Obey Giant Page #3

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Providence media went

completely nuts with the story

because everyone

read into the billboard.

What did the billboard mean?

It's a picture of

Andre the Giant,

so it's saying that

Cianci's a brute.

Only a few people

really knew

that it really wasn't

much of a commentary

on Cianci in that way,

but it made me realize

the power of scale.

So going from primarily

a two-and-a-half,

three inch sticker

to a huge billboard,

that really impacted

the conversation a lot more.

Then I had to have

a meeting with Buddy Cianci,

and he said,

"Look, you know,

this thing cost me money.

What are we gonna do about it?"

I don't know

whether he was for me

or against me,

but the fact of the matter was

it must have worked

because we won the election.

We are going back

to City Hall.

(cheering)

It also made me realize

that I needed to be careful

not to send the conversation

in a direction that maybe

I didn't want it to go.

I hadn't compared

what I thought

of the other candidates'

views to Cianci's,

and if this had hurt

Cianci's chances,

and I actually preferred him,

which it turned out

that that wasn't the case,

I would have been--

I would have been devastated

that I was that careless.

So it made me think

this isn't just

my own personal prank

for my enjoyment;

there--you know,

there are consequences

to this sort of thing.

The summer of '90,

I got a hand-me-down car,

Caprice classic station wagon

with wood paneling,

kind of like the Griswolds.

And it wasn't in great shape,

but I knew I could drive

it to Boston and back,

that was fairly safe.

Then I got more bold

and I started

driving it to New York.

Of course, the first night

the car gets broken into,

my skateboards get stolen.

But they didn't take

the big box of stickers.

So we walked around

the Lower East Side

and Greenwich Village

putting up stickers,

and I loved it,

but quickly I started

putting up stencils.

I realized that

the silver lamp

bases in New York

are a perfect size

for an Andre head stencil.

I would carry a messenger bag

with a couple of cans

of flat black spray paint

and a little bit

of spray adhesive

so the stencil would stick,

and I would walk around

and I would stencil.

I've gotten away

from helicopters,

from buildings

surrounded by six cop cars,

but if you do get caught,

just be polite.

That's all I'd say.

I wasn't really thinking

about the legality

of doing street art,

and the idea that

someone didn't like it

because it was not

done with permission,

that didn't really

faze me at all.

(siren wailing)

At the time,

street art wasn't so hyped.

One of the things was is that

it somehow wasn't

gonna be as real

or as subculturally genuine

as something like graffiti.

And then Shepard

really impressed

a bunch of haters,

people who were normally like,

"Oh, street art's

a bunch of, like,

you know, limp wristed

art students."

The Alleged Gallery

was the only gallery

that was showing artwork

derived from the three scenes

that I was really into.

The underground music scene,

the graffiti

and street art scenes,

and skateboarding.

During the early '90s,

graffiti was linked

to hip hop culture,

to break dancing culture,

to kind of hood culture.

And skateboarding was still,

even though there was

always a nice little

sizable contingent

of New York skaters,

it was a West Coast thing.

I trace the beginning

of street art

versus graffiti art

to the merging of

those two cultures,

which is, I think, why

people look back on that time

as important.

When I met Shepard,

he had, like,

such a thin body of work,

but the main thing

is I remember

the impression he made on me,

so I put him in the show

and Aaron Rose put

him in some shows.

And Shepard did his

best to fine art it up

for the museum show,

but basically it was still

in the real DIY,

handmade aspects

of the craft.

He was a skater

that made stickers,

and I knew the sticker,

but he didn't really

stick out to me at that point

as anyone more

special or different

than any other young

skater making stickers

on the East Coast

during that time.

But I do remember that

they were up everywhere,

and that grew and grew and grew.

So I had a few posters

and my manifesto

that was taped to

the wall in the gallery

and it talks about

a lot of my feelings

about, you know,

trend psychology,

conformity versus rebellion.

You know, a lot

of the ideas that

are still driving

my work to this day

are encapsulated in

this very short piece

that I wrote when

I was 20 years old.

There was a lot of artists

beginning to look at ways

in which we could break

down visual language,

ways in which we could subvert

this fine art of persuasion.

Artists like Thomas Campbell,

Phil Frost,

Mike Mills,

Futura,

all these people were

really important people

in the scene in New York.

If I'm able to connect

with this world,

there might be more potential

for me to earn

a living from this.

I'd graduated from school,

I was on my own,

and I was struggling to survive.

My parents were

constantly on my case

to get a "real job,"

and my idea of having

my screen printing studio,

doing my own projects

and doing things for bands,

you know, didn't seem

like it was gonna pan out.

And then all of a sudden,

this attention from

people in New York

made me think it was

a remote possibility.

The crazy thing

about Andre the Giant

being the subject

of my sticker

is that I had no interest

in professional wrestling.

When I started that,

that was just a bit of--

creative mischief would be

about as much dignity

as I'd give it.

But the idea of having

a reference point

that people might

consider in one way

and then using it artistically

in a different way,

that's provocative,

and I love provocative art.

The interesting thing is

that more and more I was seeing

this fear of the image,

as if it were

some sort of cult

or a gang or something

to be fearful of.

That was what led me

in the direction

of going in a more

"Big brother is watching you"

Orwellian way

with the imagery.

But my approach to maintaining

the momentum I had

was to create what

I call the Icon Face,

which is, you know,

a perfectly symmetrical,

cropped in,

very, very simplified

stylized version

of the Andre face.

Then I did the face

inside the star,

which has been amazing

to see the responses to that.

This is actually propaganda

that we're seeing here.

"You better just

do your own thing

and have sex with who you want

and do a whole bunch of drugs,

'cause that's

what we promote.

We're a bunch of Satanists."

"Oh, it's a pentagram

and that's Satan in there.

Oh, and it's 'cause it's Russian

or it's Chinese

or it's Illuminati.

It's definitely Illuminati."

You know, like, we use the star

in the American flag too.

But with the face

and the color red,

then it's gotta be Satan

or communist or something.

I mean, there were years

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