After nearly 2 years, and a crazy amount of delays we are finally ready for the release of our first book, sub-titled “Under the Influence.”  In each book, in addition to the interviews, we will have a section called The Soapbox which is a collection of stories based around the theme of the book. 

  Pre-order will be available in the next two weeks.  The book is 186 pages, perfect bound with gatefold covers that open out to 4 full pages.  .There will be two cover ways, one done by JOR as seen above and one done by DALEK. Each artist was given the whole 4 page gatefold to work with for their cover design.  Nothing I can say or show in this post can truly capture the scope and depth of this book so once we have a hard copy in hand we will replace the photo above with the acutual book.  We will also do a video flip through.

 As you know the interviews are very in depth, ranging from 14 to 20 pages each and all the interviews are really a historical look at the people featured.  Below are some excerpts from each of the inerviews. The smaller thumbnail photos are excerpts form The Soapbox section.  Right now we are working on some promo videos for the book release, as well as preparing some release parties so keep checking back on our facebook and site for updates.

COMPUTER CHIP 7

know you’re a big fan of early animation movies and sci-fi flicks. Tron and Fantastic Planet come to mind. What other sources have influenced you over the years?

Tron is such a classic movie, beyond state of the art. I loved it as kid and it looks perfect even today. I first saw Fantastic Planet much later. Navy8 put me up on it in 2004 or so [one of countless things he’s introduced me to.] It was like the animated movie I was waiting to see all my life. As a child, cartoons like Gatchaman, Robotech and the Transformers animated movie from the ‘80s had a big impact, as well as the evil horde from the Masters of the Universe and Flash Gordon, the movie.

My mother always had an expanding book collection when I was growing up. Marvel comics from the ‘80s. I met Setup KCW in 1995. He came out from Brooklyn and painted a techno organic ‘SE’ next to me that blew my mind. Rime and Kemos, the late great Nace and Sace R.I.P.; two of my favorite dudes ever. James Marshall, aka Dalek, has been like a big brother to me. He‘s been a huge influence. My friend and sometime employer, R. Nicholas Kuszyk, Newa’s angry phone calls, humor, comic illustrator Jim Steranko, “King” Kirby, Zephyr trains, cartoonist William Steig and eye panels. Japanese pop artist Keiichi Tanaami is the best. I love that stuff.

EL KAMINO

In recent years you’ve shifted to using mostly bucket paint for your pieces. How did this come about, and what are the pros and cons of this method?

It all started because the fumes from the spray paint started fucking me up. Even though I was rockin’ a mask, I’d come back from missions and be nauseous and get these wicked migraines. I’d spend the whole next day recovering. So to cut out the bulk of the problem, I started using bucket paint to fill and then come in with spray paint for the outline and highlights. That worked out pretty good. So after a while it just evolved into rolling out the fill and using brushes for the outline. I was able to eliminate spray paint altogether. What started as a health issue ended up leading me into an entirely different aesthetic. The main difference between spray paint and bucket paint is friction. With spray paint, you never actually touch the wall. You can do these gigantic sweeping motions, endless swirls, quick and sketchy lines, but with the brush you are constantly connected to the surface. It’s all about the drag. My lines became very slow and deliberate; sharp and heavy. It’s been a whole new direction for me, and I ain’t puking my guts out the next day.

DAVE MACDOWELL

Animated art seems to be a big influence on your work.

I grew up worshipping illustration and animated art. Mad, Cracked and Heavy Metal mags. Classic Disney animation had a profound effect on me. I would obsessively study the illusion of line and color, deeply amazed at how art could imitate life. I was a geeky little fat kid, freaky for the projected image on a movie screen. Just the varying grains and translucent textures of light, and how it refracted like it was a powerful living entity unto itself.

I know that your painting career jumped off pretty quick. When did you start painting seriously?

Well I always draw, but never seriously painted until 2007. Everything happened within months once the work got out. Juxtapoz reader art and then a week later I signed on with Thinkspace Gallery, with only five paintings into the game. Thankfully they saw something in me, so I figured I had better step up and learn what the hell I was actually doing.

STAK

Tell us a little bit about growing up in Bushwick.

