Kiosk - Biters Among Kings

Biters Among Kings

Deanna Ong

* Editor’s note: Characters’ names have been changed to protect their privacy.

ADRIAN Fusco* runs his fingers along the concrete wall, carefully tracing the blood-red outline of the letters that sharply contrasts with the decaying background. He smiles softly, but his eyes are blankly fixed on the work of graffiti before him. Approximately ten feet in length is the word abuelo—"grandfather" in Spanish. Adjacent to this is a large white skull , which symbolizes rebirth as well as protection from death for Latinos . Three years ago, Fusco’s grandfather passed away after a long and hard battle with lymphoma. He remembers nearly every detail of the day his grandfather died, even the exact time it took him to drive from downtown Los Angeles to reach the hospital in Downey —48 agonizing minutes. He recalls gripping his hands so tightly at the funeral that his knuckles turned white. He wanted to hurt somebody or himself. Instead, he created this piece . Graffiti, commonly referred to as "graff" by many artists, has always been one of Fusco’s chief outlets, and he felt this would be a meaningful way to mourn his loss. Two years after its completion, however, the city took note of the graffiti and promptly painted over it, enraging Fusco. He understands why they did it, but says the problem is they’ll never understand why he did it.
           He had cried while spray painting each of the letters and felt a weight lift off his shoulders upon finishing the piece. To accept the erasure of the graffiti would be to insult the honor of his grandfather. The moment he found out it had been painted over, Fusco immediately loaded his backpack with a number of Krylon spray paint cans, waited for night to come and re-created it. To this day, “abuelo ” is vivid on an otherwise drab stretch of city wall off of Mission Road in Los Angeles. As cars and buses and people stream by on the street level, the graff sits among abandoned pages of The Los Angeles Times and empty In-N-Out paper bags overlooking the road. Fusco frequently drives out of his way to ride down this street so that he can see “abuelo” and remember his grandfather.
            "This graff means a lot to me," says Fusco. "It reminds me of a loved one who will never be forgotten. Ever."
            A reserved young man with a self-described “poetic soul,” Fusco, 27, likes working with his hands and taking his creativity to the streets. He says he only wears plain t-shirts or band shirts—he doesn't want to be a walking advertisement for name brands. He has a stout, muscular build and a five-inch scar on the side of his face, the result of a near-fatal car accident several years ago. His sneakers are worn from years of wear and tear, and he always sports jeans and a leather bracelet that his abuelo gave him. Hazel eyes, fair complexion, a soft smile. He used to wear a ponytail, prompting his buddies to teasingly nickname him “Jon Seda,” the actor who plays Chris Perez’s character in the film “Selena.”
            Fusco has been a graffiti artist since his freshman year in high school 12 years ago. During his peak, he was a part of STK, a tightly-knit graffiti crew made up of taggers from Lincoln Heights, Downey and Eagle Rock, all neighborhoods of the greater Los Angeles area. Fusco is now a Computer Engineering student at California State University, Los Angeles, but says that graffiti continues to allow him to express his creativity and point of view by using the urban landscape as his canvas.

While thousands of others who drive down Mission Road probably dismiss “abuelo ” as an act of vandalism, or misinterpret it as gang-related, or neglect to notice it at all, Fusco looks upon it intently every time as if it were his first time surveying his work, despite gazing at it in hundreds of instances over the past three years. He usually only views it from the street or sidewalk, but today he stands quietly vis-à-vis the piece.
“People don’t really know what graff means for us [graff artists],” Fusco says. “What you see on the wall is only half the story.”

Since the 80’s, L.A.'s seemingly endless sprawl of freeways, bridges, buildings and other city infrastructure has played host to the work of thousands of graffiti artists or "writers." According to Fusco, graffiti and street art as a whole were more purposeful and respectable then and in the 90’s compared to now. He attributes this to an ever -increasing number of "biters," or youngsters who pose as writers when they only have a superficial understanding of the culture.

"Basically, biters are kids who don't know what the hell graff is," Fusco explains. "They copycat what they think is cool, mark shit up like they own the city."

Every writer starts off as a biter though—it's inevitable for emerging artists to adopt established techniques before they can begin to define their own sense of style. Accomplished and respected writers are often called "kings" by their peers, and have mastered the fundamentals of graffiti and focus on developing innovative approaches to the art form. To say that a graffiti artist must be either a biter or a king, however, would be a false dichotomy. No matter how experienced a graffiti artist is, there is always room for learning and improvement. And, no matter how inexperienced an artist is in the beginning, he has the potential to reach the ranks of seasoned writers. This notion of the meshing of veterans and amateurs, of biters among kings, has been and continues to blaze the path and evolution of contemporary street graffiti.

Fusco identifies the most with the Chicano-style of graffiti, which has very particular traits and iconography. The skull that Fusco painted in "abuelo" became distinctly Chicano-style about three decades ago, when graffiti culture ignited in L.A. Also, the tendency to tag the letter "E" in the form of a backward figure "3" was originally developed by Chicano gangs, but is now one of the most prevalent techniques of mainstream graffiti in the world. Another element is the Old English font, a font that is typically featured on diplomas and other official documents. Because of its aura of authority and strength, Old English is popular among many Chicano-style artists. For Fusco, writing in stylized fonts allows him to experiment with lines, shading, flow and other technicalities. It's also a way for him to exhibit his own aesthetic ; at the moment, this means honing his current interest in cubic graffiti, a style that features exaggerated, jagged angles, making a piece look almost three-dimensional.

Graffiti, however, is considered vandalism and illegal by California law. In the fiscal year 2007-2008 alone, there were over 600,000 incidents of it in L.A., according to the L.A. Office of Community Beautification (OCB), and those were just the ones reported. Through city programs and community-based initiatives such as the OCB, over 31 million square feet of tagging were removed that year. In additional efforts to crack down on the practice, California law prohibits the sale of aerosol paint cans to minors and may prosecute or fine parents for their children's tagging. The City of Los Angeles also has the right to cite an individual for not removing graffiti from his or her property within a specified amount of time.
While the law sees graff as a defacement of public and private property ; however, writers hold it in a different regard.

"I personally do think graffiti belongs in the streets, on trains, walls or gates, or whatever," Fusco says. "You're not limited to space."

Like Fusco, most writers are aware of the city's ban on graffiti and the potential consequences of tagging. Complex letterings can only be produced when there is an ample amount of time under the radar of police and watchful civilians. Fusco requires at least 20 minutes for a decent piece, one that is complete with shading, block lettering and a customized color palette. If he's pressed for time, he opts to tag instead by using a single can of spray paint to quickly write a word. He can tag "STK" in about three seconds.

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