Droppin’ Science..
Erni NYC Kicks Knowledge

Whether you know it or not [whether you even like it or not]-there is no escaping Erni Vales. Not so much in a personal sense, but rather in creations borne from his own hands. Its unlikely to go one full day, if you live in the modern world, without seeing something Erni has been involved in. From album covers, to magazine layouts, to logos, to television, to pieces-Erni is the metaphorical King Midas of art today, but in talking to him you would never know it.

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I never realized, until looking through your site www.top-2-bottom.com, how many different things you are involved in, outside of graffiti. And you would never know it in talking to you: as you’re more on the chill, inconspicuous tip. Have you always been the “quiet kid?”

I’ve always been more reserved and laid back. You kill the stereotype I have of what a New York graf writer is-tough, a ruff-neck… When I started I was a ruff-neck.

Where in New York did you grow up?

The Lower East Side…
I’m sure you’ve heard of Lee. He lived in the building next to mine. Talk about a shadow to stand in. I was like, “Oh great, the king of graffiti lives right next door to me.”

How much older was Lee?

About six years older. He’s actually still six years older. [laughs]

Yeah. Right.

He was weird; he wouldn’t do any pieces in anyone’s black books, he would never tell you what he was doing, he never would tell you what he was about to do. He was always mysterious, even on the verge of shady. He wasn’t super well liked, especially after he did that Allen Boys piece. The Allen Boys were like the rival gang because we grew up in Smith Projects. So the Smith Boys, who later turned into Die Hard, were like, “This f@#%in’ guy, he’s doing the Allen Boys piece and they’re our freakin’ enemies!” So at that point, everybody started liking me better. [laughs]
They still respected him because he was still the king of graffiti. I mean he didn’t have problems walking around the neighborhood or anything, but they definitely were like, “That’s f@#%ed up.”

Was Lee a mentor to you?

He actually wasn’t a mentor at all because like I said, he was a little weird.

We’re close now. And I’ll make fun of him now like, “You shady character!”

One time, this is a funny story, I’m in his house, just hanging out and he eats like a freakin’ gavon.’ This guy eats like eight meals a day. And he’s like, “You know what, I’m really in the mood for some orange juice. Will you go to the store and get me some orange juice?”

And I’m like, “I’m not one of those freakin’ toys that goes runnin’ around cuz you ask for sh@t.”

And he’s like, “What do you want then?” I’m like, do a throw up in my book.

And he’s like, “ I don’t do books.”

And I’m like, “I don’t do orange juice.”

Then he was like, “Alright, I’ll do something in your book.”

So he did the little throw up in my book which was very cool. But when I left, I didn’t take the book with me. I forgot it. And I came back like two days later to pick up the book and mysteriously, just that page had been razor-bladed out of the book. So I was like, “Yo, well where’s the throw up?”

And he was like, “ I don’t know.”

I’m like, “Well, you had the book. And you did the throw up. And now its neatly cut out of the book…”

And he’s like, “Well, what can I say, I did the throw up-so now we’re even.”

Like I said, we’re really close now because he’s overcome a lot of that. We laugh about it today. But he wasn’t so much a mentor, I mean you would look at his things in awe…


So you were more of an admirer.


Yeah, because he was like the first guy with can control. Wicked, wicked can control. His pieces, when they were first done, they were unbelievable.


What other writers did you come up admiring?


Mitch 77. I was talking to somebody the other day-if graffiti were baseball, if Lee was Babe Ruth, Mitch 77 was like Ted Williams. It was like all right, this guy [Lee] can hit home runs all the time, but this guy [Mitch 77] can do everything. You know this guy bombed the insides, he did throw ups, he did blockbusters, he did wild styles, he did top to bottoms. Everywhere!

It’s a shame he didn’t get put into “Subway Art” like everyone else did. But anybody that knows, from that time, you say Mitch 77 and they’ll be like, “That guy was the baddest.” He was like an unsung hero. There aren’t that many of his photos now and he didn’t get a lot of play in the “Subway Art,” but he was a bad ass


Staying with the theme of versatility, I consider you a very versatile artist. I mean I’ve seen canvases by you, photos of pieces on the streets, layouts and even furniture…was versatility something that you worked at?


At one point, I abandoned graffiti completely. I was like, “I’ve seen it all, it’s the same pieces [this was before the Europeans really started going bananas], there’s only so much you can do with a spray can.” So me and my partner Gil were like, “Lets go learn other things.” So we learned how to do full finishes, more traditional paint textures, started experimenting with paintbrushes and learning how to paint for real. You play with washes and oils and you could probably master almost everything; except maybe oils, those might take you a lifetime. But when you came back to spray painting, you had a whole new appreciation. I told Carl, [one of the two owners of Tribal] the piece I just did here on this wall looks good because it works on that wall. It works really well with the room, with the walls, the colors-and that’s a good mural, when everything works together.

