UB. Where has T-DEE been?
T.DEE has been working for a living
as the mild mannered slave to his masters.
UB. Are you still painting walls?
The easy answer to that would be ??.
UB. When did you stop and why?
"The fever" officially broke for me sometime around 96-97. Up until this point I was absolutely conjested with graffiti.
I think it kinda just ran it's course & I needed to move on. I've never been one to latch onto a certain culture or expression & run with it forever. Sometimes I feel like its a fault I have. Perhaps a fear of commitment. I simply enjoy experimenting with new things & grow tired of running around in the same circles for too long until I'm forced to look for something else. I still come back and paint from time to time.
UB. I remember you had one of the dopest magazines out called
"Under Cover", what happen with that?
Well, I started doing Under Cover in 92. Released it in 93, & it ran through 6 issues until 1996. I don't think I ever really looked at it as a business really, but more as an extention of my graffiti. A few people had been doing graff mags prior to that, but you know how it is. You look at something & immediately see what you might do differently & so that's how it started. I already had a little knowlege of printing, & had been trading pictures of graff with pen-pals from around the world. (This was in the world before email & the internet of course. Nothing that hand written letters & lugging your ass to the post office with 2 pounds of flicks couldn't cure.) The mag did really well, & quickly became well respected throughout the international graff scene, I think because of it's professional
approach, & the way it regarded graffiti as something worthy of "class".
I stopped doing the mag after a change occured in my life, namely me losing my job. Since I financed the whole project myself, I couldn't see continuing to spend the kind of money it took to keep something like that going. It was a tough decision to discontinue it, & one that still haunts meto be honest.
I released a follow up mag in 2000 called UCOPS (Under Cover Operations) & although it did well in it's own right, no one made the correlation that it was another Under Cover product & so it never gained from the rep of UC. These were some fairly uninspiring times for me personally & so I think the idea of starting this thing from the ground up again was simply more than I was willing to undertake. I still have people come up to me to this day praising
the mag, & asking what happened. It's good to know I left a mark.
UB. Is there any one point in your career you would class as 'your big break'?
Actually no. Just the breaking of my balls if thats what you mean? I'm still waiting.
UB. What are your thoughts on graffiti being just as likely to be found in a gallery
as on the streets these days?
Well, I guess it was bound to happen. First let me say that there are many extremely
talented graffiti artists producing amazing works that deserve all the prestige, attention,& hopefully financial compensation that gallery exhibits might offer. End of story. Period. Nothing more to say about that! However, to play devils advocate for a second, I don't think in the purist sense that there is such a thing as "gallery graffiti". In my opinion graffiti is something done with a certain mindset, & with certain elements of risk, or lets say "discomfort" involved that all aids in creating this genere of art. Weather it be fear of getting caught sneaking around in abandoned or restricted areas, the freezing cold of winter, the blazing heat of summer, the stink of a dead racoon nearby,... whatever the elements. They're all a part of creating the art that's called graffiti. Making paintings under studio conditions, with the hopes of a sale during a trendy party atmosphere isn't exactly the same thing. I think this may have something to do with the fact that most graffiti writers who do show in galleries tend to do so without simply displaying "pieces" in the graffiti sense. (Lettering with a background & characters.) Most writers who I've come across are legitimate fine artists who's graffiti roots are apparent but not necessarily obvious. Graff may be used to create moods in a painting butgraffiti is graffiti, & fine arts (to me) are something else.
UB. I've seen your canvases, Where do you get your inspiration for your pieces and the characters you paint?
The stuff I do on canvas tends to reflect a certain "unsettled" side of my nature.
The themes mostly stem from things I feel are wrong or dehumanizing about our society.
UB. Have you ever had your work displayed in galleries and if so
is there any one show which stands out from all the rest?
I've been lucky enough to participate in shows fairly regularly in recent years. Some more important & elaborate than others, but all of which I'm very proud of. My work is generally pretty well received which goes a long way in giving me inspiration to get up & do it all again. Now if I could just make some money at it.
UB. How would you describe your style?
I'm not one to put labels on myself or the things I do. I think part of my searching
as an artist comes from the fact that I don't want to be dumped into a certain style
& classified as this thing or that. I think as soon as I see something in my work that's starting to repeat itself regularly, my first reaction is to change it. That may sound cool enough, but there are a lot of problems with this thinking. The main one being the constant need to re-create the wheel over & over again, & another is the risk of having your work lack cohesion. I'm sometimes jealous of people who find the one style they're good at & stick with it. Perhaps it's that lack of commitment with me again. With me, when all is said & done, it's gotta be slick.
UB.. Do you see yourself as an artist or a graffiti writer?
I think I'm more of an artist, turned graffiti writer, turned back into an artist again. Since I was little I've always drawn or painted as a hobby & it wasn't until later on that I started doing graff. Now that I don't write so much anymore, I've gone back to painting & tend to take that pretty seriously.
UB. There seems to have been a sudden surge of interest in graffiti and
street art recently, why do you think this is?
Well I think the obvious & unfortunate answer to that is that graffiti has become trendy. In fact, there are some who'd tell you it's trendiness peaked 5 or 10 years ago. Naturally the culture has developed to the point where it doesn't care if it's trendy or not & the writerswill keep going on their subcultural level anyway, but it's just become more accessible & approachable to the main stream I think. Tattoos were once only a thing for rock stars, outlaws & bikers. The next generation comes along, & tattoos are now a bit of an old thing.
The shock has worn off, & everyday people start to say "I can do that". 18 million tribal bands & tramp-stamps later & you have highschool girls going to get tattooed at the local strip mall. Graff's the same way. It just became exposed to a wider variety of people who are capable of knowing a colorful & vibrant thing when they see it. It just took a while for it's rough edge to soften for many people. Now they see themselves as cool for being so cavalier about something that was once so foreign & frightening to them.
UB. What is the biggest risk you have ever taken for your art?
That's a good question & I'll tell you why. I guess the obvious answer, since we're mostly talking about graffiti here, would be some high drama action packed tale of being chased by cops & dogs through all types of obstacles, but thats not how I'm going to answer. I've been through a bit of that, but the high risks were really only present when I was bombing & not as much when painting. By realizing that, I'd have to admit that all those risks were pretty much done in persuit of my own ego, not the art aspect of it. It was all about the name & the exposure in those situations. The art was secondary. Now, the real risk for my art is the one I feel I'm taking today. By getting serious with it & committing to a life of living off this stuff. That to me is scarier than anything I've ever done on the streets.
UB. Anything else you would like to add?
I'd just like to thank all the people who have stood by me over the years & continute to stand by me. My brothers from AIDS crew, NASA & DF. People like yourself (sueworks) who were there & remember me enough to even want to do this interview in the first place. It's all very important to me. Stay crazy, but stay alive. Tomorrow is never guarenteed.
No comments:
Post a Comment