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I'm Not Guilty so Break Yoself!

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skae squiggy

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A Grave Story

 

from newspapertree (an El Paso paper)

 

 

 

 

Art, Culture & History

 

 

Profile: Dave "Grave" Herrera

By Richard Baron

 

 

Dave Herrera was born in Mexico City in 1970, but when he was 12 his family set forth to move to New York. Somehow they ended up in El Paso. Herrera graduated from Canutillo, put in a year at UTEP and then a stint in the Marines. By the time he got out, his family had left El Paso, but Herrera decided to stay, and he got a job working the front desk of the Paso del Norte Hotel. Throughout it all, however, he never abandoned a life-long fervor for paint, and in 2000 he quit his day job and became a full-time muralist and aerosol graffiti artist.

 

"My mom sent me to private painting classes when I was kid, but I remember in the early-80's that I was in the back of the truck when my dad pulled up on the side of a gas station and I saw this mural by a guy named Bismo from Los Angeles. That was like the first aerosol piece I ever saw, and I was overwhelmed because it was so colorful. I didn't understand what it was back then, but after that I always wanted to do big projects, like murals, and I wanted to do more intense pieces than I was doing in my classes.

 

"I learned some basic techniques from a couple of books, but it was when I started doing actual pieces that I really started to learn. I started running into other wall artists, and I met José Fernandez -- Match. He was working on the wall at the Pershing Theater, and he invited me to paint there with a guy named Kid Ice -- this was 1984 -- and that's when I started to warm up to the spray can, but it took me a good five or six years to really get a feel for the medium.

 

"Word got out that we have a good aerosol scene in El Paso, and people from out-of-town come to paint here. There's a network of people -- aerosol artists and other muralists -- who find out where there's places around the country to paint, and they like to travel around and paint. When people come from out-of-state, they give us a call and we go out and make a space to feature their work, and we've had a couple of big names on it like Old School Revs from New York, Crayone from San Francisco, and Sake from San Diego.

 

"But it's really mostly for the local kids, so we started Border Youth, and that offers places where kids can paint.

 

"We have a wall on Doniphan that anyone can get a space if they come out and read the rules. You can't just show up and paint, you have to sign up and read the rules. The kids understand. Some of them started out tagging but now have ceased their tagging because they learned that you have to earn the privilege to paint. We tell them, 'You're welcome to paint here, but if we see you're still tagging out on the streets, you're out of here, you're gone.'

 

"I get tired of having to disassociate myself from gangs because I'm not into that crap. When people see aerosol, the first thing that comes to mind is 'taggers,' but I don't get off on destroying people's property. It's a matter of having some common respect.

 

"Back in 1993-94, there was an epidemic of tagging. They had to lock up the spray paint in the hardware stores, and they had gang task forces and community wipe-outs. Border Youth had a lot to do with putting an end to that in El Paso because we offered places where the kids could paint.

 

"It works well for everyone -- the community is happy because the tagging has gone down, and the property owners are happy because they're getting a fresh coat of paint, and the kids are happy because they're staying out of trouble, and sometimes they get jobs out of it. People drive up while they're painting and hire them to do signs or murals or their kitchens. It channels their talent and turns their mischief in a better direction. I didn't have anything like that when I was coming up, I didn't have anyone to guide me, and it's a good thing I didn't take the wrong route.

 

"The reason I use spray paint is because it's easier to work with compared to conventional painting. You don't have to mix colors and you don't have to clean the brushes. It's a clean tool and it dries fast. It's basically a big, portable airbrush that's faster. It has a different look, a different feel, a different aesthetic. I paint canvasses with them too, but I want to show my work in a way that is appreciated on a big scale. What really got me into it the idea of doing large murals is that there's a balance between making art and working with the community, and there's freedom in doing public art.

 

"Anything can be painted with aerosol, from letters to portraits to scenery, it's all out there. A lot of it has to do with typography, but I also love to do work that involves imagery. I'm starting a little campaign this year to paint fish because you don't expect to see a fish on the side of a wall in El Paso, but also just because I like fish.

 

"Everybody that does graffiti art has their own individual style. It's very abstract. There's a lot of typography involved, and it can be anything from the artist's name to his girlfriend's name to his daughter's name, and it's the standard of the art that it involves letters. I use the name 'Grave" as my base because that was a name people called me when I worked the graveyard shift at a job I had before I was in the Marines. What's important is not what is painted but how it's painted; it's about how far you can get away with manipulating a letter.

 

"When I'm looking at a piece, I'm looking at it technically, I'm looking at the quality and technique, I'm looking at how symmetrical the outline or skeleton is, how sharp the lines are and if they are consistent, how detailed or filled-in the colors are. I'm looking at it from an engineering point of view.

 

"There's so much behind it and it all has a structure, a structure that everyone follows. It has its own kind of system with self-imposed rules and meanings only insiders understand. It's an acquired art, you have to be into it to understand it, you have to practice it to appreciate it. In some ways it discriminates but in another way it doesn't because it's out there for everyone to see, and it's accessible to anyone who wants to understand it.

 

"Aerosol art is a universal thing, it's practiced all over the world. In Europe, it's more appreciated because they see American aerosol art as a foreign type of work, the same as we appreciate foreign objects like watches or wine. They appreciate aerosol art because it's true Americana."

 

* * *

 

 

The internet site that serves as home to the international graffiti community ("artcrimes") recently did a profile of Dave (Grave) Herrera (http://www.graffiti.org/grave/index.html), and Border Youth has a busy month scheduled.

 

On Saturday, October 25, guest artists of international renown, Rock Steady Crew from New York City, will spend the whole day painting 200 yards of wall in the 6000 block of Doniphan along with some local kids; and five days later, on Thursday, October 30, Border Youth will mount an exhibit titled "Agnomena 915" in the second floor gallery of the UTEP Union Building, the first time that UTEP has hosted an exhibition of graffiti art. It will feature works by Grave, Gibbs, Myker, Razo, Adier, Mitsu and others.

 

Check it out.

 

©2003 Richard Baron

 

click here for the link...

http://www.newspapertree.com/newsletter.ss...3275c10433c4b41

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