Jeff Soto, age 28, living in Riverside,
California.
How'd you get into graffiti art? How long have
you been in the game?
There were a few things I was exposed
to that got me into graf. It seems kinda cliche but skateboarding actually
got me doing my first bit of graffiti. Probably around 1986-87 we started
skating in a drainage ditch by my house called "The L" (it was
shaped like an "L"). There was old graffiti already painted
on it, not of the Hip Hop variety but just kids drawing obscenities and
some gang graffiti. We would take spraypaint out of our parent's and neighbor's
garages.
We redecorated The L with skate logos
like Powell Rat bones, Independent, Santa Cruz, and lots of random arrows,
checkers, names and doodles. I think I saw ramps painted with graffiti
in a magazine I'd get sometimes called "Freestylin'," maybe
we were trying to do something like that. Then, a few years later in high
school I started looking at art books. I had always been into art since
I was little, but I started getting into the history of it, and looking
at individual artists. I was really into modern art, artists like Andy
Warhol, Barbara Kruger, Keith Haring, all these New York artists.
One day at the library I found a book on New York street art. It had all
these artists who took their projects to the streets; it had postering,
billboard art, sculpture, stickering...and graffiti. When I saw the graffiti
photos I just knew I had to try it. That was 1989, my freshman year, I
consider it the start of my involvement with graffiti. I dabbled in graffiti
and did my first piece before I ever did a tag. At first I didn't even
know tagging was part of graffiti, I thought it was only about painting
letters...worked solo for maybe half a year, in which time I learned a
lot about can control, and graffiti etiquette.
In the meantime, the whole Chaka thing blew up and graffiti was in the news. Almost overnight, graffiti became a fad and it seemed that all of Southern California was being destroyed. By then our crew was pretty well respected in our area, at least as piecers. We painted at a place called Twin Palms (which sadly has been bulldozed recently), we considered it our yard. Then in '92, tagbanging came into existence. It left a bad taste in my mouth; knowing that I'd devoted 3 years of my life to graffiti and it'd turned into kids shooting each other. Looking back, you can't really blame the kids. The country was pretty fucked up and everyone was poor. The economy was jacked up, especially because of Southern California's aerospace industry dying out. Everyone's parents were being layed off and kids were probably not having the best homelife. Okay now I'm going off on something different...
Well, graffiti of course played a big
part. The whole time I did graffiti I was also working on paintings. I
made a lot of experiments in high school. Like painting completely abstract,
painting landscapes, drawing stuff from life, plus trying my hand at different
mediums- skratchboard, oils, pastels, airbrush, pottery, stencils and
more.
After high school, I went to RCC for a few years. I had a great teacher
named Dayna Mason who pushed me and wouldn't let me slide by. I think
I became a pretty well rounded artist there. Then in 1999, I transferred
to Art Center in Pasadena where my style really changed. I had more great
teachers like Alex Gross, the Clayton brothers, Jason Holley, Maria Rendon,
and several other working illustrators. It was hard to not be influenced
by these badass teachers, I'm sure my style still has a lot to do with
Art Center.
more jeff soto !