Well, I moved to Bushwick and I went to third grade through eighth grade at St. Francis Cabrini. I was one of the only kids who actually lived in the neighborhood. All the other kids came from other places, so I was like a bad one. Then for high school, I went to public high school. That shit was like a shock to my system. I went to Bushwick High School. When I went to Bushwick High School, that was like, “WOW!” I remember back then 60 Minutes came to the school to do a piece. It was titled “The Worst High School in North America.” They cut some kid at lunchtime, all while 60 Minutes was there doing this story. It was wild. Somebody in the background said, “Yo, nobody better touch that last cheeseburger.” Then somebody says, “Yo! Give me that fucking cheeseburger!” Then all of a sudden, dude pulls out a razor and cut the dude for taking the last cheeseburger. Dudes were wild back then. That was before metal detectors. There weren’t metal detectors in schools back then and dudes had all types or utensils on them — guns, I remember dudes having guns in their book bags. Big guns, too.

ZEPHYR

Describe the experience of being an artist in NYC in the 1980s. What was so monumental about that scene during that time period?

What was monumental about it was the amount of amazing, creative individuals that were around at that precise moment in time. We were all just young people on our way up. We all had similar trajectories, but they were simple goals. We were just seeking exposure for our creative impulses, that’s all. We had no delusions of grandeur; we’d take what we could get. But again, it’s 20/20 hindsight. Who could have imagined the extent to which some of us would impact the world?

Two names come to mind right away, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It’s a bit mind boggling, even to me, to think about the meteoric rise of these two friends of mine. They were both lovely people, although Jean was a bit pricklier than Keith, and obviously they were both brilliant artists. You see Basquiat mentioned alongside Picasso with no irony, and one of his paintings costs at least 20 million dollars today, if you can even find one on the market. Now the really crazy part is that we all came up at the same time, and we all showed our art at the Fun Gallery in Manhattan’s East Village. That is very remarkable to me, and I have to pinch myself sometimes. It’s like, wow, my friend Jean, that I once knew quite well, is Jean-Michel Basquiat. I still have trouble accepting what he became and what the world made of him. To me, he’ll always just be Jean, the wild kid who liked to smoke a lot of weed and smash empty 40 oz. beer bottles on the street.

EYE

Planting the seed:

Clean trains didn’t come to fruition in my life right off the bat. As I started to initiate myself in the graffiti game, from 1997-1998, I was basically doing everything on my own. It wasn’t until 1999 that I met anyone who was actively doing graffiti in my area. Coming off riding the high wave of Subway Art inspiration, in my young, impressionable head, graffiti on trains was the end all be all, the essence of the whole movement itself.

ELI GESSNER

I’ve heard you speak in other interviews about creating “organically” with regards to the Zoo York Mix Tape videos. During the SHUT days, it seems like you didn’t have to worry about designing for a particular brand identity or corporate image. It seems like it was more of a “make it up as you go along” scenario. Did you miss that freedom when you went over to Phat Farm and the tail end of Zoo York, when Zoo became a much bigger machine?

Nah. SHUT Skates was much more of a “make it up as you go along” scenario. Zoo York was a total attempt at creating a clear and present brand identity. If you don’t remember, back in the early 1990s every skate brand was doing funny, jackass-style ripoff logos. Blind written like a Tide logo. World Industries like Marlboro Cigarettes. You didn’t know what the fuck you were looking at. And it was mad rave! I hated that shit. I set out to start using the same elements over and over; same font, same tags, same imagery and that’s partially why we blew up. We stood out amongst the fight for most funny and obscure ad that month. After six months of running ads everyone knew a Zoo York ad with a glance. After that everyone started to grow up and get corporate.

As far as “organic” goes, I mean that Zoo York was organic to us, to New York skaters. Organic and honest about who we were, where we came from and what we were about. It was not contrived or engineered as a marketing scheme. Honesty is the best policy. And if you’re a Zoo York fan – practice truth, fear nothing!

JOSEPH  ABAJIAN

I know back in the day it’s not like it is now, sometimes it was hard to find the names of new songs or new artists, especially on the underground tip. People, especially Dj’s, used to be real secretive with the records they were spinning.

Well I was also an avid Stretch and Bobbito listener, I use to listen to that all the time. I would call them up and be like “Yo! what’s that record your playing! I have to order it.” At first they wouldn’t tell me but then I invited them to the store and they came. Bobbito fell in love with the store right off the bat. He was helping me out, he was telling me what records they were playing and telling the artist to come down to the store. Bobbito was a fellow B-Boy, so the fact that we would actually battle each other in uprocking, he liked that, so he was helping me out. When I first started I got in good with people who were really into Hip Hop, people like Bobbito. His show helped me out so much, the WKCR show use to always blow up the shop and name it, of course you gotta take some criticism cause those two guys are kinda clowns and would just clown you the whole time but hey, they helped promote the store. NYU had a show too, the NYU show is still on, the Wednesday show, and Martin Moore and Mr. Mayhem were on there. I use to go up there all the time, I actually filled in a couple times. Back then the scene was kind of unified, this is before it split. In Fat Beats you would have Biggie, Nas, Redman, Jay-Z who was just starting, Big Daddy Cane. It wasn’t like now where you have your commercial guys and your underground guys, it was all one scene and it took off. When Hip Hop was strong the scene supported. So the store took off and I rode the wave, made allot of bad decisions, but also made a lot of right ones, enough to still be in business today.

