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| NOMZEE is a visual arsonist with
bases in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. His working media include spray paint, acrylics, textiles, and
computers. Though more a student of life, he did attend the Hussian School of Art in Philadelphia.
Aside from city walls, Nomzee's art has been shown in galleries in Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, among them: Gallery X, Studio Diabolique, the October Gallery (Philadelphia); the New York Film and Video Festival, the Time Light Space Gallery (New York). His murals can also be spotted at SPARC (Social and Public Arts Resource Center) in Los Angeles; Carribean Delight and Club Zero in Philadelphia; and Club Deco and the Justice League (formerly the Kennel Club) in San Francisco. |
| fabric8: How did you start getting into art? |
NOMZEE: I was always an artist. My mother could draw, and my older brother was one of the best artists I knew. I used to write on everything, draw on my schoolbooks . . . it was just something you couldn't keep me from doing. |
| fabric8: You started out doing graffiti, right? |
NOMZEE: My older brother would write on everything in the house, and we thought that he was crazy. At some point -- I don't remember when -- I just picked it up, and started writing on walls in 1979. From there, I went on trying to make a name for myself in Philadelphia (his tags have been Suzuki, Ice, and Nomzee). I picked up a spray can before I picked up a brush. I had more control over a spray can; I got frustrated with the brush in high school. |
| fabric8: So how did you get into painting? |
NOMZEE: I had graduated high school and decided at the last minute that I was going to go to art school to learn commercial art and illustration. Second year of art school we had painting, and I had a teacher named Virgil Sova, and he didn't really sit down and say "here's how you paint or do a stroke"; he would talk about psychology and philosophy and meditation and all that kind of stuff. So he got me into, like, the whole mental trip about art. I used to go to his house and hang out, and then I just decided that's what I wanted to do. So I dropped out of school, and came to California thinking I was going to come out here and be famous. That's how that whole thing manifested -- the painting part. |
| fabric8: What is your favorite project? |
NOMZEE: This guy from the Bahamas -- his name was John Wayne -- needed an artist to help paint his restaurant, Carribbean Delight. He was talking about he wanted to paint the whole place, from top to bottom. So we spent six months and painted the restaurant from the floor to the ceiling, like Michelangelo style. That was the best experience I ever had. |
| fabric8: Do you do any graffiti or tagging these days? |
NOMZEE: I would love to go and do a wall right now but I'm just over that shit. You know, I can't be getting chased by the police and getting locked up, because there was plenty of that when I was younger. But I've done some pieces there in Psycho City (San Francisco). Then I would see that a lot of young people into graffiti are like, "Oh graffiti is like this. Why are you putting it on t-shirts?". And it's like, I have to make it into a business, because you had to get your ideas from somewhere, which probably would be subway art or something like that. So I have to make my legacy, you know, and put my thing down so other people can see it. Those who like it will take it, and those who don't . . . leave it alone! |
| fabric8: Who would you say your influences are? |
NOMZEE: I am influenced by everything and everyone that I meet. And I think that one of my greatest influences . . . my first influences were my mother and my brother. My mom was struggling to go to art school when we were younger and she had this big old portfolio, a bag she made out of old curtains. I would go and get her sketchbook and I would sit there and just copy her work; I would try to get her style down. Then with my brother, I started to try to write graffiti and copy his style. After I went to art school I was just influenced by everything around me. Like if I would look at, say, a leaf on the ground. And I would pick it up and start seeing the veins in the leaf. There is just an infinite amount of information and influence around you. It's almost like that fractal design theory, where you can find patterns in everything. I'm pretty much a figurative artist, and within the human figure I try to find that connection to nature. Like, say, the patterns I would find in the leaf or the colors I would see in a flower somewhere; I try to capture that pattern and put it on the human flesh. |
| fabric8: Where did you learn all of these techniques and theories? |
NOMZEE: I try to do away with the theories that I learned from school because a lot of it is . . . theory. You take, for instance, the Impressionists and the Expressionists. They all had their ideas and concepts but it just seems so limited. So, okay, I'm an Impressionist painter; I only paint this type of way, and I try to get the impression of light. I can just sit and paint landscapes forever trying to get the impression light has on it, but there are just so many ideas and theories on everything. Why not try to just grab 'em all, you know what I'm saying? So that's what I do, and I think that's what drives people crazy about my art. It's too much to look at. It's so many things. And that's what I'm influenced by -- everything, and I want to put it all in a painting at one time. School was just boring to me. I realize now that I learned more about commercial art and people and markets than I ever realized I was learning, but at the time that wasn't what I wanted to do. I was bored with commercial art, I found it very restricting because I wanted to pursue fine art. I think that the best school is experience, hands-on. Life is school, and school is life. |
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