Graffiti Takes on High Art: Interview with Roger Gastman

Interview of Roger Gastman by The Wall Street Journal:

Writer and former graffiti tagger Roger Gastman has turned his love of the spray arts into a lifelong career. At 19, he sold graffiti supplies, later founded a boutique media agency that specializes in street culture, and as a 33-year-old, co-authored “The History of American Graffiti” with graffiti artist Caleb Neelon. The book chronicles the history of graffiti in more than 25 cities. Most recently, Gastman co-curated an exhibition at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) entitled “Art in the Streets.” It’s the first major U.S. museum survey of graffiti and street art. Speakeasy spoke with Gastman about graffiti as art and his book.

The Wall Street Journal: I understand you have first-hand experience with graffiti. Where did you paint?

Roger Gastman: I ran around Washington D.C. area in the early 90s to the mid-2000s, which is how I met many of the people featured in the book. I did traditional letter-based graffiti, painting freight trains, subways and various spots around the city. Then I would travel a lot to meet other writers and paint in their spots. Go to see a concert in Milwaukee for a long weekend and paint some graffiti while I was there.

When you say “writers,” that’s what you call other graffiti artists, right?

Yeah, local graffiti artists.

How did you get your start as a “writer?”

I grew up listening to hardcore punk rock music. Everybody I met had a tag, and I thought, well, I guess I need to also. So I started writing graffiti. It was all related to the music and straight edge [subculture of hardcore punk that advocates abstinence from drugs and alcohol]. Little did I know it’s part of a much larger world. Lot of my friends got into trouble and got into something else. For whatever reason, I stuck with it.

Your co-author mentions loving the adrenaline rush. How much of graffiti is done for the thrill of it?

There’s all kinds of different adrenaline rushes attached to it. From doing a really sketchy spot and getting away from it to seeing the underpass where you did a piece of graffiti or getting a photo three months after you painted something on the side of a freight train from across the country, in the mail from a friend.

Have you ever worked in the “heavens?” I know taggers in Los Angeles will lower themselves from freeway overpasses so they can scrawl their names on freeway signs. Continue…