ESTEVAN ORIOL

Who was the investor?

Well, check this out. When we went to this guy’s office, we had just come out in the Wall Street Journal in an article about the way street wear brands were taking off in Japan. We were on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. The next day we are having a meeting with this big Jewish clothing business guy. They call it ‘schemata business.’ (Laughs) He was one of those guys who was real known in the game. We were so happy, we were like “FUCK!” This guy, Irving, owned this big building, had his own pattern makers, his own people to cut fabric, everything was right there, he had all his own sewers, it was all in house. We were all fired up! We go to this guy’s office for a meeting and he had leather chairs, and a big conference room with a big fish tank with sharks in it. It was real impressive. We walk in there and he had menus for us to pick what we wanted to eat for the meeting. Then his secretary had copies of the Wall Street Journal and put copies of the article at each seat on the table. So we walk in, and we are sitting in thousand dollar chairs, big conference room table, menus from some bourgeois spot, the fish tank with the sharks, and we are like, “We made it, finally! After all the years of struggling we finally did it!” We had the meeting, and about a month later, we are all setup and running the business from Irving’s building. Shortly after, I notice a truck pulling up, and these guys start pulling out the chairs and the table. The next week the fish tank goes, a couple of weeks later they close that whole part of the building and they rented it out to some Korean purse company. Then shit started closing down, employees started going, and it slowly started falling apart.

JOR

And the companies you’re talking about, these were the types of companies that you would assume would be in line with you and your background. “Street wear” companies, if you will, or at least companies who were rooted in street culture.

Yeah. Well, these were actually bigger, more established brands that you’d find in Footlocker or wherever. They try to come off as cool, but it was still a big surprise how conservative they would be. I kind of thought, “I’m working as a shoe designer. This will be great! I will do this forever.” I really thought becoming a footwear designer would be like a hand in the glove kind of thing, but it’s totally not like that at all. That was the whole frustration with being in that environment, having all this creative energy and ideas. Then having those ideas get deadened at the board room table or in design reviews.

A while back, I had a great interview at Coach for a sneaker design position. The design director looked at my stuff and loved it. She was passing my portfolio around the office, trying to introduce me to the other designers. Then at the end she literally said, “You’re too cool to work at this boring company. You’ll hate it here.” I found a lot of companies just didn’t know how to utilize me. Or I didn’t know how to dumb my stuff down enough to utilize them. But that’s the great thing about being here doing what I am doing now. I can do whatever I want and nobody is going to be over my shoulder telling me, “This is not going to sell,” or, “Purple is not in.” Design directors would tell me stuff like that. They would say, “Purple is not in this season,” and then I couldn’t use purple. But I don’t blame them; they just want to sell units and make money.

DALEK

It’s interesting to see how big that kind of stuff got though. You can go to Target or somewhere and see those Star Wars toys and they are a direct copy from the Kid Robot stuff. It’s crazy how big it got because Hasbro started copying Kid Robot.

Well, it’s funny because it comes full circle. If you follow the real history of everything. It’s like Medicom, who is the first company to really kind of do that stuff, they stole everything from Lego; basically, it’s a direct rip-off. So, Toy2R comes around and rips-off Medicom, then Kid Robot comes in and rips-off both of them. The whole idea of creating this platform toy is a rip-off of each other. It went from a massive mainstream company, like Lego, to this behind the scenes underground thing, to basically going back to the mainstream. It is all basically a re-appropriation of the original idea. Someone at Medicom re-appropriated Lego, Toy2R and Kid Robot re-appropriated that, then everyone and their mother has a platform toy, and it’s just this formula. It’s easy and it’s cheap because you make one mold and you just get a bunch of different people to do designs for it, so it’s cost efficient. It’s great for marketing and all these other things, but it gets boring. It’s like, “Where does this really go?”

