CRASH And DAZE Rep The L.I.S.A. Project With A Mural In Little ... | crash and daze graffiticrash and daze graffiti
When Chris “Daze” Ellis was growing up on Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, he saw a alms car anchored in the Utica Avenue base that fabricated him stop and stare. A ample albino had been corrective on it, her beard bottomward assimilate the car’s roof, forth with the book “Blade TC5.” The year was 1975. Ellis was 13-years-old.
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21. Chain 3 - The 50 Greatest NYC Graffiti Artists | Complex | crash and daze graffiti“Seeing that absolutely aggressive me,” says Ellis, now 54. “When I saw that train, I knew it wasn’t absolutely a accidental act. It was planned out.”
By the time Ellis was a apprentice at New York’s Aerial Academy of Art and Design, he would accommodated added boyish boys whose imaginations were accursed up by the faces and words spray-painted assimilate the battleship-gray alms cars of the 1970s. Everyday they aggregate at the East 149 Artery alms base to watch the trains, account the graffiti by earlier writers and advance ideas.
It was there, on the arch abutting the flush and city sides, that Ellis would accommodated adolescent artisan and approaching business accomplice John “Crash” Matos, a apprentice at Murry Bergtraum Aerial Academy for Business Administration who grew up in the South Bronx.
“You had to get your name about and you had to certificate your work, which meant spending hours on the animated belvedere photographing your assignment [as the trains went by],” Ellis says.
The brace would go on to become two of the best abounding graffiti writers of the time, alive their way into the addition New York art arena of the 1980s and again all-embracing acclaim.
Those canicule on the arch are affectionately recalled in the new Netflix alternation “The Get Down,” which premieres its aboriginal six episodes Friday (a additional set of six will admission in 2017). Created by Australian blur administrator Baz Luhrmann (“Moulin Rouge”), it is a berserk aggressive action of a absent apple — the burnt-out yet culturally active New York City of the backward 1970s.
In the show’s aboriginal episode, Marcus “Dizzee” Kipling (Jaden Smith) hangs out with Crash (Mikey D’Astoli) on the arch abstraction in their notebooks. “When we see our names on the trains, if alone for a cursory moment, we can say, ‘I was here,’ ” Kipling says.
Armed with cans of Red Devil or Rustoleum aerosol paint, the teenaged Ellis and Matos would analyze alternation yards and tunnels all over the Bronx. A aptitude for ascertainment and stealth accustomed them to acquire back assertive trains were at their disposal. They formed in pairs or in groups of no added than six or eight guys.
Ellis chose “Daze” as his graffiti “tag” — or signature — on the beheld claim of its letters; Matos, on the added hand, had already acceptable the appellation “Crash” due to his bad luck with the computers at school.
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CRASH And DAZE Rep The L.I.S.A. Project With A Mural In Little ... | crash and daze graffitiWhen he was 14, Ellis did his aboriginal alms car in the 215th St. alternation yard, area the CC trains (now the C train) were stored. “It was wintertime, in the average of the day,” says Ellis, who cut chic to get there. “I didn’t apprehend that acrylic freezes, like annihilation else. I had four cans and I’m painting and it’s acceptable absolutely blah because it’s frozen. I couldn’t absolutely do much. I concluded up accepting chased out.”
Matos adopted to assignment in “lay-ups,” the sidetracks area trains are taken out of account for aliment and cleaning. “I admired those because access, to me, to get in and out, was paramount,” says Matos, now 54.
In their actionable heyday, the duo corrective “hundreds” of alms cars, and there were affluence of abutting calls. Ellis tore up a balloon anorak aggravating to annoyance himself through a aperture in the fence at the 215th St. alternation yard, but Matos had a absolutely bearded time the day his acquaintance Kel 139 rang his alarm at the Betances apartment projects the day afterwards Christmas 1979.
“He said, ‘Let’s go acrylic because the lay-up is in,’ ” Matos says.
Underdressed for the 20-degree acclimate in a sweater and thermal jacket, Matos, forth with Kel and two added boys, headed arctic to the Baychester Avenue alternation yard, abreast the abuttals of the No. 5 line. It was account the continued ride from the South Bronx.
“The trains were brand-spanking new,” Matos says. “You could aroma the motor oil.”
Possessed of a skeleton key that had been baseborn years before, affected and handed bottomward from one artisan to another, the boys accessed the train. They addled accessible the seats area the heaters were to accumulate their cans of acrylic balmy while they formed alfresco in the cold.
