Heya!

 

Please check out this pile of photos I found from the Ludlow days.  Feel free to share your own photos here from those days if you were by the place.  I'll be adding more as I look around my files.  

 

Hope it brings back some good memories!  ~ Zito

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.404061366280996.90786.166348813385587&type=3

 

 

OH! & PS - please "like" my facebook biz page while you're there?  Appreciate it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Hey Y'all,

I'll be slingin' the paint tomorrow night at the annual Mardi Gras benefit for the LES Girls Club.  I was there last year and so amazed at what a great party it was - that I vowed to never miss it!  Great live bands, beads, masks, stilt walkers, gospel choir, live art, Lady Circus, DJs, real LES nobiltiy and a raffle prize of a weekend for two in New Orleans!!!  Costumes recommended!!  Truly not to be missed, I do hope you can all make it.  Doors open at 7:pm.  All info is on the poster image below... tickets online or at the door.

Happy Fat Tuesday, Churrin! ~ Zito

 

ARTBATTLES PRESENTS

//300 WORKS
//30 ARTISTS
//3 COUNTRIES

OPENING NIGHT JANUARY 12TH 6PM-12AM

GALLERY WILL BE OPEN JAN 13TH AND 14TH WITH LIVE ART AND MUSIC 6PM-12AM AS WELL

Featuring ArtBattles Artists Painting Live with canvas provided by Fredrix Artist Canvas

FREE TO THE PUBLIC
BYO Wine or Beer (No Liquor)

I find that I do a weird thing in my head when traveling from one city to the next.  I mean, I hope it's not just me, but most people have a few distinct voices chattering away in their heads, no?  Tu sabes, the voice of reason, for instance, seems to be in constant discussion (and conflict) with the voice of primal urges. Well, I've noticed one of the voices in my head likes to stick loyal to a place to such a degree as to be fully prepared to not like anything else quite as much.  I think its a Taurus thing.  It's incredibly unreasonable I realize, but in the end how much control do we really have over what is being discussed inside our heads? So, upon leaving Madrid, I was quite enamored with the place and was of course fully prepared to like Barcelona - just not as much.

I guess I've always had that lame "root for the underdog" fixation where if something is extremely popular and well liked, I think there must be something wrong with it.  But can you blame me?  I mean, it's simply an over-reaction to looking around at popular culture and seeing nothing in the realm of the 'widely-celebrated' but a huge steaming pile of mierda.  However, I think this general theory of mine that says 'popular shit sucks' has been fading a bit with time.  I remember when the White Stripes came out and everybody was talking about them.  I thought, "If they're so popular they must really suck," and I never bothered to buy a record.   For years I blew them off, actually kinda liking the music when I heard it, but never allowing myself to fully appreciate it.  Here we are a decade later and I have every album and love every song.  What a jackass.

So I arrived in Barcelona deeply unimpressed.  Of course it only took a stroll through town for me to recall my last visit and fall completely back in love with the place. Yes, I did love Madrid!  I'm sorry, it's true.  I love you both!!  And Granada, si, tu tambien!  Oh boy, I'm in trouble now.  Well, here's a concept...  maybe it's ok to love them all in different ways.  There are endless ways to love.  I love Oriah. I love my mama. I love my brother and sister and their kids. I love (they only say this in America I think) a good coffee and a home-cooked meal.  These are all different kinds of "love" and they are all OK.

For the first few days we would stay at the hotel at La Maquinista - a monstrous mall complex that loomed like a corporate space station, all futuristic and gleaming in the sun. Its spanning walkways were open to the sky, lined on all sides with infinite troves of the American crap every Spaniard seemed aching to own. This is where the battles would take place and the hotel was part of it.   Once again, as upon our arrival in Madrid, I had to ask myself, "Why a mall?"

Suddenly I had an answer. I knew I was sent here for a reason and that I needed to learn or see something... this is always true.  But sometimes you really have to ponder it and who knows if that truth will remain as such through time, cause it rarely does.  But for now, true it was.  Es verdad. So what did I see when I looked out across the thousands of beautiful Spanish faces that pushed their way to the stage to see us perform on the massive circular stage in the center of La Maquinista?  Well, aside from it being a particular segment of the population - that is, the mall-going segment - resplendent with spiked Guido haircuts and pierced ears, eyebrows and lips, I saw a teeming throng of fully active consumers.

Here we were in proud España in the midst of it's great economic crisis and what did we see all around us? Literally thousands and thousands of people of all ages, dressed to the tee (albeit an odd off-kilter euro version of the Jersey Shore aesthetic) in crisp new expensive brand name clothes.  People were here spending lots of money. This "centro comercial" was a very popular place on the weekends. We could barely make our way to the stage.  And everyone, yes everyone, was there spending gobs of their hard earned Euros.

Crisis, shmisis!  Recession, reshmession!  Sure, some folks were having a hard time.  But exactly how accurate are the fear-driven facts that we are being so pumped full of?  Well, let me be clear. I am not an economist but to my uninformed eye, this particular economy was swinging. And in the city, were people complaining about the crisis?  Well, you bet they were!  People everywhere seem to bitch about money even when there ain't no recession.  But aside from that, what were the signs of crisis that we saw in Spain?  Not one.  There was not an excess of homeless people - by any means.  Everyone we spoke to spent what seemed like very little for their flat - and were all quite happy about it. They didn't work too hard - they're European after all and know from a good way of life.  So where was the crisis?  The trash was being picked up and the streets were squeaky clean.  The metro ran like clockwork with it's gleaming new trains arriving on the second - never late, never dirty or loud.  Everyone we encountered in every shop or bar seemed pretty damn happy.  Of course they did struggle at times, but things were okay.  Everybody struggles, right?

I really began to question this crisis.  Clearly there was a crisis somewhere - well, city hall, right?  But it wasn't on the streets.  People in Spain - at least the handful of cities and small villages we went to, were living a good life.  I'm sure there are areas that are harder hit, most likely the outlying towns probably in the south - but I think recession in Europe is different than in developing countries.

