| | Mesh was born and raised in the city of New York. When he was just a child his favorite smell was that of the dusty aroma of steel filings coming up through subway grates. Stopping everything to take it in as a train would go by beneath, Mesh grew up loving the subway and subsequently "bombing" the subway, which now connotes another more dire meaning, but always traditionally meant placing one's tag, large or small on the inside or outside of a subway car. With an interest as early as grammar school, Mesh and neighbor Cost, who later went on to pioneer roll-ups with Revs, formed the KRT crew (Kings Running Things) and branched out from local street bombing into bombing trains, traveling all across the city to do so, meeting characters of all sorts, in sketchy neighborhoods of all sorts. Mesh then formed a partnership with Reas, and along with Wolf, a high-school classmate, they together formed the AOK crew based on a quote from Min in Style Wars about what it takes to be a king: "You've got to be an All Out King!" Doing just that, covering all bases of Graffiti, The AOK crew went on to become one of the pre-eminent crews in New York City in the late 80's. First published in Henry Chalfant's book Spray Can Art with the "one" piece, Mesh is on a mission to progress the actual form of Graffiti within itself rather than create only art that is inspired by it. This new "Post-Graffiti" takes into account all the modern relationships that occur between the work and the viewer as it is informed by the historical precedence of its early character. Graffiti is the only art movement in history for which all of the original foundation works (those found on New York City subways) no longer exist. Thus an interesting relationship of impermanence occurs which Mesh believes in perpetuating as a primary ingredient of the form. This can be seen in future works that Mesh is creating. Through dissection and deconstruction Mesh is always working on capturing the essence of line while remaining true to the form. The boundaries in Graffiti have only begun to be explored and Mesh plans on expanding these boundaries as the movement progresses outwardly. | |