ANGER CBS

“He shot me once in the stomach. I went to grab my stomach where he hit me and he shot me again, right where my elbow joint is. That bullet went through my arm and then into my stomach, so at this point I had two bullets in my stomach. The third shot went into my shoulder, and that shot threw me to the ground. I remember waking up and it was like I was in Vietnam, like a fish out of water. I remember lots of sand flying all over the place, sirens, helicopters and lots of blood. I remember thinking, “Oh shit! I have to get home. I don’t feel good. I think I’ve got to go.” I got up, and started walking away. The cop tried to grab me again, and I started wrestling with him. There were now a couple of people trying to wrestle me down, but I still had adrenalin in me. If it wasn’t for me being on LSD, I probably wouldn’t have survived. I think there was speed and LSD and whatever else in those acid tabs, and that basically kept me alive. From that point they continued to try to wrestle me, and tried to handcuff me behind my back, but I had enough energy to fight them off. They ended up handcuffing me from the front. They put me on a ground, and into the ambulance. Once I was in the ambulance, they put this suit around me. The suit was kind of similar to the band they use when they take your blood pressure, that was to help keep my blood from gushing out and to keep me from losing all my blood, but I ended up busting out of the suit. The last thing I remember is the paramedics face. He was pushing me down and he was like “Yo! Get down! It’s for you own good, you’re going to be alright.” After that I blacked out again.”

RICKY POWELL

“Christopher Walken, who incidentally tried to get-over on my pipe right after I smoked him out in the corner of Robert De Niro’s restaurant with some hash…Moroccan…and I said “Yo Duke, I need that back.” He said “Relax. Have a nectarine.” ……. “Just last week, I had yet another euphoric encounter. I came out of 100 Center St. after getting a stupid pot case dismissed, and I came up on a (seriously) legendary literary New Yorker, Peter / Pete Hamill. I was like ‘Daaaamn! Pete Hamill! You’re a hero to me!” He laughed and gave me a nice handshake. I started tellin’ him I was a native New Yorker, blah, blah, blah and that I got written up in New Yorker Magazine and I got quoted for my thing about ‘New Jack Cornballs’, he laughed and I told him that I got down a ‘lil bit with books and what-not…pulled out one of my ’Ricky Powell- Frank books: ’Bug Out!’and he loved it and it made be bust. Then he signed my Frank notebook as follows..‘Long Life…Much Laughter…Pete Hamill..NYC..6/6/2011’…When I parted and dipped around the corner onto Lispernard St. I kinda yelled out, the same way I did after chilling with Joe Namath, on the set of Classic Sports Network in ’97.”

TONY ARCABASCIO

“I’ve spent my life canceling out guilt. I take into account everything I do on a daily basis, good and bad, with the goal of always trying to stay heavy on the good. If I buy a bag of weed, I make sure my kids have a couple of new books and maybe a new Disney DVD that same day. If I go out after work to an art opening and have a couple of drinks (sort of work and play), I try to make sure I’m still home before my kids bedtime so I can see my kids and help my wife get them to go down easy. Get the idea?”

CHRIS NIERATKO

“Now they are permanently tweaked. It was the same thing with this guy. He didn’t start out smart. He was as smart as this table to begin with. You know, he was a football player. You don’t get on the football team because you’re smart. He is a dummy. So he sees us take four hits of acid, and he gets this inferiority complex about his little half a hit, and he’s like, “Let me get more.” I was like, “No! Fuck off, Dude! You’re going to tweak out. Just chill out, have a half a hit and enjoy yourself.” So we went outside, and we were waiting for it to kick in, and he was like, “I have to go take a piss. I’ll be right back.” So the kid goes in the freezer, and takes three more hits of acid. Keep in mind, he has never done acid before in his life. My friend and I didn’t know that he took more. We had no idea. We just thought he went to take a piss.”

BAS RUTTEN

“I take a shower and, when I get out, I slip backwards and my head hits the toilet. The fucking toilet explodes. It is in a hundred and fifty pieces on the ground. The thing is gone. Now there is a hole in the floor, and water starts to come out of one of the pipes. I walk into the room, and there were two beds. I take all the blankets and sheets from one bed and I stuff them into the hole, and I go to sleep. Now while I was sleeping, I have a really weird dream about people coming into my room, replacing a toilet, like the weirdest thing.

So I wake up in the morning, and I go to use the restroom. Now I’m sitting to take a piss. For some reason, I always sit when I take a piss. And as I’m sitting on the toilet bowl, I reach for the light switch to turn the lights on, and there is blood everywhere. Bloody handprints, you know? Like the Blair Witch Project. I go, “Holy shit! What happened?” So I jump up to look in the mirror, and I have nothing. I go, “Oh my God, Oh my God.” I walk into the room and look through the closets. I’m thinking, “What the fuck did I do? Did I kill somebody?” Now I go to the balcony, and look down to see if there is a chalk line down there, because I don’t know what the fuck I did anymore.”

