Perhaps it was the democratic nature of public transportation that influenced Zephyr to take up graffiti, an art form accessible to all. “It feels free to me because it is. It’s the art of the people. Anyone can do it. Everyone sees it,” Zephyr mused in a recent interview with Trigger Magazine’s publisher, Liberation Iannillo.

Graffiti exists, according to Zephyr, in contrast to most of the art world. “Art, and specifically the so-called ‘art world’ exist in an elite never-never land. Art in the west is presented as something for those who can afford the luxury of dallying in it…I am a purist, and I don’t believe this is how things should be. Art needs to be for everyone. It has to be public….So I’m doing my part to change it, one graffiti piece at a time.”

Zephyr is one of the best known names in the graffiti-writing world. His career began in the late 70's – just after the first wave of the guerilla art form. But in the fast-paced world of graffiti art, he and his young friends found that by the time they wanted to contribute, many of their idols’ interests had shifted - some had even soured to the art form. “It was a complete mind-fuck, and it gave us pause. But only for a moment. We were already intoxicated with the act of writing, so we were not about to be put off.” So Zephyr and his friends had to find their own way in a landscape just recently carved out. “I’d have to say that for me and some of my cohorts like Revolt, a major turning point was when we decided to leave the past behind and form our own writing crew, RTW (Rolling Thunder Writers).”

Zephyr’s graffiti writing crew were focused on train painting and street tagging – activities that required stealth. “We fancied ourselves kind of sneaky and such. Of course, we really weren’t sneaky at all, being that we were longhaired freaks. But that’s another story…In the 70s, being a graffiti writer had no sex appeal and no commercial potential, and you did not tell anyone you were doing it. In many cases, not even our non-graffiti friends knew we did it, and sometimes not even our girlfriends (and certainly not our parents). The ‘graffiti artist hero’ thing is an 80's invention.”

If it wasn’t cool, it was at least peopled with interesting characters. While Zephyr collaborated briefly in the early 80's with renowned Lower East Side artist Jean-Michel Basquiat on a backdrop for a music video, it’s their friendship that he best remembers. “The backdrop we did for Clem Burke's band The Colors was just a one-off thing, no big deal. But I have much fonder, older memories of him coming by my place on 89th Street back in the late 70's, with a 40 ounce Rheingold beer. We’d sit and talk and smoke joints and draw cartoons with Radiograph pens. Damn, I’m getting sentimental here, but those were some good times.”

But things are different now for graffiti artists and the city that is their canvas. In Zephyr’s view, New York has become “a place that’s too expensive for its own inhabitants, designed by urban planners from other parts of the world for the inhabitation of people from other parts of the world. If you are part of this dying breed known as “native New Yorkers,” this city no longer gives a rat’s ass about you or what you think… but if you are a tourist from Kansas coming to New York, there’s a bunch of Starbucks, Disney Stores and Imax theaters so now you’ll feel right at home because it looks and feels just like the shitty mall in your town.”

And the commercial aspects of graffiti art that began in the 80s continue even now. “In today’s money-driven world, it’s tough not to question the motivation behind some street artists… discovering that many of these artists have simply used the streets as a premeditated vehicle to get into the WWW (what I call the ‘white-walled world’) is tragic to me.” But that’s not enough to negate the beneficial aspects of graffiti: “We need more public art, so anyone working unsanctioned on the streets is welcome, and it’s good news that they’re out there, taking the risks and doing it, despite what their motivations might be.”

Nowadays Zephyr writes and lectures about visual culture – advertising, tattooing, skateboard and surf culture, psychedelic art, album covers, comics and graffiti. He does some logo design, mostly for smaller independent companies. And he stays on top of his game with frequent “aerosol adventures” (in fact, he was out painting the night before this interview). Zephyr is also included in the New Museum's "East Village USA" exhibition which runs until March 19th of this year.

Despite some disappointment with the current scene, Zephyr argues that we’re living in an important moment for graffiti. “I’m feeling that we are in the midst of a very strange and interesting seismic shift in terms of attitudes. As best as I can tell, the ‘mainstreaming’ of graffiti is having a fascinating effect…The bottom line is this: if the basic person on the street is starting to think of graffiti as less of a horrendous and dangerous assault on their person (which was the 80's mindset) and more as an accepted part of the visual matrix, for me as a graffiti writer, this is good news. Getting shot at by vigilantes was very unnerving.”

On The Web | www.zephyrgraffiti.com
More About Graffiti | www.at149st.com