When Alexander Jarman decided to partner with Writerz Blok to have graffiti artists interpret
images from the Modern Mexican Painting exhibit, he knew it would raise eyebrows.
ALEXANDER JARMAN: We are going to get some questions about pairing Diego Rivera imagery
with graffiti.
But what better way to convey what goes into creating murals like the ones by Diego Rivera
than to commission one to go up in the museum where people can watch its progress.
Plus graffiti is a key part of contemporary urban muralism.
But this raises another question: what happens to this rebellious art form when it's placed
in a mainstream setting?
ALEXANDER JARMAN: It definitely changes it when it comes inside the institution but that
only makes it different.
It doesn't necessarily make it better or worse, it's just a different context for it.
Helping put graffiti into this different context is Writerz Blok artist Saratoga Sake.
I met Sake back in 1991 when he was 22, and part of a crew doing walls for a Fox 6 promo
campaign I was producing.
Back then he specialized in putting up portraits with just a spray can.
But now he's added brushes and oils to his repertoire.
SARATOGA SAKE: With the rise of the internet that sped things up for me over the past five
years.
I mean everything is there to learn how to paint, if you have the talent you can basically
teach yourself.
Yeah, I'm totally self taught, I think I got Ds and Fs in art class in high school.
With his new tools Sake adapted easily to the challenges of putting up the museum mural.
For one, he couldn't paint with aerosol inside the museum because the fumes and particles
could damage other paintings.
So for the base layer of the mural he had the team of Writerz Blok artists employ a
centuries old technique.
ISRAEL SERRANO: Yeah this is some type of charcoal and we're basically putting an under
base because Sake's chosen to use a Flemish technique so a lot of these under tones will
show through once we add color.
SARATOGA SAKE: I drew everything first with charcoal and then I'm doing light washes on
top of it... the under painting does all the magic and you just paint right over it real
lightly.
Sake found the old masters helpful in solving his problems.
Sake's ability to mix traditional and street art also led him to a design appropriate for
a museum setting but without sacrificing his graffiti style.
SARATOGA SAKE: I wanted to make a kind homage if you will but I wanted like the hands of
Dr. more by Diego Rivera to be like the hands of god like Diego is like the creator of the
mural movement and this woman's head in like the shape of the world and he's injecting
the tree of life into her and cutting off a limb, and I want a rainbow of color shooting
out her eye and that's where the graffiti is gonna start
ISRAEL SERRANO: This whole section in this curve is gonna be cut out and will have graffiti
in it so right now I am laying out the contour so they can cut it out precisely.
The graffiti panels were spray painted outdoors and then mounted onto the 70 foot mural.
The sheer scale of the wall was a challenge as well.
Sectioning it off through a grid helped.
ISRAEL SERRANO: The grid helps us so we measure off the wall and get everything in the right
place and once you have one thing in the right place it helps you get other things in the
right place.
Back in the day, Sake never would have used a grid.
But his attitude has changed about a lot of things especially after he started going to
museums and seeing the art with an open mind.
SARATOGA SAKE: I think that made me a better graffiti artist being more open to all sorts
of art.
Seeing paintings I had seen in books before they didn't look as how they looked in books,
they looked like just whoa!
That's precisely the feeling Alexander Jarman wants to elicit from people coming to the
museum and seeing the mural from Writerz Blok.
ALEXANDER JARMAN: Nothing replaces having an experience with the art right in front
of you.
Seeing the impressive 70 foot mural up close may be exactly the type of intimate experience
that will bring people around to appreciating graffiti as a fine art.