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News Channel 5 Interview : The Plus Side of Nashville!
August 2009
http://www.newschannel5.com/Global/story.asp?S=5373517
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Graffiti artists score rare gallery showcase
THE TENNESSEAN • May 24, 2009
By Will Ayers
Sera Davis had an emergency on her hands. It was late April, and the owner
of The Showroom, an art gallery in the Arcade downtown, had just learned
some of the art for her May show wasn't going to be done in time. She had
days to pull a show together; normally she would have months.
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Scrambling for an idea, she thought back to when she lived in Brooklyn and remembered how dynamic the graffiti art scene was there, how she had long wanted to showcase urban artists in a gallery setting. She combed through her contacts and called Quincy Crutchfield, a Nashville art-scene acquaintance who has friends in the graffiti world, and asked him for help.
"There's this whole subculture to Nashville and other cities that doesn't really get a formal venue, so why don't we bring it off the street and into the gallery and put it on the wall and see what happens?" she remembers thinking.
Crutchfield made a few calls, and soon Davis had assembled a very unusual exhibition: the Urban Project graffiti art show, now showing through June 3. There hasn't been a show solely of Nashville graffiti art in this city since Ruby Green hosted one in 2000.
"These people don't show at formal venues and they are self-taught; they're complete outsider artists," says Davis.
The centerpiece of the exhibit is a painting by local graffiti artist Jon Judkins, who paints under the name Ragoe, on one of the gallery's walls. It took him about 10 hours over three days to create Shoulda Done It On Your Wall, a busy, vibrating collection of stylized text known as a "piece."
Pieces are the most refined part of a graffiti artist's body of work; the totem pole starts at the lowly tag, a scrawled set of letters that's more a mark of territory than an artistic statement. Above that there are throw-ups, tags with shading and color within the text.
Some graffiti artists, also known as writers, design their pieces to include scenery and figures, but Judkins, who's been painting around Nashville for 11 years, usually sticks to a text template that he riffs on.
"It's not something completely original every time I do it," he says. "I just switch up things here and there. I don't really have a plan before I do it."
After this show wraps up, Judkins will drive down to Manchester, where he and about 50 other graffiti artists from across the country will paint a mile-long wall on the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival grounds. It's a good chance to swap ideas, he says, and Bonnaroo is paying for the paint.
Alongside Judkins' work at The Showroom are graffiti paintings by local artists Riet and Nathan Brown, among others, as well as jewelry by Crutchfield.
Working with Nashville artists is an anomaly for Davis, who typically brings in work from out of town, but that's what a time crunch will do for you — not that it's a bad thing.
"It turned out beautifully," she says, "considering the
show came together in less than five days."
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THE TENNESSEAN • Sunday, July 6th, 2008
