T.DEE on Walls vs. Canvas

I had two reasons for picking up a copy of Roger Gastman & Caleb Neelon, The History of American Graffiti: 1) It presented itself as being the first comprehensive history of the modern graffiti movement in America. 2) I leafed through its table of contents and saw two entries for New Jersey; I looked at them and saw names I recognized from walls I’d photographed, ZAR, KEMOS, RIME, and T.DEE, among them. The second told me that the first claim might actually pan out.

And so far it has. So far I’m a 100+ pages into this 400-page book and love it. Whether or not I’ll actually read it page-for-page, that’s another question and doesn’t really reflect on the book. As I tend not to read such books from cover-to-cover. I read them for my purposes, which are what they are and they change from time to time.

One thing I wanted from this book was a context for the work I’ve been photographing for the past five years. Though Gastman & Caleb don’t say much about New Jersey graffiti – after all, they’ve got to cover Pittsburgh, Hawaii, San Diego, Puerto Rico, Baltimore, Nashville, Detroit, Chicago and on and on. So I wouldn’t have expected much on New Jersey, much less Jersey City. But I got enough to make some connections and I assume people in other cities have gotten the same, some connections to the larger narrative.

But enough of that. This is about T.DEE. As I said, I’ve photographed some of his work on local Jersey City walls:

It turns out that, like many writers, T.DEE has a Facebook page and a webpage where, among other things, you can find the write-up he gave to Gastman and Neelon about Jersey City graffiti. One of the most interesting things I found, however, was in an interview published at Element-Tree. He was asked about the transition from walls to canvas:

I'd have to say it's been a bit of a rocky road for me because I tend to see the two as being completely different. I mean, think of the physical movements of your body alone when painting a wall that's 15 feet long by 7 feet tall. It's so much different from the dynamics of sitting in a room painting a canvas. For me I've also never adapted well to the concept of painting graffiti on canvas the way I might do a blackbook or something. To me the size is too confining and it just doesn't have the same effect as the piece that's 15 X 7. I mostly tend to stay away from that. Much of the stuff I do on canvas has very little to do with graffiti. I think this is why I say the transition has been rocky for me. It's as though by some choice I can't remember making, I refuse to draw from my graffiti past when approaching a canvas and sometimes it causes me to wonder if I'm not always starting all over again. I think it's good though because as an artist it keeps me searching for the next thing and really kinda illustrates how fully I commit to change within my work.

Makes sense to me. What little graffiti-style work I’ve seen on canvas (or small boards) hasn’t been very convincing. Scale matters, even to the viewer. Certainly to the viewer. When you’re looking at a large out-door piece you’re moving around. You may come upon it at an angle; you move to where you can take it all in, straight-on; then you step closer for this or that detail. And then you leave, at another angle.