BRAD SIMMS

“Now more bouncers came, so I had seven dudes on me. One hit me upside the face, another punched me in the head. So, I dropped to the floor again, balled up and dudes were just stomping my ribs. I was just like, “Alright, alright, alright! I will get you your money!” I had this crazy double goose parka thing on, sweating bullets, sweating like a Hebrew slave in that mother-fucker. I get up and the Mob Boss walks in. Trench coat on, clean looking mother-fucker, and he was calm. He wasn’t worried about a thing. He handed me a phone and said, “Call your bank. Get me my money.” So I called Bank Of America and I can’t get through. I was calling the fucking emergency number! Finally I get through and they are like, “Yeah, we see some suspicious activity on your account.” I said, “Yeah yeah, I am in a fetish club in Bulgaria. I am trying to buy a bunch of drinks and it won’t go through.”

I have them transfer $1,000 into my account. I was trying not to breathe too hard and stay calm and the operator kept asking me, “Is everything was OK?” I replied, “Yeah, it’s fine.” They transfer the funds immediately and the guy scans my card. I was like, “Sorry man! I just got scared!” I get up and he tells me I can go. I walk back into the club and I see Vango and he asks, “What happened?” I said, “What the fuck do you mean what happened!?” He didn’t know anything that was going on! As we were walking out the door, Vango was talking to one of the guys, and he told Vango that they were about to take us out to the field to kill us if I wasn’t able to transfer the money. On the way home we stopped by the store so Vango could buy a pack of cigarettes. Never before have I seen someone chain-smoke that many cigarettes!”

JON ELLIOTT

“Come Sunday morning, I decided my parents were either “That Ignorant” or “That Considerate”, but I loved them. Maybe they understood that the human inebriation ceremony was important no matter which way it was expressed be it through the biblical spirit or huffing paint in a trailer south of the border. Possibly I was beginning to comprehend that we (all humans) have a slew of names for very similar experiences. Maybe that undercover was just a strange man looking for his ceremony. The THC that had flooded my basic brain synapses  lifted and my norm was restored. To this day I feel like both of my parents knew what was going on and did their best to calm me. Sometimes acting like you don’t know how fucked up someone is makes them feel like they aren’t that twisted.”

TIM BARRY

“At this point, I am limp and I am not totally conscious. I do know that all of my homies are spread out all over the place. They’re all pretty fucked, most of them are on the ground. The skinheads won, there is no doubt about that. The next thing I know, I feel some kind of cold metal or steel on my wrists. I’m thinking, “What the fuck is this?” I’m basically incapacitated at this point and I can’t move my arms. They fucking handcuffed me! Now I’m on my feet, handcuffed by a gang of skinheads, there’s probably four to six of them around me at this point, and there is nothing I can do. They grab the back of my jacket and the back of my head and start forcing me down the street. I’m thinking, “What the fuck is going on?” I’m looking back at the bus and no one can do anything, people are losing their fucking minds. They forced me into…I don’t want to call it a warehouse. It was almost like an office space, it was like a vacant office space. They take me up the steps and there’s a long hallway that turns left. I look down the hallway and I see the tour manager, and he’s handcuffed from behind. He’s in the corner at the end of this long hallway and his head is just fucking covered in blood, completely swollen. He is cocked against the corner, half sitting up, barely conscious, just fucking destroyed.”

Last night we co-sponsored an art show at the Zakka Shop in Brooklyn.  The event was hosted by Mathmatiks and the turnout was great.   It featured works by Nick Kuszyk, Jade Kuei, El Kamino, Chip 7 and Pars Kid.  We gave out over 100 copies of The Art of Storytelling magazine and we also released our first figure called eyeball kid which was a collaboration between The Art of Storytelling, Chip7 and sculptor Danny the Farrow.   All in all it was a great night.  Zakka is now carrying The Art of Storytelling Magazine as well as The Art of Storytelling DVD so if you need copies of either you can pick them up there.

Outside of the event, the shop itself is amazing.  They are stacked with vinyl toys, a ton a rare books and dvd’s, clothing and more. You should definitely stop by to check this place out.  Here are some flicks from the event.

CLICK HERE TO SEE MORE FROM THE SHOW >