Chris Stain

Happy New Year

Blame It On My Youth

Below is a recent paper I had to write for school. I took the title from a song by Nat King Cole.

                                                      Blame It On my Youth

           If I remember correctly I learned how to write my name when I was in the 1^st grade at St. Elizabeth’s of Hungary Catholic School. My 1^st grade teacher,Ms. Pat, was a short woman with curly hair, thick glasses, and a pleasant but firm demeanor.  Among the many lessons we received Ms. Pat also taught us hand writing. She would hand out the thick yellow colored paper with the broken blue-green writing exercise lines and flecks of tree pulp embedded in the sheet. Then we would take up our pencils as if they were weapons and attack the page with, a a a a a a a, b b b b b b b, c c c c c c c, and so on. After a few lessons we got down the basics. We would then begin to practice writing our names.  “Very good Christopher,” she would say. “Everyone look at Christopher’s writing. This is how neat your writing should be.”  These thoughts crossed my mind last month as I sat in Central Booking with about 35 other criminals in pen # 6, 12 feet wide by 10 feet across, eating some dry ass corn flakes at 5 something in the morning, trying to figure out how I got there in the first place.  All this trouble because as a child I learned how to write my name.

           It seems natural for children to want to write their names in places that they visit.  I can recall going into the basement at my grandmother’s house and seeing my father and uncle’s names written under the stairs with chalk, back from when they were kids.  “Frankie ’53, Mark ’57, Tommie ’65.” One day while doing the laundry I even saw my daughter writing her name on the window of the basement door. I quickly grabbed the camera to capture the moment. The sanguine look on her face in the photograph clearly describes her innocence and the thought process of her actions as being harmless.  It’s as if she is thinking to herself, “My name is Amara and I love writing my name. I want to let everyone know I’m alive! What’s so wrong with that?”

Their have been several books that document this phenomenon of children writing their names and staking their claim in this world but the two that stand out most in this regard are Golden Boy as Anthony Cool: A Photo Essay on Naming and Graffiti  (1971), and Norman Mailers The Faith of Graffiti (1974) which has recently been re-released.  In his book Mailer states poetically,

“ Out of what connection to the past are these lights and touches of flame so much like the Hebrew alphabet where the form of the letter itself was worshipped as a manifest of the Lord; no, it is not enough to think of the childlike desire to see one’s name ride by in letters large enough to scream your ego across the city, no, it is almost as if we must go back into some more primeval sense of existence, in to that curious intimation of how our existence and our identity may perceive each other only as in a mirror.”

What Mailer is describing in the last sentence of the quote is the innate desire to prove the importance of one’s existence. That feeling is fulfilled by the simple act of writing one’s name, in this case, in the public arena.

           I began to notice children’s names and nicknames covering park benches, trees, lampposts, buses, trains, vans, bridges, and buildings, at the age of 11 when graffiti first caught my eye driving down Fayette St in my father’s old Malibu Classic.  It began to pop up in my East Baltimore neighborhood in the early to mid 1980’s.  At first it looked wild and uncontrolled but further investigation lead me to see how some names were written in cursive, others in print, and others still in a combination of the two with embellishments that made the letters stand out in a more calligraphic form. The names weren’t written small either, but large, bold, and colorful defying the grey walls and streets that defined the city.  Names were mostly written with markers, shoe polish, and spray paint, which at the time were easily accessible to pre-adolescent youth. Over night names would appear like magic as if a wizard came through waving a wand giving life to the dull surroundings.  As time passed it became obvious that not everyone shared the same sentiments about name writing. A flurry of anti graffiti pamphlets and advertisements began popping up on buses and subway platforms telling responsible adults what to look out for such as, “Who is the typical Graffiti Vandal? He prefers punk music and punk clothes…” Articles in the Sunday Sun magazine covered graffiti buffing and the damage and money it was costing the city. All the hype around the name writing just got the kids more excited. I remember collecting anti graffiti signs and pamphlets as if they were baseball cards.

 What I find interesting is that writing is how we are taught to identify ourselves in school and society.  On every paper, on every document of importance; on our driver license, our passports, on voting ballots, marriage certificates, checks, credit card bills, mortgage loans, parking tickets, forms of consent, wills and so on, we write our names as a statement of purpose, to be held accountable for our actions and beliefs, and as a document of our existence. 

Sculptor, teacher, and former graffiti writer Leon Reid the 4^th makes a direct connection between learning how to write one’s name, writing graffiti, and feelings of self worth. In an interview dated November 11^th he explained how at the age of 14 while attending The School for the Performing Arts “ everyone was doing the traditional landscape and portrait paintings but after school what you did was graffiti in the bathrooms. At the time I was thinking this is how I can become part of some thing, be a part of a group and be an individual at the same time.”  When Leon first learned how to write his name he was used as an example of what not do as he made cursive “A’s” incorrectly on a timed test.  He notes that by his adolescents his handwriting had improved and he had added his own flare to his letters. He remarks that,

“The advantage of learning how to write and be literate is that you can add your own personal elements of style, making it your own, which is essentially what graffiti is. Which means knowing the rules and breaking them to the point of basically an excessive style.  Graffiti is a great experience of the discipline of writing the Roman alphabet in conjunction with all the crazy experience and spray paint combined.” 

Leon’s thoughts link the discipline of learning how to write with the creativity of graffiti to form individual expression and a sense of self.  I found similar points being made when discussing the topic of learning how to write with long time graffiti artist Billy Mode.

            Bill and I grew up on opposite sides of Patterson Park when graffiti was reaching its height in Baltimore.  He remembers learning how to write as I did in Catholic school and how being sensitive to lettering influenced his attraction to graffiti. He explained how his experience began,

“In first or second grade along with the lessons of learning how to write each letter, doing it over and over again. There were different variations too; capital “G” has a few.  I remember later at about the age of 11 or 12 seeing graffiti art and paying attention to what they were doing and trying to break it down. Some tags were more cursive based. like “CHAS” and “JAMONE,” while others had their own thing going on which I think sparked for me the realization that you could add your own creativity to the letters. You had liberties to expand on what had been done. I remember reflecting back on that repetition and I think those early formative years of learning penmanship allowed me to apply it to the graffiti hand style. That’s why my tags always have connected like that of cursive writing.”

Much like my experience Bill received positive feedback in his formative years from his teacher, which not only gave him confidence but also made him attracted to lettering itself.

 It was that attraction, the way the letters connected, how the curves made some letters seem strong in their form, it was the artistry and how the mere motion of writing one’s name was enjoyable, that lead me to write my name in public. Which at 3 times in my life have lead to my arrest; once at age 11, later at 16, and most recently last month at the tender age of 39. Who would have thought that on the night of my birthday I would be sitting on the filthy cement floor of central booking listening to men vomit, fight, talk shit, and harass the female guards? Certainly not me, after all I’m an “established artist” and an “adult.”

            Although all three of us have carried our artwork into similar realms as that of graffiti writing we base our introduction into the world of art through graffiti, an avenue which would not have been explored had we not been taught the basic elements of hand writing styles as children.  In my work today the energy of the graffiti aesthetic is carried over in the form of the graphic line qualities that are the structure of my images. The sharp turns and cuts that give the imagery life are much like the connections and flourishes I would incorporate into my lettering.

But make no mistake, there is a particular energy that can only be experienced when writing your name in big bold letters at 3 in the morning on the street.