What this came down to for me was something I already knew but apparently needed to have reenforced in my psyche. It is the simple understanding that very few truths are universal.  Truth is individual.  Everyone has their own view of life, based on the standards they have established and set in their cranium and hence their own personal version of the "truth".  Once again, EVERYTHING comes back down to my favorite word: perception.  This has been the most persistent lesson for me over the past decade: that everything we experience as unique individuals is susceptible to the whim of our perception. And so we must learn to guide our perceptions in order to create a better life for ourselves.  Call it faith or belief or whatever you want but what it means is that you can create, recreate and completely rearrange your life, your situation for better or worse depending upon your thoughts, words and inner dialogue. For me - this is one universal truth.  And in keeping with my philosophy on the matter, I suppose it may not be true for everyone.  Well, let's just say I'm open to the possibility of that, although in this instance I believe this to be a law of nature and there's no way around it. But that's just my own experience and although I see the same causes and effects in other people's lives, I'm just a tiny bit open to the possibility of learning otherwise at some point.  I mean, we have to stay open to everything just a little bit, right?

But this is supposed to be about Barcelona. And so far we haven't even left the mall.  But we did in fact leave the mall.  Yes!  We crossed the bridge out of the bizarre, industrial pre-suburban sprawl surrounding La Maquinista into a lovely little barrio called Sant Andreu. We had the option of hopping the metro to the centro but decided we may as well walk and have a bite along the way. We walked all day - more than eight hours on foot.  We stopped for comida y cervezas along the way and slowly made our way to the center of the city.  My impressions of Madrid seemed to fade and blur in my memory as if there were only room for one city in my head.  I struggled to recall what it was I loved so much about Madrid, and I could remember places, faces and moments but the grip I had on it's essence began to fade as I became immersed in the bat-gothic, art nouveau elegance of beautiful Barcelona.

We walked and walked and walked until suddenly we turned a corner and bam! - on the horizon the surreal steeples of the insanely beautiful Gaudi masterwork, Sagrada Familia, loomed with powerful whimsical majesty above our heads.  If you've never been there, look it up - go there if you can. It's beyond belief of course, as with all of Gaudi's works, but this is his masterpiece, his life's culmination, and his theories on nature as the quintessential source of form are nothing less than pure genius.

We circled this grand 'cathedral on acid' in awe, the facade melting like an other-worldy drip-castle oozing through the stone impermanence of reality. We fought our way through the throngs of tourists, their naive comments topped by one Midwestern housewife who's stunningly cultured reaction to the cathedral was (in a heavy Chicagoan accent), "Oh it looks like the Magic Kingdom!"  Um.  Lady, you're lucky I'm a pacifist or I'd rip your friggin head off!  This is high art, not friggin Disney!  Joder!!!

After a few days of ArtBattles at La Maquinista, we were fortunate to be moving into a killer apartamento on Carrer de Ferran, right in the center of El Barrio Gotico just off La Rambla. This was Barcelona. This was where we had been taking the metro to every day now. And ahora - we lived here!   It was a huge flat, painstakingly decorated by our host who was, as I had been for years in NY, in the habit of renting her place out to tourists. It's a good racket. I lived off it for quite a while myself. (Don't tell anyone.)  And she did it right! There were different colored rooms with exotic mod light fixtures and artwork, not to mention the 2 bottles of champagne and the Belgian chocolates in the fridge. Nice touches.

We were on the top floor overlooking from our balcony the busy, touristy street below.  We also had rooftop access and could look out over much of the city. It was perfect and we all felt very much at home there. I admit, I liked it a bit less when I started waking up with bites on my legs from some hungry critters lodging in the couch that served as my bed, but you take the bad with the good and then you take all of your clothes to the sweet little old lady on the little tiny cobblestone street that's impossible to find and you thank the bedbugs for bringing you to meet such a cute friendly being who was sad to hear I wouldn't be coming to see her every week. She had a blind old dog and she waved, "Buenas tardes, Zito!  Buenas!  Zito!" as I ducked out of her little shop. As long as I remain uninfested, I like the places that bedbugs send me. That's just my way of looking at it. Maybe its not the popular view but its my perception.  Who knew you could be thankful for blood-sucking insects?  La vida es estraneo, no?

(Gracia, Barcelona)

I remembered a cool little plaza from my last visit and, with some help from my friend Mercedes, the local, raven-haired, Catalan goddess, we found it again.  It was a beautiful seedy little spot in the center of what would become our favorite barrio de Barcelona: Gracia. Gracia was up the hill from La Rambla y Placa Catalunya. It was out of the touristy fray and reminded me a lot of the old East Village. It was colorful, ragged and full of life. We sat in that plaza all night and partied with the locals. Our first night in Barcelona was a lot like our time in Madrid, just hangin out in plazas. But everybody knows, that's where life in the city is... in la calle.

(our new Moroccan friends)

We entered the Art Battles arena every Thursday, Friday and Saturday and to our amazement, thousands of people showed up to watch.  It was a large circular red stage in the center of the bewilderingly humungous complex and we looked up at two levels of audience far above the main crowd on all sides. It was nuts.  Everyone on stage was spraying aerosol except me. So I had the run of the acrylic paint surplus to my own damn self.  A battalion of easels supported the several large canvases that stood in the spotlight and every night (and twice on Saturdays) we painted our way through two 40-minute sets.  One evening we set 4 huge canvases on the stage in a giant cube. It was a solo battle (as opposed to a team collaboration) and I was fully prepared to kill. I decided to come on stage wearing my long-beaked carnivale mask that I had picked up the day before and painted with Poscas. When Flaco, our mildly jaded, extremely hyper Neuyorican MC, called me to the stage, "Representando Nueva York... El unico!  El Peligroso!  Zito!", I jumped up from no-where with my creepy shnozz mask under a black hoody and boy, I must have freaked a few kids out.

I had earned the name Peligroso in Madrid because I'd recently become a complete spazz during live painting events and, sorry everybody but please step back cuz the paint does get to flyin pretty regularly.  When I walked off the stage after the first set, I had already left a massive, multi-colored footprint in front of my painting.  By the end of the second set, I was usually swimming in my shoes and there were angry Spanish djs with newly-spattered, expensive jackets cursing my name: ¡El Peligroso!

