THE LETTER AS LIVING MEMORY

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THE HERITAGE AND THE BIRTH OF A VOCATION

Do you consider yourself an artist when you started creating in urban spaces? Or have you always been an artist?

I believe that a "true" artist is born an artist. As a four-year-old, I was already drawing and telling my parents that I wanted to be an artist when I grew up. It's an innate feeling: you want to draw everything, to understand the world. I first saw gang-style graffiti around the age of eight, in 1959. Our style of graffiti emerged in the mid-1940s and served as a form of protective signage for the community. Seeing the pure beauty and grace of the lettering, I knew deep down that graffiti was a legitimate art form.

What impact did your childhood in Los Angeles in the 1960s have on your artistic practice? Was the feeling of belonging to a territory essential?

In the 1960s, the entire country was swept up in the Civil Rights Movement. We questioned what made us "real" Americans, beyond skin color. Many cities experienced riots and fires. Los Angeles burned in 1965, and again in 1992. These events led me to ask myself, "Who am I, and what am I going to do to change things?" I started tagging in my neighborhood, on the streets of Highland Park, in 1969. The custom, inherited from LA gang tradition, was to paint only in your own territory. In New York, they wrote "All City." I've never stopped; I paint and write graffiti every day. It's an allegiance to my tradition and my neighborhood. It makes me one of the oldest and one of the very first graffiti artists in the world.

THE MYTH OF SEÑOR SUERTE

What references inspired you to create the character of Señor Suerte? We can feel the influence of Chicano culture and the style of the pachucos.

Chicano culture is Mexican-American identity; I have the best of both worlds. I was raised in American culture and only spoke English, but I spent my summers and vacations with my grandparents in Tijuana, Mexico. My uncle was a Zoot Suiter, and I admired his elegance and style. It was in Tijuana that I first saw the use of stencils. Political parties used one- or two-color stencils to spray their logos on the streets, in a graffiti style. This gave me the idea to make and use a large plastic stencil for my tag. I was the first to use a stencil on the street in 1969. I designed and created a tag, Señor Suerte (Mr. Chance). He is the product of several influences: the hat and the fur coat come from films like Super Fly And Shaft, The grinning teeth of Hollywood horror films, and the skull image from the Mexican heritage of Day of the Dead festivals. For Mexican-American culture, the skull doesn't represent death, but life; I personally feel that our departed loved ones are still alive with us. My skull tag was more about integrating into a contemporary American art movement than glorifying gang culture. I was looking forward, not backward.

You said that "a powerful image can make a career." Your first graffiti, Mr. Lucky, became an icon. How does that make you feel?

It's true that we remember history's greatest artists through a single image, the one we all fall in love with. I believe the true value of art lies in the conviction a person brings to their work. I also think that all art is a self-portrait: we paint what is important and interesting to us. You can always deconstruct a painting to sense the artist's character within it. Señor Suerte He was very generous to me. I had a very successful career in graffiti, even though the art market for it didn't yet exist when I started out. I feel lucky. My lettering and Mr. Lucky paintings are now collected by many museums, including the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.

Has the fact that gangs have appropriated this character given him a deeper political and social dimension?

Shortly after I tagged my first stencil, the local gang, the "Avenues," adopted it. Gang members got it tattooed, saying, "If you get shot, the skull will protect you from death." I've seen my skull image tattooed on skulls, necks, torsos, backs, and legs. These men live and die with that skull; no image is more valuable than one someone is willing to fight for. What is art, if not something you believe in?

WRITING AS LANGUAGE AND ARCHITECTURE

Calligraphy is central to your work. Do you see this work with letters as the basis of your practice?

As a young man, I studied to become an architect and I loved printing. At the same time, I saw Cholo-style graffiti on the walls of my neighborhood. I could read the messages and the different letter styles; I loved it. Graffiti has always been a language, the language of territories and participants. Signs of warning or protection, with their own grammar. Graffiti was a spoken language: we painted quotation marks at the top and arranged everything like urban billboards, with a headline, body text, and the gang logo, just like in the format of modern advertising. I applied this formula to my art, letting the "conversation" dictate the "composition" of the painting.

How do you perceive the street as a space for creation?

Between 1970 and 2000, we tagged at night. The night was magical. It was a time when you were alone, without pressure or distractions; it was "your time." Since then, we've emerged from the darkness, and the majority of street art is done legally in broad daylight. It's become a "profession." I see more and more trained artists painting walls using projections to enlarge a computer-generated image; less manual labor, more machine. The walls of the street are the new canvas; everyone has something to say. The street is where creation happens, but unfortunately, the money and prestige come from within the walls, from the galleries.

In your opinion, is contemporary urban art a unified movement or a succession of trends?

The current movement originated from street graffiti and seems to continue growing with each generation, bringing waves of beautiful new styles. Graffiti artists are using computers more and more, and I love all of that. I never imagined an international graffiti movement would exist. I believe that if graffiti were a book with its entire history and the names of its artists, I would be just one page, and I'm proud of that.

You stated: "This is no longer my world. My world was one of civil rights, hippies, feminism, graffiti…". Is a work of art necessarily a reflection of its time?

Only the finest works survive the ages. What is true and beautiful in our past remains relevant today. It is the conviction one carries in their work that makes it immortal. Perhaps each era has a different outward appearance, but our inner spirit remains the same.

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