Is that where your roots in the graffiti scene originated? Can you talk to us a little bit about those days?

Around 1986 or ‘87 I started spending a lot of time on my skateboard in Brooklyn and NYC with Blake Hannan, Hack, Johnny Schilleref, and Alyasha Owerka Moore who led me around town showing me graffiti pieces, tags and throw ups––I couldn’t get enough of staring at them. At that time I was most inspired by Smith Sane. They painted everything, even giant rocks uptown. A little bit later I started to roll with Alex Ducky Talavera, Steven Cales SNS, and Angel Nieves (NA) who further broadened my awareness of graffiti hanging out in Bayridge and skating the city. I remember once ditching school to go to the city with Kenny Reed and Terry Otto on the bus, and when we got there getting scooped up by Ryan Hickey and going over to the skate shop that used to be near Port Authority. This is like ‘88 or ‘89. When it was time to leave, Ronnie Boikens took Kenny and Terry to his spot and Keenan Milton took me on the train to Cosmos house in Bayridge so I could meet up with Steven. I had my very first pilot in my pocket, and I just went for it and started writing all over the iron girders on the subway platform. Keenan was tripping and told me to stop, so I did, but as soon as I got up with Steven later on that night, it started again.

That was the very beginning for me. Steven and I would watch over and over Eli Gesners part in the Z-Boys video when he paints on the elevated train line. By the time I moved there in ‘91, I began to draw all over the subway platform and interior of the train cars on the way to work in the middle of the night and as well wheat pasting snippets and doodles and torn in half photo copied drawings on my way to work in the city and in my neighborhood of Astoria Queens. It seems a lot of this I later found out happened just outside Sasha Jenkins mother’s house. Around ‘93 I began to hang out and spend a lot of time with REVS and then assist him and COST on wheat paste missions and then began to paste a lot with just REVS.

How did you transcend out of that graffiti scene to have your work shown with Picasso and Dali?

Through a lot of hard work and honing of my perceptive talents, a style emerged. It was a great honor to show my work along side such grand painters and thanks should be given to Andrea Rosen and Jeremy Lawson for caring to curate me into that context.