I had been to Encants, a wonderfully seedy open market in Glóries, just before the show and had found a little stack of old Catalan books that I brought with me to the stage.  The books were yellowed, old children's fables of a Christian bent and their crumbling pages lifted from the spine with ease.  As i flipped through them trying to determine their usefulness, a couple of Moroccan guys blasted past in a hurry, frantically shooting glances over their shoulders.  Just as they disappeared, a couple of uniformed members of La Guardia Urbana bolted off in the same direction.  Of course, I rooted for the criminals, whose crimes I assumed were petty mercado ones and as they faded into the crowd, I returned to my excavations. I unearthed a big, disheveled, three-ring binder that had obviously been put together by some old Catalan abuelita. It was full of images of the Virgin Mother that I imagined her collecting and clipping out of magazines. There were funerary announcements, likely of her friends and family, and strange Catalan words printed poster style on sheets of white paper.  I wasn't sure of the meaning of the Spanish word 'oculto' which appeared throughout, but it seemed most certainly old world Catholic and, with most of that stuff, it creeped me out a bit.  It just reeked of Inquisition.  Irony intact, I took all this beautiful collage material with me to the stage.  Sean, in an effort to keep the tour afloat, had bought clear acrylic gel medium which he asked me to use on my canvases to mix down with the paint - to get more mileage out of what we had. But there was no stopping me. Once I got up there, I was full-throttle and everybody ran for cover.  I'm not exaggerating.  The dj had a plastic dropcloth over his turntables and was no longer sporting his Sunday best. Flaco would flinch, duck and run every time I turned around.  Of course that only made me want to get him.

(detail from my first live collage painting)

But the gel medium really did come in handy. The day I decided to first bring the collage element into the live pieces, I grabbed up two large clear catsup bottles of gel and, wielding them like six-guns, I sprayed the canvas with them from ten feet away.  They made a furious splashing and splattering causing the crowd to whoop and leap back with fright.  At the last minute I had decided I would paint from one of the photos from the abuelita's book.  It was a shot of one of those overblown Spanish madonnas, with more bling on her halo than half of Brooklyn.  I sketched out a basic layout of 'madonna and child' then started ripping pages from the book and pasting these wonderful bits of Catalan catholic schoolin up onto the canvas as flesh tone where their faces would be.  And the gel held the pages safely in place.  Once I'd filled those areas, I got back to the brushes and started hefting great gobs of azure at the canvas like if I didn't cover it quick it would destroy us all.  It was super fun, that's for sure.  The halo was going on thicker and thicker - layers of yellow, ochre and white were sticking out from the surface by a full inch.  I hadn't considered the top right corner of the piece but suddenly decided to throw a very heavy cloud up there and then draw an all seeing eye in it with the handle of the brush.  It was as thick as cake frosting - a big eye in a cloud of whipped cream floating above our favorite single mother.  It was for me, so far, the best piece of the tour. I had a lot of fun painting it and was happy when it was all over to look at the thing and say, "Hey. That's actually alright." Because believe me, when you're up there just slinging goo, you really have no concept of how these things really look.  And afterwards, when you do you see the "finished" piece, sometimes you hardly recognize it.  And sometimes parts of it are just flippin awful.

For whatever reason, we moved back to the hotel at La Maquinista after 10 wild and crazy days on Carrer de Ferran. The last night there, while everyone else dozed in their beds, my old NYC pal Ally and I painted with Poscas on a mannequin far into the sunrise. She had been living in Andalusia for the past 11 years and we had a lot of catching up to do. We listened to old Bowie and drew all sorts of colorful weirdness all over that poor torso.  Of course we left it, along with a handful of other paintings, for our host who seemed genuinely thrilled by our gifts.

After 2 nights back in the plasticky hotel, we were once again thrilled to be packing and moving back to the barrio. I couldn't have been more pleased at where we would spend our last week. We were a few floors up on a tiny quiet street deep in El Barrio Gotico and we all loved it. There were two adjoining apartments there with two amazing balconies outside tall glass doors with wooden shutters on the inside. Across the narrow way, we looked right into the neighbors homes. I gawked fascinated as I became an involuntary voyeur of a perfect little Barcelona apartamento. An adorable little Spanish girl, her dark curls flying behind her, swung happily on a hammock.  A stunningly elegant, black-haired, Catalan woman leaned over the plants of her balcony chatting on the phone in a lacy black blouse with several large silver rings on her tan fingers. A colorful house cat strolled softly through the bars of the balcony rail amidst the plants and the legs of the young mother.  In the window below, a dread-locked artisan girl worked steadily at weaving shawls on a triangular loom. I watched her day after day weaving away in her little "taller". Another window exposed a group of dark haired tourists, clicking away at their laptops and smoking cigarillos on the balcony. As with everywhere there were banners and flags of the Catalan independence movement draped from the rails. Up from the corners of the street the jubilant voices of tipsy bar patrons echoed off the stone walls and into our balcony. Our last place, on Carrer de Ferran, had been a busy street crowded with tourists at most times. But here, on the tiny, block-long bit of street named Carrer de Milans, we were really in the heart of old Barcelona.  I couldn't have dreamed it any more perfect.

But we rarely stayed in. Although there was quite a bit of rain during our final week, we walked the ancient streets incessantly. We had been in Spain so long now - more than a month - that the novelty of it almost lifted from time to time and I almost glimpsed the whiff of jadedness that comes with being in a place for a while. You can get used to anything over time and it's a little sad when that fresh unfettered enthusiasm inevitably fades. But it didn't really.  I only noticed myself imagining what it would be like.

I began chatting with Oriah in NY about possibly moving to Barcelona for a few years. She heard in my voice how much I loved it and she agreed that she would probably feel the same about it. We were lucky that we appreciated many of the same things. Over and over I wished she were there with me to experience all this great city had to offer.  But it was what it was, so I would scout it out and bring her there to see it for herself someday soon.

The battles at Maquinista raged on. Week after week, I would suit up in my dearly departed friend Lincoln's striped trousers and my white sleeveless tee with eyes painted on the front and back, with my paint spattered (um... covered) formerly black chucks and bizarre beaked masquera to take the stage as El Peligroso.  I felt very at home on stage doing my thing. And I truly made the most of it.  Aside from the live paintings we all were racking up from our performances, we would constantly be taken outside the city by our new Spanish friend, El Nino de las Pinturas, and the other graffiti writers from the area to paint massive pieces on concrete walls. This was not illegal activity though. So many areas in Spain were heavily covered with graff pieces and we drove out to these spots in a haze of hashish smoke and painted these huge integrated murals into nightfall. We left many a mark across the Spanish countryside and these were some of the most vividly memorable moments of an insanely colorful journey. I remain eternally thankful to El Nino and all his buddies for being our truest guides through their beautiful country.

