Kristy and I didn’t know anything about graffiti. We invited an artist to come in and talk to us about working on a project. We had a wall adjacent to our property with a large tag on it. Instead of buffing it, we wanted someone to paint over it. Make art on it. Our invited artist tagged subway cars in the early nineties under the mentorship of street art legends. He spoke in a technical language that we didn’t understand- but it was fascinating. He explained to us that the previous work on site was created by toys (amateurs whose work can be tagged over). We were hoping he’d do some throw-ups (quick pieces) on our project, but after buying 200 dollars worth of spray-paint, he had to cancel due to a scheduling conflict.
With the help of Wikipedia, eHow and urbandictionary.com we got the basics down and decided to do some graffiti of our own. We were going to throw-up some pieces in the sheet metal freezer that was to be demolished.
It’s a lot harder to paint with a spray-can than I thought. Especially on sheet metal, where the paint bleeds and runs. We painted our names in faux-wildstyle. We painted some nonsense, project related architectural drawings.
Even with masks, the fumes were unbearable in the air-tight space. In the end we were left with 220 feet of gallery walls covered with total amateur, rookie art. Kristy’s looks a little bit more professional than mine. Luckily it’s been locked inside the vault for some time and no one can get in to see how bad it is. . . until now, when we post it online. With the help of eHow, we are now learning how to do wheat paste-ups. Be prepared to see some ill paste-ups in Bushwick soon.