At one point my graffiti was strictly about Indigenous resistance – spray it, don’t say it. Years later I realized I wasn’t as angry as I used to be.
I stopped writing a specific graffiti name and started writing conscious messages that eventually turned into affirmations. It was a trip, I put myself through art therapy without realizing it. Around the same time, I was learning to communicate emotions through abstraction.
I was diagnosed with bipolar & schizophrenia some years ago and had been struggling to do anything off of antidepressants. That’s not exactly something you want to publicize either, you know? So my support system at the time was a little shot. I felt like it was more of a label placed on me than something I recognized & resonated with. When enough became enough, I decided all of that was just noise. I quit everything cold turkey and resorted back to traditional Native healing and spiritual practices, and by extension, Native themes in my work.
I remember a big turning point while naming a piece “Elevation, Not Escapism.” It wasn’t until I started including my elder’s teachings, and returned to painting from my roots, that the non-indigenous art world began to notice my work.
My babysitter’s boyfriend was a writer & b-boy from LA; I was taught graffiti while learning to speak English. Like myself, he was also a Native American abstract artist who did most of his work with spray paint. Later in high school my friend, whose father was a famous Native American painter, invited me over and I was immediately re-inspired by his work. There was heavy Native American iconography but it still felt street. I knew when it was my time to do ART on a canvas of my own, it would look like something between the two of them with my touch.
My reservation (Navajo) is larger than most, it touches 4 states. AZ, NM, CO, UT. I’ve noticed a lot of paintings on our water towers. It’s different from traditional graffiti, not so much letter-based, and if it is it’s in Navajo with Navajo iconography. But most art scenes have taken place outside the rez, in border towns like Flagstaff, Winslow, & Gallup. More younger artists have been bum-rushing Santa Fe, Burque, and La Phoeniquera lately.
I moved away from the reservation at age 5 and never moved back. My first day in Winslow, Arizona, I stumbled upon a poppin dance battle and electro-funk gig in my neighborhood. I didn’t even know what to call it, but street/hip-hop culture influenced me heavy. And I noticed every sub-scene under that umbrella had a different zeitgeist & flavor to it.
Around 2000, a first Friday art movement started to brew in Phoenix. Every month, hundreds of artists opened up their apartments as personal galleries. And all the after-hour art parties that came with that extended ’till the sun came up. When the first high rise was built and local art organizations teamed up with the city, all that slowly started to die.
That’s when I left for New Mexico – Burque first, but I was all over, and before all that I lived in the Bay Area for many years. Eventually, I moved to Las Vegas and started taking flights to Miami, Portland, and LA because flying from there was so cheap. I’d also drive all over the Southwest DJing and live painting, selling my art. I had a foot in many worlds, both taking and leaving behind inspiration in every location I tapped into.
By the time the pandemic slowed down, I was paying rent at 3 different locations: DTLA Arts District where I had my “Boogie Gallerie,” Phoenix, Arizona where I had my warehouse art studio, and I had an upstairs Gallery in the plaza of Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was a crazy couple of years living like that. I shut down everything to live in Phoenix for my family, but I love secretly staying in Los Angeles because the culture inspires me the most. I’m filming a documentary in Rhode Island right now so I fly back East monthly, and even further East, I had an Artshow in Bristol, UK last year. I’m really trying to stay in one place right now, but now that I’m directing films, I’m going wherever I need to tell a story.
I attended design college and have been doing graphic design since 2001. Over 20 years later, I found myself doing municipal design gigs with the Phoenix Suns & The Super Bowl.
I did graffiti from age 6-26 (1985-2005), struggled professionally for about 10 years (2005-2015), and finally got a big art commission to finish 80 paintings for a hotel in 2016. I’ve been going hard since then.
I used to paint using house paint, acrylics, sprays, mean streaks, oil pastels, charcoal, colored pencils… One time I used roofing tar. You can really create with anything. I love Ramellezzee’s ideology of “gothic futurism” and all his contemporaries; Dondi, Doze Green, Phase 2, Vulcan definitely got me on one, Futura 2000… But being from the Southwest, the West Coast has had a bigger influence on my approach, most notably Chaz Bojórquez followed by the whole LA graffiti scene – K2S, UTI, MTA, CBS, MSK, AWR, TKO, OFA, STP… I’m sure I forgot a few, but that’s off the top. My crews from the Southwest TNR & FOF have always had my back.
My inspirations have expanded to include modern & conceptual art movements, a lot of architecture & interior design. Lately I’ve been on event designing – new ways of creating stages and runways, the environments for music and art events. I can’t forget the Native American artists that inspire me: Norval Morrisseau, T.C. Cannon, R.C. Gorman, Dan Namingha, David Johns, Tony Abeyta, Joe Maktima, as well as my Medicine Paint Conglomerates and current contemporaries.
I used to hate talking about my achievements because my paintings derive from graffiti, I never got into art so I could flaunt. But it is necessary so people understand where you’ve been and where you’re going. I guess I understood that when I landed that art direction gig for the Super Bowl… Lil Wayne’s crying cause he’s not performing halftime, people cried when they saw Native motion graphics at the game entrance <haha>. But it was the most eyes I’ve ever had on my ART. It was surreal and exciting. I needed to feel that.
These days my art is about finding solutions to social or internal problems organically, aligning with your soul’s purpose. I make paintings, handle art direction for several clients (from grassroots to corporate MFs), just had a crazy fashion show at the 1st Inaugural Indigenous Fashion Week in Santa Fe, and am currently filming a documentary around matriarchy. I’m making all genres of music for a movie I’m writing & I’m planning another Sacred Cypher event for the community this Winter – all that to say I don’t stick to one medium, theme, or discipline.
I’m Diné (Navajo). Traditionally, our tribal community revolves around ceremonial song and dance, and we use art & storytelling to heal ourselves and each other. I find new parallels between my Indigeneity and how I choose to live creatively every day.
My art is about working through generational trauma & my new ideas are the elevation that connection has brought to my life.
That A24 Quannah painting was inspired by the Andy Warhol x Basquiat collabs. It’s part of a pop art style I call ‘hypechief’ which has to do with counter-culture & culture jamming, very cease & desist themed. I took pop culture & pop art, Native humor & iconography, and spun off some larger brand logos to represent Native people in spaces we haven’t been let into yet. I painted that collection in one night; Heard Museum Indian Market was coming up that weekend and a few people from out of town asked if anything was going on the night before. So I said f*ck it and ran an art show at the gallery the next night with all new original paintings. I went home and made a flyer on some cowboy & Indian sh*t, a Native warrior punching John Wayne called “John Wayne’s Teeth” <haha>, and busted out a collection before the sun came up. I played songs & scenes from Smoke Signals too, something funny for a bit of a pre-party to that weekend. Museums don’t really put on many non-traditional Native artists, myself included, so I did a rez meme, magazine cover art show!
As a DIY artist, I got my name out there by finding venues to rent for the night and self-promoting art shows, hoping that people pull up. There were a lot of ups, other times downs. I also frequented shows, 99 percent of the time not even being on the bill. I just wanted to surround myself with art. You can still catch me at Miami Art Basel, Complex Con, Museum of Graffiti, Cntrl Gallery, Mirus, Super Chief, Subliminal Projects, 2 Live & Die in LA/AZ, etc. Sh*t, I remember when SWAT shut down a Dead City gig! <haha>.
I’ve always heard the hardest part is showing up. So, on that note: support your Loco… (no typo)… You know what I mean.
