When where and why u started graffiti and who you started with, why you got into it ?

     Started writing in the late 90's, but didn't take it too serious then, doodle here tag there. In my hood I'd see dudes in b-boy cyphers carrying around blackbooks all tagged up so at that impressionable age of course I had to follow suit. It wasn't until I linked up with Seak2 and Faust around '00-'01 that I started taking the whole graffiti thing a little more serious.


      With the city being my main base of operations at an early stage in my graffiti career, I had access to meet an eclectic group of people who influenced me both in graffiti and in life. Some notables from that time frame were: Faust, Seak2, Seno, Cchild, Share137, Mista, Sandman, & Seig.

     Sometime after through Seno I ended up meeting Bler and a whole new array of Queens writers I had heard of but never met. In this circle it was where I met GR4 who was my main painting partner roughly during '01-'06. I started pieceing a lot during those years, linking up with more Queens writers and forming a crew "CND", whose members included at one time or another: GR4, Psyck, Seter, Stae2, Uend, Part(TDS), Diego127, Seno, Seak2, Sense3, Cchild, Themo and a slew of others. During this time I also hooked up with Deem(KD) whom I still paint with almost weekly, and through him I got introduced to the Bronx and all the heavy hitters that came along with it.

     Fast forward a few years, hundreds of pieces later and I'm still at it. I took brief breaks in between because of school and work, but graffiti is still the thing that holds my life together. Currently I am still learning and evolving each time I paint, my crew (4Burners) is my main source of inspiration as we're a young group of guys that aren't in it for the "fame" as we writers love to call it, but for the sheer love of it.

How do you feel about where graffiti has gone ?

      As with any type of raw revolutionary art-form, may it be music, dance, or painting... it eventually becomes relatively accepted and so graffiti has become as mainstream as can be. Its on your sneakers and jeans and socks and that commercial and this ad and that ad, etc...

     Now, it has its positives along with its negatives, if you can somehow make a living out of it, doing murals or applying graffiti techniques to photography or some sort of design related field, then great, you'll be seen as a sellout by ignorant/jealous people, but that just means they couldn't cut it.

     Graffiti is all about the internet now too, its killed the beauty of it being this small secret society that would trade flicks and stories at the park or in somebody's basement, but at the same time it's helped it flourish into something writers in the 70s and 80s couldn't have imagined. Because of the internet someone from Spain is able to email me and tell me they are visiting New York in a week and would like to paint, and in turn when I visit Spain I am able to do the same to them... its an amazing way to network with writers all over the world. On the other-hand, the downside of graffiti on the internet is the shit talking, ignorance, and beef that starts on forums, sometimes it's downright comical but in the end there's nothing to be gained from it, and if your body of work consists of only illegal activity, stay away from the internet!

     Youth getting into graffiti should use the net as a tool in order to develop their style, it's tough to have a mentor pass down style to you now as it used to be back in the day, but being able to see so much online should open kids eyes to the kind of work they should be striving to do. Don't bite, but analyze shape, form, color, balance, and understand what makes what you are looking at so appealing to you, and how you could apply ideas from it to further your own style... and work from there.



Let them know what you been up to as of late:

     Besides painting every chance I get with my crew [4B] which consists of Sen2, Deem, Logek and Myself.... My career is in full bloom and thankfully I'm involved in dozens of projects at any given time... no need to go into details but writing on walls made it all happen...

Word.

- Gusto 4B, KD, TFP



www.gusnyc.com
www.gustoizm.com
www.4burners.com