I only hope that when El Nino makes it to NY as a result of winning the most battles in Spain, that I can return the favor. But as of now, I'm wracking my brain trying to come up with something just half as cool. Luckily everyone from Europe seems wildly impressed with NYC so I guess that will work in our favor. But I get the feeling that even in my own city, El Nino will be showing me around a little bit.

It was an insane task I had set before myself.  But you know - when you decide you're gonna do something - you just take it step by step until it's done.  It was coming down to the wire and I had a ridiculous pile of things to sort out before leaving.

(suffolk street)

One: I had to move out of my apartment of 15 years.  This was the big one.  There were other loose ends and some of them were nothing to shrug at but this, without question was the big daddy-o. I had to do this in enough time so that the landlord could look the place over and the lawyers could do their thing so that I could get my buy-out check in the bank before I got on the plane.  I won't get into the details of the move - there are few writers on the planet who could make this back-breaking grunt work seem interesting and I'm not about to assume I'm one of them.  But it's safe to say that the two weeks leading up to my departure were some of the most humid and ease-defying days of the year. I was literally slipping on my own sweat which had spattered on the marble steps of the tenement stairwell while carrying furniture and overstuffed boxes down 4 flights over and over and over ad nauseum.  I was soaked with sweat and exhausted to the bone for days on end.

(the art fair)

At the same time, we were wrapping up the art fair on Governors Island. And this is more work than most folks imagine.  120 rooms of exhibition needed to come down in a few days and the site would be emptied, patched, painted and cleaned.  I needed to make sure there was enough wood cut, logged, split and stacked in East Granby for my roommates to make it through the first months of winter in my absence. And with 2 days left in the month, I hadn't paid the mortgage. I had about $60 in cash and nothing in the bank. I needed a couple grand to magically appear in the next 2 days. Actually since the check had to be overnighted to arrive before the 1st, and I was leaving on the 28th, it needed to happen now.

(harbor to guvs)

Against the "logic" of my past patterns of belief, I kept my cool. I rose above the persistent temptation to completely freak out over the fact that I didn't have the money and could slip into default on my loan. I knew that if I could just keep my mentality balanced for a few more days I would make it through.  Drenched in sweat and running from chore to chore, I kept my eyes on the prize, busily convincing myself that somehow, someway, it would all work out.  "It always does."  Just then I got an email from a friend. She had been at my last party on Suffolk Street and wanted to know about one of the paintings I still had hanging in the living room.

(swept)

We would make a deal. The art fair would get wrapped up.  The apartment would be swept clean.  The buy-out check would come through.  I would find a new housemate for the farm who would cut, log and stack all the wood for winter.  I would get new sturdy luggage.  I would pay all my bills, put all the temporary systems in place, say my goodbyes, hug and kiss my sweet Oriah, and leap headlong to JFK just in time to take my seat on the plane with a raging stress headache.

I had been doing way way too much in the past few weeks and had physically pushed myself ambitiously beyond my threshold.  But by some miracle, I had accomplished it all to the best of my abilities and with the pain in my head promising to subside, I'd settle into the uncomfortable straight-back seat of a humungous skyliner.

Through it all I had felt a presence pushing me - something timeless, vast and insistent was undeniably there to jettison me through this gateway. That's what it felt like.... like I was blasting through a violently spiraling portal - willingly thrusting every limb into the unknown - and I was being helped through.  I was at war with my past and shedding it fast.  No wonder my head was pounding. But I was being guided. I could feel it. There's little possibility I could have done this all on my own. I could tell just what was happening - this deep shift - and I was fully accepting a vague yet indeclinable ride downstream.

There was no rest to be had on my flight. 6 movies, 4 tv shows.  I tried to make it through Tree of Life but just couldn't. I could see the beauty in it but really. Get over yourself.  It was unbearable. I watched a film called Limitless about a drug that makes you super confident and sharp. I liked the premise and stuck it through. The Borgias was pretty fun - especially for you 'Jeremy Irons' fans. Bla bla bla I didn't catch a wink.

My head light and swirling gently, I sifted through the first pages of Castaneda's Tales of Power (a travel gift from Oriah)  in a cafe in the Madrid airport where Sean Bono came to meet me. We met up with Ill Spoken and Don Rimx - both from Brooklyn. Ill is an MC who was just passing through Madrid on his way to kick off a big tour in Barcelona. I remembered him after realizing he'd cut all his dreads off. He had MC'd two ArtBattles I'd been in... Stuytown and Brooklyn Museum.  Rimx (pronounced: Rhyme X) was a mellow Puerto Rican cat with long braids hanging down from under his ball cap.  We met on the common ground of being exhausted and out of place.

We shuffled all our crap over to the Citreon minivan rental and hit the road.  On our initial approach to Madrid, we were all amazed at the dark grey cloud of heavy smog that hung ominously over the city. It was weird to voluntarily drive straight into it, but we did and I could feel the filth of the city integrating with the cells of my tissue stream, making me one with this dark imperial monstrosity of carcinogenic and magnificently delicious activity. We eventually arrived at the hotel to drop our bags.  It was in a mall.

The mall, I was soon to understand, was where we would be battling for the next two weeks - a short drive outside of the center of Madrid.  The excitement I felt for being on this amazing adventure took another kiltered skwarnk (like during the smog realization) as I tilted my head and squeezed an abnormally profound questioning crinkle onto my face.

"Why a mall?" I asked myself. "Why a mall?"  I'm a true stalwart from the old 'everything for a reason' school of thought so...  I just had to stop and ask myself one more time... "Why a mall?"

