"After a couple years Twin Palms was a destination to come and see graffiti. People came from all over, even some of the “too cool for school” L.A. artists came out."
Registered to vote this morning. If you havenÂ’t or have moved recently: http://www.eac.gov/register_vote.asp?format=none Thinking about the upcoming election is making me sick to my stomach. They just said on CNN that the Democratic Nat. convention attracted a couple hundred protesters and the Republican Nat. convention will be attracting tens of thousands. Cool. Rock on New York! Give emÂ’ hell!
Stayed up late working on a drawing for Philadelphia Magazine. Going to do a nicer cleaner final drawing tonight after I get approval.
Got a call from an ad agency up in the SF area. TheyÂ’re interested in using my work for an ad campaign overseas. We talked about it a while. Sounds like a fun project, I need to get them quotes tomorrow. Advertising illustration is usually pretty chill but they need several detailed pieces in about a month. Sheesh.
My brother Corey and I went to the batting cages today. We usually go once or twice a week but havenÂ’t been for a while. I never played baseball, in fact I never did any organized sports, but I think itÂ’s fun to try to smack the hell out of those yellow balls. ItÂ’s a good stress reliever. I used to go in the softball cages, but now I donÂ’t fuck around, I go straight to the 90mph cages. IÂ’m not particularly good, I have terrible form and I miss the ball pretty often, but itÂ’s a nice feeling when you do connect. ItÂ’s smooth man. IÂ’m working on my Garret Anderson swing.
We drove by our old neighborhood because we were in the area. This is my parentsÂ’ first house they owned. They lost it when the economy was so bad in the early 90Â’s. Lots of memories here. That's the curb I learned to ollie. At one time it was spraypainted and waxed for grinds.
Down the street was this big vacant lot we used to paint graffiti in. It was called Twin Palms. There were these big abandoned cement tanks that we painted on. I practically lived out here during high school. About a year ago I was sad to see that the city had bulldozed the walls and left a pile of rubble. I was pretty bummed out when i saw it. I imagine it’s how people felt who had painted in the Venice graffiti pit and saw it get destroyed (and soon to be Belmont). Twin Palms was our refuge, we spent many long hours perfecting our skills and making art. This is where I did my first piece in 1989. I painted just an outline at night on virgin walls. Went to look at it the next day and there was new graffiti all over, including the words “wack” and “toy” around my piece. The culprit was a piecer from L.A. who wrote Solek. He was visiting his girlfriend and had spied graffiti out in the field, so he went to check it out and ended up doing one of the baddest ass things I had ever seen. It was the first time I had seen ‘real’ graffiti in person. To this day Solek is my hero. I didn’t care that he labeled my graf as wack. He was right! It was wack!
After a couple years Twin Palms was a destination to come and see graffiti. People came from all over, even some of the “too cool for school” L.A. artists came out. This was in like 1991 when you could paint outside during the day and the cops would see you but they didn’t really care because it was an old abandoned structure in a vacant lot. I was always into the piecing more than the bombing. Call me oldschool but that’s what it was all about in the early 90’s. Hex, Slick, NASA crew, Coax, Toonz, Zodak, it was all about West coast style piecing with lots of characters and fruity backgrounds and the “mysterious blue light” that was always shining on the sides of characters. Very different from what is “cool” in graffiti today. Anyway, we had a little crew called CIA, this was before we knew anything about the O.G. New York CIA (Subway Art was not available from our bookstore until 92). It’s always been about me and my painting buddy Maxx. Trek and Sag byatch. I’m going to post some of our old graffiti. Someone emailed and asked about it anyways, so here goes.
For the last 5 years graffiti has not held my attention like it used to. It was so fun and pure back in the day. I was never into tagging, I did it ocassionally but never got good feelings from it. I was more into the "art" of piecing. But even that started fading. The last piece I did was in Riverside, in 2000. HavenÂ’t touched spraypaint since then, well, except for that one night in SF with Maxx and Freddi C. The paint fumes were giving me problems so I decided to quit. I might get back into it someday but the circumstances have to be right.
So tonight Jennifer and I were supposed to go see our friends Jon and Lani and hang out with them and their new baby. I had to cancel because I have to redraw the piece for Philadelphia Magazine, get a quote together and take care of a few more business things tonight. ItÂ’s too bad because itÂ’s always fun hanging out with them. JonÂ’s an old homie from high school. One of the few I still know. We once made our own crop circles out in a field at night (IÂ’ll see if I have a picture). And we used to drive his momÂ’s car all over the I.E. getting into trouble. IÂ’ll see if I can get their photo in here.
Goddamn it, Oakland won tonight. IÂ’m starting to think theyÂ’re unstoppable.
Before I forget there’s a nice art show opening tomorrow night here in the I.E. It’s called “Tall Stories” and is at Wignall Museum at Chaffey college. Lots of art, PJay Fidler, Alex Gross, the Claytons, Jason Holley, Julie Murphy, Martha Rich, Souther Salazar, Erik Sandberg and yours truly. Here’s a link with the info: http://www.chaffey.edu/wignallgallery/currentframe.html
IÂ’ll have a full report tomorrow.
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