(Colorado Daily)

Exterior Design

Graffiti writers turned fine artists Giant and Dalek take their talent indoors

It has been said that the three most important things about real estate are location, location, location.

The same could be said for the creative endeavors of graffiti artists. On a wall or freeway overpass, graffiti is a crime, sometimes resulting in high fines and jail time. Hung on a gallery wall, however, it becomes fine art. Both will get the artists name in the paper, but the latter can actually generate some income. It makes you wonder what we’d be saying about DiVinci if he’d painted the Mona Lisa on a trash dumpster.

The Revoluciones Collective Art Space in Denver seeks to bridge that gap of reason with it show “System Failure,” an exhibition of the fine art manifestations of two of the nation’s most innovative graffiti artists.

Both Mike Giant and James Marshall (known widely in lowbrow art circles as Dalek) entered the world of art with spray paint cans in hand, Giant writing mind-boggling letter forms, Marshall doodling an atypical band of characters. Both men’s work has evolved and gained underground popularity, somehow even becoming digestible to the mainstream public.

An active graffiti writer, Giant’s non-street artwork, while drawing heavily on his graffiti repertoire, incorporates elements that have rubbed off from his work as a tattoo artist at Everlasting Tattoo in San Francisco. Snakes, skulls and religious iconography pervade Giant’s pieces, along with his tell-tale lettering style.

Thematically, Marshall’s work couldn’t be more dissimilar. Words rarely pop up in his paintings, which are like textless, cryptic cartoon strips peopled by an odd sort of creature he calls “space monkeys.” The monkeys are at the same time cute and a little disturbing, marching lockstep across his canvas. Still, they are very original and always evolving, making each new piece Marshall creates a stimulating adventure.

Other than making money and showing his art indoors, Giant insists that his approach to art has changed very little.

“I don’t feel like I’ve left graffiti for fine art,” says Giant. “To me, they are different things. Graffiti writing is much more about the experience of doing something you’re not supposed to. Fine art is just drawing things that I feel like drawing.”

Giant is not ashamed to admit that it’s also about getting paid. The world of gallery shows, he says unabashedly, is all about money. If an artist’s work doesn’t sell, he doesn’t get shows.
Graffiti, on the other hand, can earn an artist real respect, Gaint says, something he insists is sometimes lacking in the world of high art.

“Your name within the fine art world may boost a gallery’s status,” says Giant, “but status doesn’t pay the rent. To be honest, the praise I get from other graffiti writers for work I do on the street far outweighs the praise I get from regular folks that dig the stuff I show in galleries.”

It is perhaps easier to imagine Marshall’s space monkeys appealing to a mainstream audience, odd though they may be. Though his work is unique in context and easily discernible on a canvas or a wall, Marshall has never been fully accepted in the Graffiti world because of his character-heavy designs. He is a painter trapped in contextual limbo, but he sees fine art as a natural progression for a graffiti artist.

“It’s a matter of opinion,” says Marshall, “but certain people will tell you that because I never was super into letters then therefore I’m not a graffiti writer. I know there are people who look at progression as some for of selling out, but most of those kids are 16-year-olds who are living at home and don’t have real issues to deal with in life such as paying your rent and trying to make a life for themselves.”

Marshall’s unusual graffiti style developed, he says, simply because doodling character felt more natural than traditional writing styles.

“When I looked at letters, it didn’t appeal to me,” he says. “The essence of graffiti appealed to me. I love the medium, I love the idea, and I love letter pieces. It’s just that when I’d step up to the wall and I didn’t have an idea, it was more natural for me to start doodling a character on the wall than to doodle letter forms.”

As that development occurred, the space monkeys began to take shape. They grew new limbs, acquired conveyances, and multiplied. But one thing has never changed: All the space monkeys face left. Marshall says the left-facing orientation of his characters feels more natural, and has become a part of the mythos surrounding the monkeys.

“When I see them facing right, it automatically looks like they’re reversed,” says Marshall. “Then it got enveloped into this whole philosophy that they are kind of marching in a single direction, kind of like they are attracted to a homing beacon, the idea being that they are kind of lost from their home planet, trying to find their way home.”

One thing both Marshall and Giant recognize is the relative permanence of the art they show in galleries, as compared to some of their other endeavors. Both have been active in the skateboard industry, creating graphics for skateboard decks. That art, like graffiti, is disposable, lasting only as long as the skateboard.

In the long run, though, Giant says having your work seen, though rewarding, isn’t the be-all-and-end-all of art.

“It’s the act of making art and expressing yourself that’s important, not the work the public sees,” says Giant. “I make art because it makes me feel good. Most of the graffiti I do lasts only a few days -- if that -- but its longevity doesn’t matter. By the time the public sees the work, I’m already on to something else.”