Intro and interview by Dan Christiansen
Luckily for Todd James, the junior high reverie of girls, video games, comics, and cartoons also included an inkling for and inking of sketches and graffiti in his notebook alongside the band logos and hearts scrawled with the name of the prettiest girl in school. This notebook waved the flag of still-wet-behind-the-ears graffiti writer high and proud, in plain view of influential older kids who took notice to what the youngster was putting up. James was soon elevated into the world of high-school hijinks, blazing a trail by going outside the lines with markers and spray paint.
Soon after, he hit the pavement running and began ornamenting New York City with the letters REAS and a bevy of cartoon-inspired characters that bounced off the walls more than any bubble lettering could. Rolling with a cast that would make any graffiti-phile drool, REAS became a fixture in the surging graffiti scene.
With notice comes notoriety. James soon found himself working for record labels and other corporations, including creating artwork for the Beastie Boys and developing a logo for The Source, all with his original style. These early rumblings of earning a real living from the vandalistic act of graffiti led to more design work for James.
Todd James’s art career started to take shape while sliding back and forth between getting up and producing graphics for companies. The Street Market show, which featured James, ESPO, and Barry McGee, brought together the two worlds Todd was living in.
Then, his signature touch of humor hit the art world with big-bosomed women, drunk inanimate objects, people and things in highly suggestive (and quite acrobatic) positions, sexified monsters, and anything else that’ll bring a chuckle across your body.
However, those humorous drawings and paintings stand tall with a backbone strengthened by viewing the world taking a turn for the worse in recent times and lunging head first into the smelly, wet, spiral abyss that is the great porcelain god––the toilet. Todd James’s paintings and work teeter on the top of the bowl, realizing that instead of drowning in the murky stench of sewer pipes and wallowing in a pile of other people’s filth, let’s all have a hearty bleached-induced laugh about things and make your life better because, frankly, shit’s funny.