(fountain spectacle de ParqueSur)

I found a crappy map of Madrid covered with hotel and El Corte Ingles logos - so much so you could barely see the streets - and I tore out the section containing the center of the city.  I had been here before. I was in Madrid twice in 2005 and I remembered it very fondly. I recalled immediately the visceral earthiness of the people - ruddy, proud, dark and beautiful. I remembered the main streets like Atocha, Alcalà and Gran Via. I remembered my favorite street - Fuencarrall.  I remembered how everybody - no really everybody - smoked like chimneys.  As I watched a fully pregnant gal in her 40s pull heartily on a cigarillo, it all started coming back to me.  I remembered the jamón, the tinto, the tortillas and the tapas. I remembered the Prado and the Reina Sofia. And I wanted to experience it all once again.  Of all the places in the world, I felt like I had been literally picked up and sent here to return to Madrid.  I had no option other than to enjoy it to the fullest.

One by one, the other members of the crew began to show up.  Ill Spoken had already gone on his way - maybe we would hook up with him in Barcelona. Along with Sean and Rimx, there came Max Bode and Max Neutra. There was Flaco Navaja, our proudly NueroRican MC and the Spanish graffiti artist from Granada, El Niño de Las Pinturas.

(Max Bode, Flaco y Rimix)

We all began to realize right away - that everyone here was pretty damn alright.  There were folks from all walks of life. Max Bode, the blonde guy born and raised in the west village came in with his twisted cartoony style.   Max Neutra - a successful artist in his own right from LA - was on the trip to document and network the event.  Sean - hailing from New Jersey - was the ring leader running the show. Flaco was from Spanish Harlem - an actor and singer whose easy-going upbeat vibe was reflected all around him.  And Rimx, when he wasnt beat-boxing or talking smack in Spanglish, would settle into his quiet, poker-faced position, quickly earning him the name, Default.  He seemed to just reset into Default mode.  This was our crew and one was just as bewildered as the other to be all thrown together into this unpredictable adventure.  Not a diva or prima donna in the bunch. Che bueno!

We tore into Madrid, devouring the food, the sights and the street life that so richly swept through the royal ciudad at night. We watched as the plazas all filled to the brim night after night with earthy, beautiful young people drinking and carousing.  These same plazas were patrolled by Chinese and Indian friends proffering ice cold cervezas to the revelers - "Super Fria!"  And they were kept busy. The tall street lamps glowed from every corner of these ancient and perfectly disheveled squares. There were cyclists spinning their wheels in twists and stunts that baffled the simple understanding of physics we held in our guts. Couples with raven black hair and colorful clothes grappled passionately in the dark.  Kids rolled by on skateboards and futballs pattered announcements across the worn sanded stone. An old white-bearded caballero perambulated his elderly female companion across the park in a wheel chair. A threesome of scrawny little dogs dashed rolling headlong after a rock thrown across the plaza for their amusement.

 (jamon galore)

 

We sat down for pizza in a cafe in my favorite spot, La Plaza de Los Dos de Mayo, and Max Bode opened his sketchbook for all of us to collaborate on a long foldout drawing. The waiter introduced himself to us. He was a graffiti writer known as Mars - just off the next day to Morocco for a 3 month residency of painting. He took a shine to us, buying us dinner and muchas cervezas.  We were pleasantly stunned by his blatant hospitality. We thanked him robustly.

The first battle at the mall - ParqueSur (which we quickly determined translated as South Park) - started with a bang.  Flaco stepped out on the stage where the canvases were all set to be attacked, and led in with an acapella salsa number to warm up the crowd. As he did, people began to stir, directing their attention and their feet to the source of his song.  Through the applause following, Flaco began to announce the rules of the game.

"Welcome to Art Battles - La Battella de Arte!"  He continued in a WWF/monster-truck voice announcing that artists had come from New York and were here to face the hometown heroes representing Madrid and that after two 40-minute sets, they - the audience - would decide the winner.

He gave us a count-down and the first artists were off and running - painting like locos to the blasting music.  There was a Spanish dj working behind the artists on stage.  There were 2 teams.  "NYC" - Max Bode and Don Rimx vs. "Madrid" - El Niño de Los Pinturas and 3TTman (a Frenchman living and painting in Madrid).  Bono and I were in the merch tent this first run, banging out stenciled t-shirts and small canvases for the crowd.  Armed only with a few spray cans and a matchstick, I turned out a volume of requests from gothic letters to fast portraits.

The crowd was into it and standing strong for the hometown heroes who took the win.  The audience dispersed and we began to break down the set. Within minutes, everything was packed up and the stage cleared. We shuttled all our gear up to the mall's storage area and headed out to Madrid in the minivan.  This would become our usual routine - put on a show, pack it up and get the hell out of the mall ASAP. Madrid was calling and we loved it.

The next day we were invited by El Niño and his friend, Seleka, to join them and a few other graff artists for a jaunt to an abandoned warehouse outside the city. We drove out through golden brown sprawling fields across gently rolling hills of olive trees until we pulled down a gravel road and swung the van through a clanging corrugated iron gate.
We drove right in to a massive warehouse/factory complex that seems to go on forever.  We walked through its abandoned rooms, massive wide open floors with natural light beaming in through the discarded debris that was strewn about.  Staircases creaked and then left us all dangling above a cement floor in mid-air.  We followed our guides as they brought us to a very long concrete wall where we all chose a section.  I'd never done a spray mural before - especially not with a crew of pros - but I felt like painting and it didn't matter if I had a dead fly and a bucket of mud... I was gonna make something big and crazy.  We tore into the wall for a few hours until, noticing the time, we blasted back across the fields to ParqueSur.

I ran to the stage in a hurry after I had just scoured the entire vast and endless corporate mecca of a mall for a print shop. This was the day of my first battle and I needed a source image. Apple Store? Check. Aldo? Check. G-StarRaw? Check. El Corte Ingles? Check. Print shop?  Copy shop?  Nada. So we had no source photo to work from. We wanted to paint Ganesh but all I had was the one inch tall metal figurine that Oriah had given me to travel with. He was meant to bring good fortune so I politely asked him if I could paint him. He didn't say "no" so along to the stage he came. I would try not to get any paint on him.