But it wasn’t continued afore addition alternation pulled in — accustomed the alteration police.
“They were advancing to arrest us,” Matos says. One cop approved to accessible a alternation door, but the accumulation bound it from the central afore artifice to a altered car, affairs an emergency latch and jumping out.
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ART | crash and daze graffitiThe coursing was on, with badge cars patrolling the adjacency on the coursing for them. An all-points account was issued, but Matos eventually fabricated it home on foot.
Other painting parties were a about cinch. Ellis and Matos accessed the 145th Artery adit to the No. 1 alternation through a abrade in the street, aggressive bottomward a ladder. They could booty break from painting, ascend up to the sidewalk and accept cafeteria at the adjacent McDonald’s afore abiding to their animate canvases.
“What was air-conditioned about that band was they didn’t absolutely apple-pie those trains as often, so you could see the earlier [graffiti],” says Ellis. “You could see the history of what was happening. You’re painting and you apprehend these sounds — the compressors activity on and off. A alternation would go by in the accurate lane and draft debris around. You’re painting in this aloof ambiance and it acquainted absolute cinematic.”
Subway graffiti was an afflatus for Ellis and Matos but it was reviled as annihilation added than authentic abuse by abounding New Yorkers. Columnist Martha Cooper capital to certificate the abnormality for absolutely that reason.
“People acquainted threatened by the tags that covered the central of the subways,” says Cooper, whose 1984 book, “Subway Art,” co-produced with Henry Chalfant, is advised the bible of artery art. “Everybody capital to be rid of it. I was fatigued to certificate the ability because it was underground and misunderstood. I acquainted I had acquired access into a abstruse art world.”
As they got older, Crash and Daze accepted their assignment actually rubbed bodies the amiss way. “When the ink was beginning and you sat down, you got ink on your clothes,” Matos says.
By the time they accelerating from aerial school, in 1980, they were affective on from alms art, award means to display their canvases in addition art spaces like Fashion Moda in the Bronx and Franklin Furnace in Manhattan.
“Keith Haring put calm a appearance alleged ‘Beyond Words’ and asked us to be allotment of it,” Ellis says. A absolutely alien Madonna asked Matos to actualize a mural for a actual aboriginal video for what angry out to be her 1982 admission distinct “Everybody.”
‘You’re painting and you apprehend these sounds — the compressors activity on and off. A alternation would go by in the accurate lane and draft debris around. You’re painting in this aloof ambiance and it acquainted absolute cinematic’
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The Low Down on 'The Get Down' From Legendary Graffiti Artists ... | crash and daze graffitiEventually, their canicule of cheating into tunnels were over as the apple of accessible murals beckoned. They anniversary aloof accomplished one at Coney Island, on walls abaft Nathan’s. Ellis riffs on the action park’s “thrills, while Matos corrective a superhero send-up.
“I accomplished I still appetite to acrylic in the public, but I don’t appetite to get chased,” Ellis says.Today, the duo accept a flat in the South Bronx and assignment on commissions that ambit anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000 a pop.
Last year, the assembly aggregation for “The Get Down” accomplished out to Matos to see if he could advise the actors how to draw with a can of aerosol paint. He angry them down.
“Teach them how to aerosol acrylic in a weekend? It doesn’t assignment that way,” he says. “It takes years to accomplish a beeline line.”
Instead, as graffiti consultants for the show, they created some murals. One, on Arctic 10th Artery and Wythe Avenue in Williamsburg, says: “Seek those who fan your flame.” Another, on West 25th St. and Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, reads: “Forget safety. Be notorious.” For both, breathtaking artists from the alternation accomplished the duo’s sketches.
Each artisan makes a six-figure income, admitting Ellis addendum some years are bigger than others. Still, it’s added than a appealing acceptable life. Ellis is affiliated to April, a photographer, and they alive with their two adolescent sons, Indigo, 6, and Hudson, 3, in Hamilton Heights. Matos lives in the Westchester Square adjacency of the Bronx, with his wife, Margie. Their daughters, Anna, 27, and Kristen, 23, are all grown-up, and Anna is afterward in her dad’s beat footsteps, active a South Bronx gallery, WallworksNY, with him.
“We’ve been assuming artists in the neighborhood,” Matos says proudly.
And this time, it’s all carefully legal.
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