Street artists walk a thin legal line by using the world as their canvas
Not every shadowy figure prowling Albuquerque’s dark alleys is a money-hungry, petty criminal or a bloodthirsty cop.
Some shady figures are legitimate artists.
The street art movement found a natural home in the city, with walls, sidewalks and any other available surface frequently covered in illegal paint. Public reaction to graffiti is mixed, with supporters claiming it’s a legitimate means to express yourself, and others saying it’s vandalism.
“Street art” is a controversial term with ill-defined boundaries. It is often (but not always) done with spray cans, and it is often (but not always) done on a piece of public property not meant to be painted on.
The illegal element of this art style has influenced the techniques used by its practitioners. The Daily Lobo interviewed a few of these renegade painters and discovered elements of how these artists formulate their ideas, how they execute them and, of course, how they avoid getting caught.
Choosing a Location
Artist Rage 1 has a seemingly dangerous preference of what to use as a canvas.
“I hit up billboards,” he said.
Picking a billboard is a matter of finding one that a lot of people will see, and that can be easily accessed, he said.
“We go to freeways, off exits, you know what I mean. We just find one that’s opened up. I usually find one on the side of a freeway or in the valley,” he said. “We see a big ol’ billboard, and we just climb up.”
He avoids detection by painting quickly and relies on darkness and people not being interested in their surroundings.
“Some people don’t pay attention to what’s going on around them. They don’t even see us, neither, ’cause it’s like late at night when no one’s even out,” he said.
For Trip, another street artist, legal walls provide an alternative to sneaking around in the night. He placed a large work on Fixed and Free Bike Shop on Central Avenue across from the Guild.
“I got hooked up with them through bike riding,” he said. “When those kids showed up in town, we ended up meeting up, and they got their shop. I pretty much just asked if I could paint in the back, and they said, ‘Go ahead and do it,’ and I just went ahead and started.”
Trip said he also paints at the Acme Arts wall, a legal wall set aside for graffiti art at Acme Iron & Metal Company Inc. on Second Street and Osuna Road.
“That’s where I spend all my time these days,” he said.
Developing Your Technique
A typical large piece starts with a color outline that will be most prominent in the piece, artist FIEND said.
“If you don’t do the outline first, you’re not going to know what you’re doin’, man. I think some people out there can do it like that, but I couldn’t,” he said. “Putting the outline is important, ’cause you got to have something to fill in. If you ain’t got nothing to fill in, you’re just putting paint on the wall for no reason.”
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The next step is to develop the outline into recognizable shapes.
“This is something depending on skill levels, but some people cut up their piece, like once you do an outline, you pick your fill-in colors and you cut your outline,” Trip said. “Like say you use black outline on every letter, you would cut all those edges to make it clean and crisp.”
Some people then add 3D effects to their pieces, Trip said. The final step is a shell.
“Once you finish that, you go back with your shell,” he said. “That’s the one color that like, capsulizes — that’s not really a word — pretty much wraps your whole piece. Kind of like the finishing touch.”
Paint choice is important to the development of a piece, Rage 1 said.
“If you get some Wal-Mart paint, it’s going to take longer to get a piece on the wall,” he said. “Montana paint, which is the best paint … takes care of it, you know what I mean. It’s shorter. It takes less time. You’re out of the place as soon as you get the paint; it only takes about two minutes.”
Persistence is a key element in developing your style, Trip said.
“I’ve been painting for about 12 years,” he said. “It’s just practice, practice, practice, pretty much like anything else.”
The other artists interviewed for this article have also been developing their art since a young age.
“I started when I was 12 years old,” Rage 1 said. “It was just a lifestyle, you know what I mean. I just stuck with it. It’s a habit for me.”
Getting Away With ItPerhaps street art’s most important element is evading detection.
“Make sure it’s where nobody’s walking around,” FIEND said. “And if there are, they’re not suspicious-looking people, at that. Make sure they’re not suspicious-looking at all. And if so, man, I would just watch out for where you’re going to.”
For Trip, getting caught is not an issue when painting on legal walls. Rage 1 has a simple explanation for how he stays out of jail: He doesn’t paint anything that can be recognized as him. Aside from that, he simply doesn’t get caught.
“We stay low-key,” he said. “I don’t get caught up.”
Graffiti removal expert decries vandalism acts
It’s easy to complain that graffiti is underappreciated if it’s not your job to clean it up.
Angelo Lucero is one of Albuquerque’s graffiti removal team’s supervisors, and he said he doesn’t think tagging is art.
“Graffiti is debasement of a residential and commercial building. Period,” he said.
Lucero’s job is simple. He gets calls about graffiti in residential or commercial areas, and he cleans it up. Last year there were more than 89,000 reported cases of graffiti in town. Sometimes it’s as simple as painting over it. Other times it requires a power washer (for stucco).
No matter how, Lucero cleans up everything around the city painted without permission.
Most of his work is in the northeast quadrant of town. He said it might be because of the numerous arroyos, which make it easy for graffiti artists to create elaborate works in relative dark.
“We have arroyos everywhere else,” Lucero said. “But it just seems you have your mix of people in the UNM area. Basically, they are from everywhere. … You know, everyone can see that. I am not labeling anybody. It’s just the majority in that area.”
He said he doesn’t understand the prevalence of graffiti or why people call it street art.
“These little artists — they call themselves — put it up,” he said. “They can read it, but we can’t read it. To us, it’s an eyesore. Tagging dirty little words or certain little words here and there on trash cans and poles and all, that’s not street art. That’s garbage.”
That’s not to say he doesn’t appreciate what some artists do.
Lucero said he makes a clear distinction between street artists and people who just happen to have cans of spray paint and nothing better to do.
“Tagging stuff up, like windows, that’s not good, you know,” he said. “Ruining people’s windows, that’s not art to me. How to differentiate the throw ups between art work, I can’t really answer that for you. It’s just in these guys’ point of view.”
People who make something colorful with character are good, though, he said. But no matter Lucero’s appreciation of the art, he still has a job to do at the end of the day: Clean up messes.
One time, he found a piece of art he said he was impressed about. It was full-scale replication of all the Iron Maiden mythos characters, and it ran the entire length of an arroyo near Tramway Boulevard and Encantado Road.
“It was beautiful, beautiful work,” Lucero said. “We had to clean over it, definitely. Our job is to remove it. I hated to do it, but we had too.”
Lucero said he supports areas like those near the Acme Iron and Metal Recycling company. He doesn’t cover up art either, like the murals supported by the city or Arts in the Park, and he said he wouldn’t mind watching a street artist working.
“I would love to see how they work their colors,” Lucero said. “I would love to see it because these guys are artists. The ones that actually do that are artists, you know on an OK wall. I have seen it done before back in the day. It’s some cool stuff.”