Sean and I were a team and we mixed his spray with my acrylic pulling a bright impasto Ganesh out of a violent azure and Prussian blue sky. El Niño and 3TTman did their mix of 'primal clown mask' and 'expressive portrait through Mandala portal' to take the prize again.  The hometown crowd was super supportive but in truth the Spanish artists' work looked great and they instantly functioned very well as a team. We were happy with our piece but we still needed to learn to work together. It was something neither one of us was any good at... yet.  A few times we did solo battles and after my visit to the Prado, I was stuck on the old maestros so, in the two 40-min sets we had, I busted out a pretty fun Velasquez tribute with heavy heavy impasto and made a big old mess all over the stage.

(after Velasquez)

After the show we again headed straight into Madrid where would again dine, drink and sponge up the rich nightlife of these regal streets.  And so it would go for the next few weeks.

(possibly the greatest unstaged photo of all time?)

Buenas Noches! :)

 

For the 4 millionth time, I methodically rattle the keys around in specific directions, allowing them to settle in their expected position in my hand, one last flip and snatch over the top and I’m in, to the hilt, one quarter turn clockwise - midnight to 3 and a click-thud creaks the heavy metal door to swing open into the living room.  The sun beams through the dirty windows and glows with cinematic slumber - dust particles trudging dazed across its clear channel of concentrated energy - vividly calling to attention the surface of the lamp, the sill and the bright corner of a painting.  The breeze through the screened windows surges with the opening door sending a crinkle of cellophane feather-rattling down the stairs.  The sound of horns blaring, huge trucks rumbling and loud conversation fills the modest room with the echoes of the tar-scarred corner below.  Daily for years it seems the crews begin with jackhammers promptly at 7am.  I have been violently shaken out of bed by these sonic invasions repeatedly and from the 4th floor I have watched as the worker bees in yellow plastic hats with giant road-cutting saws slice the scars every which way across Houston Street’s flesh.  

As I put down my keys, bags, whatever, I realize that we develop these mundane unconscious acts that are woven through the loom of our imagination to become real objects, places and situations... the repeated standard rhythms of day to day existence on the platform of physical being through the sensory lens.  Our habits, our patterns are code locked into form through the limitless network of our decision making processes.

I’ve made the same series of motions for over 15 years on a regular basis, like clockwork.  And soon, I will uproot that entire orgamism of deeply rutted synaptic links - by essentially erasing this realm from my reality.  But thats what we do when we move on in life.  We decide that it is time for a change and we step out into... lesser known territory.  

I look around the room, through all the stuff that's hanging on the walls, to another time, another paint color on the walls, different roommates, different friends, different lovers, different projects, different fears.  I see it all play out in high speed blurred abstraction with no meaning to anyone but me.  

I think to myself, “Man, its gonna be weird leaving here.  I’ve been here for 15 years.  I can’t believe I’m really gonna do it.”  And I almost don’t remember how it came to this.  But one thing is for sure... there was a big push from almost every area in my life for this to happen.  And we can all ignore the signs we are given like experts of espionage but if there is something that you really need to learn, the signs are gonna keep on coming until you get it or die resisting.  

And everything was pointing at me breaking out.  And then it all just fell together.  I leave end of September as the art fair on Governors Island draws to a close.  Somehow, adding incredible momentum as if to verify the aim of my decision, the trip to Spain that I won through Art Battles was extended from a week to a month and a week - including flight, room, per diem and a series of paid live painting events.  From Barcelona and Madrid, a swing through Italy to meet Oriah, then we head south to Ethiopia!  My imagination is sparked to ridiculous heights by the mere suggestion of it.  I know I have been aligned with this beautiful woman and her amazing family for a reason, I know there is something for me to find in Ethiopia.

At a certain point almost a year ago, I made a conscious decision to begin saying with conviction, that we are going to Ethiopia in the fall.  At first I didn’t believe myself - I couldn’t imagine how it would happen.  But I decided we would make it real.  Oriah’s father lives there and we have had an open invitation that we have yet to fulfill.  So I just kept thinking of it, wanting it and knowing that by thinking and wanting I would eventually create the most conducive environment for its manifestation.  Then suddenly, I am being flown to Europe on a paid live painting gig.  Wait a minute.  Who’s life is this?  Happily I hardly recognize it.

I have grown weary of the endless battle with financial abstracts that is the mysterious ladle that stirs the cauldron of New York.  But when you step away from New York, you have to ask yourself, “Is it really worth it?  What am I getting for all this?  I don’t really like this street, these corners, these people...  I mean yes, thats why I am in this big city - for the people.  The depth of complex networks of interaction in a city like New York is mind-boggling.  I have met and continue to meet every sort of wildly interesting character.  The energy on the streets on these summer nights is deliciously palpable.  Am I cursed to be a city dweller?  Is there a version of this that doesn’t grate so hard on my nerves?  Is there a place to raise kids someday?  Is there a patch of green grass or the splash of a tide that I could reach out to?  Where the hell should I go?”

I have really begun to wonder if I belong here any more.  Around the same time I closed my gallery on Ludlow Street, CBGB closed on Bowery.  Now I’m about to leave Suffolk Street and Mars Bar lies in ruins.  I popped inside a few nights ago to see what was going on behind the closed door.  They were ripping the entire place apart and saving all the pieces.  Hank knows what he’s got.  I spent an easy solid decade in that room, raising hell and legitimate questions as well as getting drunk, pushing boundaries and making a general nuisance of myself.  It was brilliantly depressing and macabre but we loved it.  The end of Mars clearly delineates the death of the East Village and for many - New York City.  I am actually trying to decide as we speak.

To leave a place you’ve slept in for the past 15 years, without a real plan, its kinda nuts - but essential and really fun at the same time.  The practical fact is I haven’t been operating as a portrait painter from a retail location for years and the small number of people who make it into my cave of a studio are few.  So I know I can work from anywhere.  And if I don’t pay rent and bills at yet another apartment for a while - that lightens my load quite a bit.  But can I leave New York?  Right now, in the blistering heat and humidity, in the wake of so much I have known, I would love to.  I need to travel, unravel. And everything is lined up for that to happen.  

So, sooner than I had anticipated, I am leaving this place.  And I’m not sure if I’ll be back.  Its an odd feeling.  But I have a bigger feeling that the world is wide open and not confined to a dirty American megalopolis.  I can easily see myself settling down in a sleepy Italian town for a decade.  If I’ve learned anything from busting ass in filthy old New York for the past 2 decades, its that I don’t want to bust my ass in an ugly place anymore.  I want to be surrounded by beauty, I don’t want this garbage ridden stench pit of a city to be my only option.   

