Wild Style cookies
Style you can eat, food for thought!
Journey around the sun – 2011
There’s always the chance to see the light in every little moment, and during the last few years it mostly happened when I’m surrounded by children. You could argument “you’re a father with a little child” all your attention and sensibility is focused there. Maybe. But the truth is that I feel bored. I’m bored of what I see and what I hear around me. Everybody is just strugglin for his own survive and Italy looks like a small-town. It’s so difficult to act honestly without being considered stupid, and frankly this is exhausting.
My old-time friend Simona is living nearby my studio so from time to time she jumps in to say hi. In 2011 she arrived with her 1 year old son in a baby sling hanging on her front. If you ever met them goin around like that, you could easily see he was (and he is) her own sun. Their strengh and light, simple and clean, made me smile. They were just beautiful, so after a while I asked her if I could take few “aerial photos” of them.
Later on I tried to return that feeling on canvas: dancing with the sun in an infinity loop. Because happiness mostly happens and disappear in one second but its memory lasts forever.
Graffiti, sports and drugs under the bridge. Milano 1998
1998 no-drugs CONI spot in front of THP crew hall of fame in Giambellino, Milano, with world’s champions Alberto Tomba, Jury Chechi, Deborah Compagnoni and Roberto Baggio. And offcourse featuring pieces by Airone, Clock, Done, Zeta, Mastro K.
Strange, I know.
Spruzzo ergo sum. Milano and Roma graffiti writing in 1997.
Bad title for this honest and clean documentary mostly about Milano and Roma graffiti writing, with some nice music featuring. It has been produced and directed by Cristina De Ritis for RAI DUE, public television’s tv channel. She has been so nice to convince me to be filmed, something I permitted in very rare cases (I dont trust too much in journalists). It has been transmitted the 20 Agoust 1997. It features 23 REC crew, Hekto, Mind, Clock, Mastro K, Marco Teatro, Ice One among others. On my back you can see how it looked the renowned THP crew wall in Giambellino, at its peak of fame during mid ’90s. Clock, MindOne and Mastro were also being filmed while painting there.
P.S.: I know that in the video I translate “whole car” as “whole train”. Shit happens, being filmed is not my preferite sport, so please don’t laugh. Thanks again to Cristina for not making judgments and trying to understand us a little more than most others journalists did during those days.
I love NY caps, especially after a wild night
The story behind this piece is one I can’t forget: comin back from my brother’s marriage. A nice day on Lake Maggiore, the marriage happened the afternoon before, and the party went on all night long. We were a couple of hours by car from Milano, so when I came back early in the morning I thought I was too fucked-up to go painting at this convention. But KayOne did his best to organize it and my man Loze and KidOne were in town plus most of the crew was down painting…
Basically, when I woke up after 3 hours I was still drunk and when I arrived at the wall the temperature was +35, there was no shade and everybody was already painting. I took place in the THP crew space left for me between Ghen and Done, I greeted my friends from Norway and some brother I rarely see (hey Zeta and Gob!) and started with an old sketch (normally I go freestyling), but it immediatly looked bad. Really bad. I wasn’t able to manage thin lines
at all.
So I just stopped and went around along the wall to say hi to all the friends, there were masters like Teatro, Tawa, Styng 253, Dropsy, Mambo and many others. Comin back I stopped speaking with Done and I noticed he had a couple of NY caps. I love them, especially on trains. Their line look like a bolder soft cap line, their use is much more instinctive, the final appeal a little rough but full of energy. A lot of people don’t use them just because, compared with other soft caps, after some time they are hard to push with fingers: definetly not confortable for long time hall-of-fame painting. But perfect for a quite fast piece when the sun is burning, your head is hosting an hammering jam session and you must hide your inability…
I ended up being the first one to finish, so I could relax and enjoy the hottest spring Sunday in many years. So don’t you ever forget your NY caps!
Airone KayOne Chief Dust Dusk – Milano, Giambellino 1991
This is a nice photo I received from KayOne a couple of years ago. It must be year 1991, the place is our first hall of fame in Via Rosalba Carriera, Giambellino neighborhood, Milano.
The wall was just in front of an abandoned factory. In the middle there was – and still it is – an open-air public parking. Few people used the parking ’cause of all the junkies that used to live inside the factory. A perfect underground place to paint: so dirty and derelict that few teenagers with spraycans were a minor problem and, to say the truth, police was happy that someone stayed there, this made the place less dangerous for people wanting to reach the old public market nearby. It’s been our headquarter for almost 5 years.
In 1991 the abandoned building was gradually demolished and left space for a small insignificant garden and the progressive cheap redevelopment of the whole neighborhood. The image is a snapshot of this moment, with just a small part of the bunch of creative people that spent their days at the wall.
Tagged with: Chico Rush, Chief, Dusk, Dust, Giambellino, KayOne, Milano Graffiti, MNP crew, Old School Graffiti, THP crew
