SPREAD THE ART WORD

Lisa: I have composed some questions, but to be honest it is difficult when you don't meet somebody.
Scott: I can imagine it probably is quite difficult........ I'll attempt to answer your 'post meeting' questions anyway.....

Lisa: Like some of the people you describe I don't really understand Graffiti Art, I have always supposed it is an expression of anger.
Scott: Wow....Did you see anger in my work? I wonder if you did.....I imagine there is every emotion in my work. So there is probably a bit of anger in there, but I'd say I am not really an angry person. I am going to take it that you meant the 'anger thing' as a sweeping statement.
A generalisation, and that you weren't talking about 'my work', but more about your take on the average graffiti that's seen by the public. Lets look at this for a moment.....Its true to say that, the average 'graffiti' that people see on the streets may have been done by young people who are 'maybe' angry....or perhaps willingly perceived as angry or disagreeable.
'Graffiti' & 'Graffiti-art' are unique in that they are the only forms of visual art or visual language, that have actually been invented by 'Young people'. Often teenagers or young adults. It's well known that this particular age group are notoriously hard to understand and often feel the need to rebel. Young people often form subcultures (youth movements) as a means to rebel. (e.g. greasers, mods, punk, Hip-hop, gothic and more recently emo). The need to rebel against the norm or 'the parent culture' is accepted as a natural and normal thing for young people to do as part of their journey to adult hood. Some young people 'angry or otherwise' who identify with the subculture of 'graffiti' then use this as a means to rebel against the popular or parent culture. No matter how diverse or random subcultures appear to be, like popular culture, they have their own rules and boundaries. When these rules are broken, questioned or pushed. New cultures evolve.The culture that surrounds graffiti is diverse and fragmented, you may have noticed, earlier in this 'rant', that I refer to 'Graffiti' AND 'Graffiti-Art'. I believe they are separate things, 'closely related' but separate things. Anyway I hope this goes some way towards explaining, why you might think you are seeing anger when you see graffiti.

Lisa: Who has been your biggest inspiration?
Scott: Other graffiti writers. I started out on my journey to become a 'graffiti artist' after seeing the work of other graffiti artists. First I saw their taggs, that's the 'scribble the signatures the scrawl'. Its often unsightly, seemingly nonsensical or aggressive, but I was informed that this was just the surface, the tip of the iceberg. I quickly learned that behind most of these signatures there was an individual an artist, or in some cases a group of artists. Who, given enough time, space and spraypaint, could make the letters of his/her 'taggs' or 'alias's' into murals. I found these murals intriguing, they were often presented as scenes or environments designed to strengthen the appearance of the letters/words which generally formed the main part of the piece. I learned that this type of painting had its own history and traditions, and to take part was to become part of an underground and often unseen group.
A mysterious and secretive group that didn't like to share painting techniques, methods or places to paint. A group where the public were only seeing half their story. It was basically very difficult to get involved without getting yourself in trouble with (A) the authorities or (B) the other graffiti artists, who were all in a constant battle for space. The way in, was part of the tradition, you had to be an apprentice to be a known and respected member of the graffiti community. You had to learn from them by helping them create bigger and better murals for themselves. By watching their back and helping them you learned the techniques methods and secrets of using a spraycan. I learned a lot from writers but I had two main mentors, so I'd have to say they were my main inspiration.
Firstly 'Ikie' a graffiti artist and writer from my school who was two years older than me, and secondly "Reakt" a guy one year older than me who I met at art college. Reakt taught me loads..... what paint to use what nozzles to use, places to paint, people within the scene to admire people to avoid, techniques methods and approaches to painting. We still paint regularly together today 13 years after meeting at art college. Other early inspiration came from films & books, Spray-can-art & Subway Art, the film 'Stylewars' and the artists that they featured like 'Seen' "Gnome" 'Lee' many of the New york 1980's originators.
More recently I am inspired by artists like, 'Giant One' 'Can2' 'Atom' 'Shok' Twist' 'daim' 'Astek' 'ERZ crew" and of course the guys that I paint with regularly, we are always bouncing ideas of each other and working together to create new and inspirational paintings.You can look up the works of many of these individuals if you visit http://www.graffiti.org/

Lisa: What has been the best/happiest moments of your career so far?
Scott: Being invited to places to paint makes me happy, working in the V&A was good and its great to get paid, but I was recently invited to paint at the biggest graffiti art gathering ever to happen in the UK. Being recognised as an artist by the establishment is great, but it means more to me to be recognised by my contemporaries. Mainly because the recent Graffiti gathering was an international event and I got to paint back to back (literally) with some of the best Graffiti artists on the planet. Some of which I listed in the question above, the graffiti-art-superstars....(my inspiration) yeah that was one of my happiest and proudest moments so far, and its probably worth mentioning I didn't get paid for that event.