I know now its all about what makes you happy in the moment.  That is the measure of success...  are you happy?  Do you love your surroundings, your environment?  Is this where you want to be?  The people around you...  are they who you want to be with?  The way you spend your time...  does it please you?  Your work?  Your play?  Are you doing enough to defend your true desires?????  Sometimes they can become lost in the brier patch of stagnant risk-free existence.  You can stay in your zone of competence, move to your zone of excellence but you’ll never be free till you risk it all to enter your zone of genius.  

This year's Governors Island Art Fair is turning into something unexpectedly interesting.  For the past few years we 4heads have opened 120 exhibition areas in the abandoned miltary bunkers of this surreal colonial outcrop.  And a vast majority of these dingy rooms were commandeered by individual art makers encouraged to work freely there in whatever form the vision takes. 

The first big change this year is the upswell in the aspect of festivity.  And thats always good.  The live music and performance art will happen on themed weekends (something like): Bluegrass, Gypsy Music,  which, mixed with the more austere large scale exhibition, can only be a breeding ground for more incredible possibilities. 
The record and film industries are being gradually dismantled by the everyman infusion of accessible technology.  How long before the art world does?  What will be the catalyst to activate the ultimate revelation that the emperors clothes are complete bullshit and that creativity belongs to all - and that all hierarchies are a sham.

http://www.artbattles.com/poll/vote

I need your help.  There were 4 of us painting in a competition at The Gym in Soho Friday night.  I and another artist made the finals and now the voting continues online.  We only have a few days to do this - I need your help to go to a live painting battle in Barcelona.

PLEASE FOLLOW THE LINK AND SEND ME TO SPAIN!!!!

A thousand thank yous to everyone!!  I will know ya love me when I'm trying to remember how to ask for the bathroom in Catalan. 

Thank you!!!!!! >>>  Zito

 

 

I moved into my apartment on Suffolk and Houston on my birthday - May 1st, 1996 - with my girlfriend at the time, Nikki.  We had lived previously in a mad state of chaos, in a rat-infested, junky-infested, insane party scene of a place on East 5th Street.  Those were lovely times, to be sure, but that is a whole other story.  Lets just say it got too crazy and being the lease-holder and being entirely fed up with the rampant irresponsibility of my compadres, I eventually threw down the gauntlet and announced we would all be moving on.  Everyone seemed a bit shaken up and more or less put off by this sudden proclamation but I was serious - we all had to go!  I was tired of policing the phone bill, dragging blacked-out corpses off the sidewalk and fielding complaints from the neighbors (our band practiced at ear-drum stabbing volume in, of course, the living room).  I have one such complaint in writing which I keep framed for nostalgia's sake.

So sooner or later everyone found a place of their own.  They all sort of paired off and got new places.  Except me.  I had drawn this line in the sand and it was just 2 weeks till move out day, and I was stuck floundering.  Every place I had seen was just too cramped - period.  We weren't coming from a palace, but we did have a huge living room and - how is this possible? - a front AND back yard.  It was pretty sweet.  But it was over.  We had driven it into the ground.  So where were we gonna go?

My beautiful art-punk goddess of a girlfriend was, in keeping with the culture of the nineties, strung out on heroin, and it had become my main goal in life to get her clean.  I asked a friend who was a shady real estate expert, who himself lived in what could have been a stunning apartment on east 10th street - were it not for his hoarding of books, newspapers, magazines and grocery bags.  You couldn't walk through the place.  You couldn't see the fireplace or get to the balcony, but he knew lots about how to get things done so I asked his advice. 

"How am I gonna find and apartment?" I asked.  "We have to move out in less than 2 weeks and I can't seem to come up with anything," I told him.

"Here's what you do, " he said.  "Go out and walk around the Village.  Beat the pavement on the streets you want to live and pop your head into every construction site you can find until you meet a landlord, super or building manager.  Thats the best way to get around the real estate agents.  You'll find a place that way."

So, trusting his expertise in spite of his insanity (he was a practicing thespian in that he could make $25/hour panhandling because his technique was so artful - the picture perfect illustration of the heights of East Village ambition).    I started walking around the blocks near where I lived.  I loved my neighborhood.  Being there already four years, I wasn't quite prepared to make the move over to Brooklyn that so many artists and musicians I knew had made.  I wanted to try Manhattan just a little bit longer. 

One afternoon Nikki and I poked our heads into a construction site on east 3rd.  I asked the guy there about the apartment they were renovating.  He told me there was a 62-person waiting list.  I couldn't even imagine what that meant.  It was just a crappy East Village apartment.  This was the time when things had truly begun to change.  And I just was starting to realize it.  Rents were sky-rocketing and everyone from everywhere else seemed to be moving into the East Village.  And it was becoming less and less of what it was when I had moved in just 4 years ago.  When I moved into east 14th street in 1992, I never ever saw a "well-dressed" person on the street.  Now you could see folks in suits and loafers popping out of apartment doors with their briefcase in hand - scurrying off to Mid-town for their 9 to 5.  It was even strange to see people rushing in our neighborhood, unless it was a couple of junkies doing that manic "fast walk" to cop a fix. 

Back out on 3rd street, I began to feel a little down.  "What had I done?"  I had a great apartment - a huge place - but it was $2000 a month and there was no way I could afford it.  I could do about $900 a month but I couldn't count on Nikki to bring in anything - she could never hold a job, much less get one. 

But I persisted.  We saw a tall older guy moving some stuff into a van and I asked him if he knew any landlords around.  He said, in a broken Russian accent, "That guy right there!  He is landlord.  You talk to heem.  He is Tomey."

"Tomey?" I said as I approached the other man.  "Hi are you Tomey?"  He turned his pleasantly weathered face my way.  He had incredibly light sparkling eyes and a thick shock of bright white hair that reminded me of my grandfather's.  It turned out his name was actually Tommy (not Tomey) and he was an old Italian man with an pleasant demeanor.  He smiled widely when he saw Nikki, with her pretty vintage dress, and bright red lips under her Marge Simpson vertical stack of blonde dreadlocks as she hopped about child-like in her cute rubber goulashes.  "Was this 80-year old guy flirting with my girlfriend?"  I couldn't have too surprised because Nikki had something about her - she exuded a playful sexuality that she could not hide.  I remember walking around with her and men, women, kids and dogs would all stare at her with wide-eyed wonder.  She was always being approached - even as I invisibly stood with her, holding her hand.  It was kind of annoying at times but I had considered the pros and cons and I was in it for the long haul.  "If they only knew what I have to deal with," I would often think.

