by Eva Dameron
Daily Lobo
Self-taught artist Derick Montez said everything he learned about art, he learned from a spray can.
He put together a show, "Wall Scrawl," for 17 artists inspired by graffiti.
It opens Nov. 18 at the Downtown Contemporary Art Center.
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"People have described my stuff as a Johnny Cash song," Montez said. "Like 'Shot A Man in Reno' ('Folsom Prison Blues'). It's a really sad song, but you find yourself singing along to it. The imagery has a sad edge to it, but then I put in some element that kind of brightens it up. That makes it bittersweet."
One of his pieces in the exhibit is a dead woman on train tracks on a black-and-white transfer photo on canvas.
"Around the borders I painted this big floral design with butterflies, and it's real colorful," he said. "That's a beautiful floral image, but it's focusing on this dead woman on the train tracks. This is a series of stuff I'm doing for the show with the floral borders."
Logan Demas, another artist in "Wall Scrawl," said the show represents the urban side of art.
"Graffiti brings a lot of bad people to the show," he said. "You get the kids who show up that just want to cause trouble. This is more for older people who either were into graffiti at one point and grew out of it, or people that do that style of art."
Demas turned a skateboard into a bomber.
"I chopped it down and shaped it like a 1940s bomber," Demas said. "I painted it so it looks like a bomb dropped out of a plane. It's got wings on the background."
He also painted on turtle shells. He said on two of the shells he painted as Day of the Dead skulls. He described the background as Japanese print graffiti-style. He said he buys the shells from an American Indian who sells arts and crafts material.
"He was really surprised I picked them up because he sells them to Native Americans - they use them for rattles," he said. "I started using shells because they can't be framed. The shells are divided into sections. If I leave the outside ring, it helps the flow of it."
Artist Merrill Webb said his work is based on graffiti, but he's gearing toward fine art because he is now a family guy and is focusing on the positive.
"Graffiti in this town is on a different level than it has been over the years," he said. "Chavez and his escalating it to a felony offense - it's gotten more rough."
He said, at 32, he's from the older graffiti scene.
"It's not the same as it was when it got started," he said. "It gets mixed up in drugs. That comes with the territory, but people like me and Derick are trying to get away from that whole deal and focus on new work, a little more on the positive."
Webb said he likes doing art nobody else is doing.
"I took some personal ads from the Alibi and I put what I would imagine them to look like," he said. "I did some photo transfer process. Total imaginary faces."
He also did a piece with two men fighting, but he removed their facial expressions. He replaced the dominant man's face with an exclamation point, and the man at the short end of the stick got a question mark on his face.
"There's a lot of different drive out here as far as artists go," he said. "New Mexico, as a whole, is a really creative state."