Lisa: Tell me about Brave Arts at the V & A
Scott: I've worked with the V&A twice, the department I worked with was Learning/Education. I was invited to host a series of workshops which revolved around the theme of "image and Identity". The first was October which is Black History month. Many people believe that the graffiti culture was brought to a worldwide audience through the hip-hop culture during the mid 1980's. I have quite a knowledge of this and was asked to do a lecture and introduce people to the basics of drawing graffiti style letters & pictures. We ran a drop in through out the week and members of the public from all walks of life and many nationalitys took part . Me and my team helped them to design graffiti style t-shirts which they then printed & could take away with them. The 'image and identity' theme is a revolving one, so I was invited back to do basically the same thing, but with a slightly different team and approach. I organised 5 other Graffiti artists and we took classes of Young people coached in from all over the U.K. The students had been working on an exhibition for the V&A and as part of that we designed 'graffiti-style' name taggs to hang around there necks, both projects went really well.
It was nice to be able to hang some of our work in the V&A for a few days. I also had the opportunity to meet and chat with David Lammy M.P. & secretary for arts and culture, which was all very posh. I guess that too was a highlight of my career, and I got paid for that one!!

Lisa: How did you find the Prison Project residency, was you nervous at first? Tell me about how you initially felt working there, and were your fears (if you had any) resolved, you seemed, from what you have said in your website to like the people you worked with.
Scott: My initial reaction to working in the prison was....no thanks! I didn't want to go to prison if I didn't have to. I'd worked in young peoples secure units before teaching spray-can-art, and the best thing about working there is being able to leave at the end of the day. It is heart breaking! I'd never been in an adult prison before and we had to do several briefings and meetings there before the project could start. During one of these meetings we had to sign the official secrets act which I thought was a bit daunting. During our security briefings we were told things like...."if you were to be taken hostage by one of the prisoners you must realise that we will not use force to free you unless your life is in danger." Think about that, there are a lot of horrible things that potentially happen to somebody without endangering their life!
So yeah I was scared, it would have been silly not to have been a bit scared! Once we'd got the initial meeting the prisoners over we quickly realised that they were going to be cooperative and easy to work with. I'd been waiting for an opportunity to work with adults, I teach spray-can-art/Graffiti-art to loads of young people, and have done for many years. Working with adults, at least on this occasion proved to be very rewarding! They had respect for us they listened to us and they picked up the techniques we were showing them faster than any group I'd worked with before. We painted a 40 ft long wall in the prison yard, we went in without a clue of what the final mural would look like. After the first workshop the prisoners had come up with a theme, a character and two main words they wanted in the mural. All that was left for us to do was arrange it into an appropriate design, sketch it up, and supervise them whilst they completed it. None of them had done anything like it before, and I think we all really enjoyed it and learned a lot from each other too. It was an emotional week, you could tell as the project was coming to an end how disappointed the group were that it was going to be over. Some of the guys we worked with had done 2 years of a 22 year sentence, and it seemed pretty clear that if the project wasn't one of the best things that had 'ever' happened in their lives, it was probably one of the best things they would do for a long time!
Link to project pictures....http://www.braveone.co.uk/Residencies1.asp

Lisa: It can be challenging doing what a lot of people interpret as graffiti, well done for persisting. What do you think has driven you to persist?
Scott: I guess I persisted because I am pretty stubborn, I don't know how confident I would be doing anything else. The whole thing is so real to me, its so close to my heart. It would break my heart if I had to stop doing it. I know for a fact that the people I work with really enjoy doing the workshops and learning how to paint and that. I work with a lot of young people that are notoriously difficult to work with. i.e. they are out of mainstream education, they've been kicked out of schools and refuse to take part in any educational activities. Because of the persona that surrounds graffiti and the stigmas attached to it, these sorts of young people are willing to take part in my workshops. I've worked with hundreds of young people, and I think I've made a difference to lots of lives. When I left university with a degree in graphic design I applied for loads of jobs, Graphic design jobs all of which wanted 2 years experience etc. After loads of rejection I came to the realisation that I didn't actually want to spend my 8 hrs a day sat in front of a computer, I wanted to get out there face to face with real people doing real things. Basically uni was difficult & I thought to myself, there's no way that I've done this degree for nothing I am gonna make it work for "me"!

Lisa: Can you get me to understand what motivates someone to do graffiti art? It's something I've never really understood.(I know I don't look cool here).
Scott: I think I've pretty much answered this in a couple of the previous questions, and my rant at the very beginning. If there is anymore that needs to be said it's that painting with a spray-can is fun! You pick it up, you squeeze it, your off. If you haven't already tried it, have a go! I guess its the same thing that motivates any artist, the need to be creative. There is a lot of camaraderie involved in graffiti-art, your peers are very important they motivate and inspire you. I think any graffiti artist would be lying if they said they didn't want fame, or at least the persona that they have invented for themselves (there alias) to be famous. Its been the same really since the beginnings of graffiti, its writers who want to be known, they want to be remembered, noticed ,they want to stand out or have there work stand out. They want people to wonder about them.

Labels: Artists, The Brave One