My name is Tetris, and I came up from Los Angeles to do this collaboration wall that I’m painting with my crew, we are known as the WAI crew. The theme of the wall is ‘wild animal instincts’ – we are intending for it to be a memorial piece for one of our graffiti community members who passed away last week. He went by the name “Animal.”
We just started, but it will look like a wild jungle – with crocodiles and everything. Basically we are free-styling, playing around, having fun with it – there’s no sketch that we are going off of. We have a few more artists coming through, so this will be the work of about 15 of us.
I started doing graffiti in fifth grade. My buddies were a lot older than me and they really got me into it. In L.A., there’s a lot of gang activity and that kind of influence, so until high school I was more into ‘tag banging,’ where everything was about crossing people off and getting into trouble. It was a little dangerous.
as I got older, I discovered graffiti as art. I went to school for graphic design and was doing that for seven years. But I missed painting on walls – its so much more hands on.
When doing a mural, you actually have to put so much work into it..every little line you do, it counts. There’s no cheating. I feel like this kind of art makes a bigger impact, and I feel proud when I finish a big production like this.