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| Graffiti gatekeeper: Once Jonathan Cohen – aka Meres – gives his approval, the artists go to work on projects that will be displayed for hours
or years. [Editor's note: The original version misspelled the photographer's name.] Dmitry Kiper |
Curator of an urban canvas
The Gatekeeper of New York's 'graffiti mecca,' 'Meres' decides who paints – and how long it stays.
from the July 24, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
By age 17, he had sold a few paintings and dropped out of school. He later attended a GED program in the Bronx for young people passionate about aerosol art, and then enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where he studied on-and-off for eight years while working full-time as a Manhattan bike messenger. He never graduated.
These days, the thin-faced, hazel-eyed Cohen is always on call, which may explain why his five o'clock shadow is closer to 10 o'clock. When he's not answering his cellphone or making sure the building isn't tagged illegally, he gives tours to interested onlookers. And every Sunday afternoon he teaches aerosol art to a class of 10 kids – after they earn their keep with two hours of scraping walls, painting them, and picking up trash.
Listen in on the class, and you'd swear you were hearing a foreign language. Some translations, then: a "tag" is an artist's basic signature; a "piece" is a signature with a detailed font and colors; and a "production" or "mural" is a scene with a concept.
On a recent muggy Friday afternoon at 5 Pointz, this dialect was in full force as old-school graffiti artists reminisced. Louie Gasparro (aka KR1), who has made aerosol art since 1977 as an 11-year-old tagging trains and alleys, remembers when he could tell what borough he was in by the graffiti style. Now, he says, styles from all over the world fuse into one another.
"Back in the day, you couldn't do elaborate pieces like this," says Mr. Gasparro in a thick New York accent, pointing to works that took weeks to create. As graffiti has become more accepted at places like 5 Pointz, he says, it's improved because artists can paint without the fear of being fined or chased by police. Instead of minutes, they can dedicate days, weeks, or months to a single work. But 5 Pointz is the exception, not the rule. "There should be more places like this," says Gasparro.
"It's another world away from the world," says Cohen.
Yet part of the appeal of 5 Pointz is its lack of isolation: The fact that this world is clearly visible from the subway ensures a steady flow of curious eyes. And there's another magnet nearby. P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, an affiliate of the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, is across the street. When people, especially those in their 20s and 30s, unexpectedly see 5 Pointz on the way to or from the museum, they are inexorably drawn to it by a mixed sense of enchantment and disbelief. A common reaction of passersby, says Cohen, is, "'Wow! Did you do all this with a can?'"
"It brings an audience that wouldn't be coming around here otherwise," he explains.
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