now where I'm at, I'm like, okay this is great, but how can I paint what I want to paint and get paid for it? How do I transition from doing all these commissioned projects to make ends meet to being more of an “art” artist and people coming to me for my work, because it's a specific style. I've gotten good at a lot of everything with murals and stuff like text and painting logos to landscapes and portraits and stuff. If I had it my way, it'd be cool to just travel around and get paid to do realism and portrait work, you know, or just cool still life’s and stuff like that. Stuff that's tasteful. I feel like in bigger cities, the street art scenes are so saturated. There's a lot of it everywhere and there's a lot of bad ugly stuff that's whack. Who am I to say that that's whack, it's not my place, I think that they're expressing themselves. It's just my style, what I find attractive in my eyes. You can tell that they just started, they may have YouTube'd some videos earlier that day, and were like, oh, I'm gonna go do a stencil. I experienced that in Los Angeles last year too. I was helping my homegirl with a project while Hawk and I were down there for a mural jam type thing. It's the hip thing to do to make art on canvases and sell them on the sidewalk, and then you get 20,000 followers and you're just doing like, the most basic shit ever with a spray can and people love it. Oftentimes people come up to me when I'm working on a wall and they're like, “this is cool man, but have you seen those people in Vegas on the corner?” You see those universe landscapes they do with newspaper I'm like, that shit’s whack. I can paint that on a huge wall with none of those tools, no tape, nothing like that and it looks more realistic than it does in some super quick five minute piece. I don't know, man. It's crazy out there. I think the game is watered down. I’m trying to preserve it.
Are there opportunities you've had here in Boise you might not have had elsewhere?
I think 100% of that is being in Boise. It's not like I'm trying to invite people here to share the wealth. Yes, do that, but you gotta put in the legwork. I feel lucky to come from Boise, yes, but when I first started, I was bummed out because I had no one to talk to, to learn how to do it, to ask questions. There were a couple writers that had shared a little bit of knowledge, but it was just enough to take it and be like, “alright, you guys are on your own, figure it out.” so that helped. Having Elms and a few other homies to bounce our styles off of for what we did, graffiti, or whatever you want to call it. That was a way to advance, you know, and then as the internet became more powerful, and social media came out, you had more access to see what and how it was going down. You didn't use YouTube to teach you how to paint. It was like, “okay, painting my name is dope but how can I further my style?” How can I make what I do a little more flexible? Stretch my letters out? I do think coming from Boise has everything to do with where I am in my career. When I started and Hawk and I were getting our first commissioned works and stuff there were no other people doing it in that style like what we were trying to do and push, so to see it evolve to where it is now, it makes sense, but I sometimes wish I was in a bigger city and had a little bit more resistance to getting to where I am now. You know what I mean? It has been hard work, don't get me wrong, it has been hard as shit, but yeah, it would have been cool to be in crews and have mentors that show you what's up, and then you're able to do that rather than trial and error. Everything is trial and error, but you want to minimize your shitty experiences. Those are what make you who you are and where there is good there's bad and vice versa. Yeah, shout out to Boise for sure.
Is there anything you want to talk about that I haven't asked you about?
I don't know man. I think that everything is going to keep evolving with art, with anything. Here in Boise, I think they nurture the creatives, they give those people a platform as best as they can. If you're an artist that's just learning how to do what you want to do and if you want to put it in front of people's eyes, you gotta embrace failure because it'll happen for sure. And when that does occur to you as an artist, take that as a golden token, you know, like you've earned a stripe almost and figure out how to reinvent that situation to where it can get you further next time. Don't be discouraged because that is what happens and that's what will straight-up wipe artists' motivation from their heads, and then they just will go "I tried that". But you’ve got to be persistent and expect failure to happen so that way when it does happen, you aren't caught off guard. So yeah, I mean, that's some advice, I guess. I'm hoping to do more of this style work [mural in the video]. And yeah, man, stay healthy too. That's all I've got to say.