Growing up with some artists was exciting, strange, and very cool. My grandfather was a master cartoonist. He could quickly whip up a galloping horse, or a praying mantis with only a few pencil strokes. When he was in the army this was kind of a parlor trick that he used to entertain himself and his fellow soldiers. He showed me how to draw Kilroy peeking over the edge of wall. He had beautiful handwriting and always filled all his letters to me with drawings in the margins and on the back of the pages. One of my Aunts was a funky downtown NYC artist in the 80s and early 90s. She created huge collages or did things like write a phone number on a dozen wooden fish and leave them by the riverfront docks. Then strangers would find them and leave a message on an answering machine. She also collected random Tchotchkes and various Americana that was packed into the apartments she lived in; old industrial brick buildings in sections the city filled with graffiti. She had lots of weird friends that were gay, or drug addicts, or musicians like the B52s. Visiting her was a thrill for me and she encouraged my art by always giving me sketchbooks, pencils and markers. Later on she would get me art books about subjects like monster movie posters, or the history of Mad magazine, etc.

I like them all. I love the golden age comics or any comics from the 50s to the late 80s when artists mastered realistic anatomy. I also love the Avant Garde stuff like Art Speigelman, Will Eisner and so much more. I’m very big on tv cartoons from before my time as well as the ones I grew up on, like Ren & Stimpy and Batman the animated series. Throw in all the Underground comix and animations by Ralph Bakshi. Every thing inspires me to be honest. Any movie filmed in Nyc in the 70s is great. I also recommend all of the Rocky movies.

The freedom and bravery of the guys who created it. The gall that one must posses to put up a crazy phrase or a colorful demented face on the side of a highway with cars and trucks roaring by. The adventure, the mystery. I thought of Spider-Man or Batman, but way cooler. I was captivated by the bad ass attitude exemplified by John Connor Jr. in Terminator 2, rap music, skateboarding, rollerblading; I threw all of these things in the same bucket as graff. Back then, those subcultures were very intertwined organically. I knew there must be some community behind it, which I wanted to belong to. I was somewhat of a loner growing up. In my imagination, there was a ragtag group of misfits who met up weekly in a secret clubhouse or a deserted warehouse, and I wanted to find that.

New Haven Connecticut is the largest city in the state and the cultural center with museums, restaurants, and a general urban growth that never really slowed down. Like most of the East coast cities; it has a large Black and Puerto Rican population. As well as Italian. Its close proximity to NYC gave it a lot of style and energy. NYC was a short train ride away and actually the nickname was just The C.I., short for The CITY.

In New Haven, many writers visited from larger cities like Boston and NYC, or other parts of Conn. Graffiti hit its peak there around 1990 and by 96, there was very few serious active writers still living there, after that. Nowadays it’s quite different and it’s had a resurgence in more ways than just the amount of new writers and graffiti.

Philadelphia is its own city with very little to no connection to NYC. It’s insular and prides itself on having its own flavor, slang, and movement.

Graff in Philly is part of growing up. It’s baked into the culture. Every kid has a good handstyle that they learned or copied from schoolmates, people in their community, or older family members. Graff is a very deep rooted secret subculture with every possible type of person as a participant. In Philly there are more Black writers than in other smaller American cities. There are also many active bombers that are over the age of 50.

NYC just has everything, everyone, and at any time, nothing compares to NYC at all.

TGE started from a mail correspondence between Esteme and I in 1999. He left Philly for Atlanta. He is the one who recommended that we start a crew with the two of us, and our mutual friends Ronin and June. After that it just grew. Mast and Empty got down in the Bronx, Totem and Saver got down in Atlanta, and Jedi5 Eptic and Jurne got down in NY. This was the initial core members. A handful of writers have been down over the span of two and half decades. Nowadays we are fairly tight knit and we all communicate and try to work on projects together. Our crew means The Great Escape. It’s about practicing graff as an escape. For each person that means something different, but recognizing graff as a form of escapism is at the heart of it. It also has a double meaning because it’s often necessary to escape the law and the powers that be. Hopefully Lady Luck is on your side and that escape ends in a great way. We all look towards the positive aspects of graff and we honor and respect eachother as friends and crew mates, each with our own personal skill set and strength. In fact, we have become the crew that I imagined existed out there, as a child.

My rules lately are keeping my work very connected to the old school styles and nuances of graffiti. I don’t want my stuff to be easily palatable to people who don’t have a grasp on history or traditions of graff. I get bored with my style, and always want to challenge myself. I want to be able to create something that would’ve captured me as a youth.

I learned airbrush from trying and struggling and making lots of mistakes. I probably went thru more than 10 airbrush guns. I’ve wanted to learn since I was kid but it involved so much cleaning, patience and careful crafting. Spray paint was easier and any occasional messiness was less noticeable, and sometimes actually looked cool. When had my daughter, I started teaching myself airbrush seriously. I must’ve felt a change in myself where I was more patient, careful, and dedicated. I kept messing up for a few years but kept working at it. One day it clicked and I found myself effortlessly flowing and rendering comfortably without even thinking about it. The first shirt I actually felt that I successfully rocked was a thugged out Olaf from the movie Frozen. Next to him was a quote from Mobb Deep’s Shook Ones 2.

It comes from that classic technique of flipping a popular kids cartoon with a streetwise teenage sensibility. I saw lots of that material growing up. It was closely aligned with graff. Nowadays I watch cartoons with my daughter and get many ideas.

I have yet to get any weird ones but the funniest one was probably the phrase JESUS SAVES, I $PEND. Accompanied by a Cupid with a Yankee hat, a sack of money and designer shoulder bag.

I like to be alone, focused and I might throw on a record or an podcast interview with an artist or musician.

The filmmaker was a writer. We were both from the same generation and aware of one another. I told him I was a fan of the documentary, and he was a long time fan of my work, so he asked me if I would make a design for it. When I watched this documentary, I just wanted to capture the characters in the series, and the vibe of New Jersey in general with some cartoons, so it was a perfect meeting of minds.

I’m working on some pieces for a few upcoming gallery shows. And also a bigger project that delves deep into the phenomenon of Philadelphia handstyles.

My music tastes are pretty eclectic these days, which is kind of symptom of all the new and old music that is available and presented to anybody on any kind of social media. My current vibes relate to listening while driving and span from Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, to Public Image Limited, to pretty much all 90s rap and R&B that I grew up hearing. My art is heavily influenced by album covers from the 70s and 80s so any kind of jazz fusion, funk, galactic, psychedelic and progressive rock music that I discover thru looking at that artwork is my taste. Philly is just filled with so much history, music, art and culture. The Philly Sound and the tv show American Bandstand can really give one an idea of why the first early wall writers decided to go so large, confident, and stylish. In terms of letter structure, colors, and characters; I’d point to the influence of the disco and heavy metal era, from Broadway to the railroad overpasses across America.