He liked us - or maybe just her - and told us, "I have a place for you.  You're gonna love it."

"How much is it?" I asked being the practical one in this situation.

"Its $1100 a month," he said.

"Ah well, no thanks," I said.  "I can only afford 900."  I had looked at my finances to whatever degree I was capable of doing so at the time and determined $900 was the most I could do.  And that felt like a lot.  We were each paying about $360 on 5th street. 

"Come look at it first," he insisted.  "You will really love it.  And If you want to take it I'll give it to you for $1025."  He seemed to really want us to move in.

I was reluctant but we followed him across Houston street - a place I had rarely ever been at that time - and up into an old tenement building.  When he opened the door to the apartment, our eyes popped open and and our jaws dropped.  It was beautiful.  There were big windows in every room, flooding the place with light.  The ceilings were high and the parkay floors were gorgeous.  He knew we would love it and he seemed to be - in a very clean sweet way - vicariously enjoying the thrill of the idea with us. 

It was pretty obvious.  We would take it and find a way.  (I would find a way.)  Tommy picked up a Chinese food menu off the floor that had been slipped under the door and handed it to me.  
 

"Write your name and number down on this," he said.  "You're not gonna screw me for the rent, are you?"

"No!  Of course not!  This place is amazing!  Thank you so much!"

It seemed unreal.  I will never forget lying in bed with Nikki for the first time after having moved in, just staring straight up at the ceiling in disbelief.  We had really done it.  We had moved into an amazing new apartment.  We were so young and full of dreams.  We were gonna get her clean and have a perfect little domestic life here in this spacious, light-filled 2 bedroom apartment on Houston street.  We were on our way.  And we couldn't get over the feeling.  It was exhilarating.  

So here I am - sitting int he very same living room that I first walked into that day.  I've been here 15 years.  I have a great rent but my landlord has changed.  The sweet old fella who rented that place to me back in the day has since passed on and his son has taken over.  The son is different from his dad.  He's not a bad guy - but he ain't sweet - thats for sure.  He is a stressed out maniac who doesn't really want to be the real estate mogul that his inheritance has asked him to be.  He would rather be at his house in the Hamptons or cruising around LA in his giant SUV acting like a big producer or something.  Who knows.  But one thing is for sure.  He wants me out.

He has told me in no uncertain terms that he is sick of me being behind on my rent - which in all honesty had happened from time to time.  But even though I've paid up all my back rent and been right on top of it for a good while, he is not impressed.  So I've been getting these official letters from his lawyers - threatening me with trumped up charges - like "you do not actually reside at the premises" bla bla bla.  So I have a lawyer - an angel actually - who works with artists and helps them in situations such as this.  She slashes her rate and does whatever she can.  In this case - since he really wants me gone - and has threatened to (and I quote) "Lawyer me to death" - we are hoping to reach some sort of agreement. 

We've gone back and forth a hundred times trying to figure out the best arrangement.  At first I said, "Hell no I won't go!  This is my home and I'm not going anywhere."  He offered me a meager buy-out of the lease - hardly worth considering.  I dug my heels in, lost sleep and made myself miserable at the thought of leaving.  My landlord et al did not seem to budge.  I even spoke with him personally a couple of times and it went nowhere.

But at a certain point I asked myself, "What am I fighting for?  Sure its a great apartment.  That is, if you don't mind the incessant traffic, the insanely loud construction that has been going on since the day I moved in 15 years ago, the drunken reveler on the street at night and the crazed rants of domestic violence that erupt on a regular basis.  They tore down the building across from me and that was fun.  Now their working in there as well as tearing up Houston street - a giant linear cavity that stretches all the way along the length of the 2 blocks surrounding my apartment.  The jack-hammering and rumbling of machinery never ends.  The steel plates that cover the wound clank and bang as the monster trucks that barrel over them do the same.  Sometimes the noises have been so loud - that spine-crumblingly deafening "metal on metal" bang - that I have shot up in bed, eyes wide with fear, fresh from a dream into what I was sure for an instant was the Apocalypse.

And so I asked myself, "How long do I REALLY want to live here?  In eight years I'll be 50!  Is this where I see myself at that age?!" 

And of course suddenly I hear the echoes of a thousand fear-based East Village conversations that go something like this: "Never let go of that apartment.  All you have around here is your rent stabilized status.  If you let that go, you're done.  Where will you go?  Brooklyn?  New Jersey?  Harlem?  You'll be so disconnected you won't matter any more."  It goes on and on. 

I know its hard to find a new place.  But aren't we supposed to look forward to something better than what we have as opposed to feeling that this is the best its ever gonna be and - sure its not perfect but - its worth it!  Sure, its loud and smelly and on an ugly block with no sort of neighborhood.  And sure, the new people in the building won't even look at each other much less say hello.  But we are fighters!  and we hold onto what we've got for dear life!

But I've started to look at it in a different way.  I love my apartment.  And after 15 years I finally feel like I have it just the way I like it.  I have the right furniture, the right paint job, everything is in its place and it feels just right.  And guess what that means?  It means its time to go. So we are making arrangements that sometime in the next 3 years I will be gone.  Is it a little scary?  Of course.  But I don't wan to spend my time in court or with lawyers.  How insane is that???  That is not reality - not in my world.  I don't need to be tied to a specific building or set of rooms.  I know there are all sorts of amazing opportunities out there in this big city - this big world.  Maybe I'll travel for 5 years and have no apartment in NY.  Maybe I'll move to the country and become the farmer I was raised to be.  Maybe Oriah and I will move to Italy or Ethiopia.  I refuse to put limitations on myself.  And I refuse to base my future movements on a foundation of fear - the fear of lack.  What if this is the best I can ever do?  I should keep it just in case!  Bullshit.

I realized something about myself.  I can take this circus anywhere.