Winter in America
Check out some of the highlights of our conversation in the video clip!
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A while back I was lucky enough to grab some time with graffiti writer and stencil print maker Chris Stain. I have the feeling that I didn't quiet make the best first impression seeing as I was waiting in the bar while he was waiting in the reception area of the hotel lobby on one of several comfy couches. The "reception" area would make sense for an 11:30 am meeting, while the bar would have been suited for an 11:30 pm engagement. Clearly I was still jet lagged and my "it's 5:30 somewhere" mentality was clouding my judgment.
Then of course, I chose The Breslin for lunch. It's a new restaurant in the West 20s and is the sister to the famous Spotted Pig. A good friend of mine just started working as the restaurant's manager and suggested it as a good place for brunch. He warned me to make sure that whoever I was bringing there for lunch wasn't a vegetarian. I pulled out the trust blackberry to shoot him an email, but much to my dismay all the trusty communication features on my Italian phone hadn't sorted themselves out yet and weren't working on American soil. So I thought about it for a minute and figured, "He's a street artist. These guys are hard-core. There's no way he's a vegetarian." Then again, who the hell knows what that’s supposed to mean?
After our half an hour disconnect, we finally manage to sit down just after noon and take a look at the menu. "Well, there is pretty much nothing on the menu that I can eat." My heart sinks. "You're a vegetarian…?" (gulp) How was I supposed to recover from this? "Caesar salad?" We order the caesar and some totally awesome fries to share and get to talking.
Chris hasn't done his own book with us (yet), but Drago is not new to him and by no means is he new to us. His work has recently been featured in RJ Rushmore's exhibition The Thousands in London as well as in the accompanying book we released in Europe in November (which has just recently arrived state-side), The Thousands: Painting Outside, Breaking In. For the book Know Hope wrote a great blurb on Chris so when it comes to explaining him and his work I can't help but quote Know Hope because I couldn't write anything more pertinent or genuine.
"What's very present in Chris's work is the communication of the things relevant to him, from those same things that he sees around him. There's some feeling of responsibility that is very attendant, to portray these troubled situations, often other people's situations - stated, then transformed and bent into some idealist reminiscence. Tainted with nostalgia, it's all taken into account both for the worse, and for the better."
I couldn't have been more impressed with the man who sat across from me at lunch: honest, straightforward, kind, conversational, aware, opinionated, interesting, and interested. His work is marked by a strong social tinge and the diverse style of intercity living, a quality that Chris was familiar with growing up in Baltimore. His personal story acts a steady influence and leads him to gravitate toward blue-collar issues and other social ills. While some remark that his work might be “too political”, Chris notes that although the politics are there and that is how things tend to be defined he leans toward more anarchist tendencies and that it is less related to politics, but rather should be seen on a more humane level.
His work most definitely portrays the basic level of humanity. A quality that is so fundamental that we tend to forget what exactly it means to be human, to feel, and to treat others with an elemental sense of decency. I guess that’s what it’s all about: a tale of social sufferance. So get on board, Winter in America is too long and too cold to go it alone.