Erni blesses the new Tribal warehouse in San Diego.

So when you go back to doing pieces, it’s the same thing. For example, if you’re piecing with some of the best writers in the world, you gotta stand out. So you think, “How do I do that?” Maybe it’s not a wild style; maybe it’s something simple, something clean.


It just seems for an artist, versatility is important. It’s funny because you’ll hear some writers today saying, “F@#% doing all that art sh@t: I’m a graf writer.”


Yeah, it is funny because before graffiti started out, before “Subway Art,” before Style Wars, before the galleries-graffiti was, who’s rockin’ the line. Who’s piece burned whose? Who did a piece with this guy and got rocked? And that’s what it was about. You made your own style, you didn’t bite and you tried to innovate your own style to be the best on that car or that train that you were doing. That’s what it was. And that competition kind of got lost over the years. That competition that made you think, “I need to be better.” How do you get better? You gotta learn. Graffiti was about getting the most you could out of a spray can. Learning and exploring more, changing the letters; that’s where wild style came up. It started as a bubble letter, then it became this “thing” by itself over the years from culture to culture to culture. It became these wild, elaborate pieces.

So then in that tradition, why not say, “You know what, I have to go beyond graffiti now to learn more things to bring them back to graffiti.” It’s the only way. You can’t say, “Alright, I’ve learned everything in this spectrum that there is to know.” Because then you’ve just done what you’ve accused everyone else on Madison Avenue of doing. You would see a book come out and it had fake graffiti on the cover and you were like, “Oh, some f@#%in’ ad agency with an art director thinks they know what graffiti is, did that; and they’re just ignorant to what we do.” Well, we’ve become ignorant to the world. And that’s what happened. Once you did that, you weren’t an artist anymore. An artist has to always explore-exploring feelings, exploring emotions. And that’s one thing that lacks in graffiti today; no one explores anymore.

And that’s my critique on graffiti specifically in the past five or six years. There is a whole lot of talking, but no one is saying anything. Look at the world today-isn’t there something in the world that affects you, that will reflect in your work?


That’s why when you talk of the Europeans, I guess that is where the evolution is going. What writers are you into today-are you into Daim and company, etc.?


Yeah, those guys. And I know that they’re also going to school and they are applying the learning [to graffiti and art.] And you’re seeing it in their work.

I met Daim, we were gonna piece once, but it didn’t work out. We were talking about this wall we were working on in the Bronx. And Daim didn’t want to do this theme that they had chosen because he had done it before. So he was trying to get them to come up with another theme, but they were set on doing that. But I understood his point which was; we’ve already done this particular thing, why do it again-you don’t need to do it again. I understand and I respect that; anyone who pushes the envelope, because that’s really what graffiti is about. And there are even a lot of guys playing with weird styles that don’t look like graffiti at all. Whether you like it or not, that doesn’t matter. It’s all cut out of the same stone and they’re trying to find something. And the only thing that separates hundreds of thousands of graffiti artists out there, again, is to look inside and see something inside of you and say, “You know what, I really do have message and I need to get that message out.” How come out of a hundred thousand graffiti artists, no one has a message? It’s really weird. And I love seeing the pieces, they’re great. Name, crew, name, crew, name, crew…


But what are you saying.


Exactly.

That bugs me because I could go into the East Village and go into some gallery and I could see guys whose paintings might suck. But you know what-they’ve committed themselves to the act of painting and they have something to say and they are driven to do that.

It’s hard to get graffiti artists to paint. They’re like, “Well, how much am I gonna get, what’s in it for me, am I getting free paint…” Man, when I was nineteen, I would run to the wall. You gotta wall? You got paint? I’m comin’! I don’t care. And now it’s more political. But I still know artists today who spend all of their money on another tube of oil paint, another can of spray paint. And these people, they don’t go out, they don’t have any money, they work in a restaurant and then they go home and they paint. They might be ugly paintings, whatever, but they’ve committed themselves. Like you said, a lot of people don’t know the scope of my work. A lot of people think I just do graffiti now and then. I don’t know what they think I’m doing in between, but for twenty years, I’ve been consistently working. I’ve had a couple of vacations. But beside that, I’ve worked. Anyone who comes to my studio, I tell them, “Come with some hours!” Looking back now, I think, “Jesus, that’s a lot of work.”

erni@top-2-bottom.com

A friend was mentioning to me that you were going to be doing a CD-ROM of your old black books…


I have five black books, two that I did all myself. The other three are about eighty percent myself. And this is just from high school. So I was like, “What am I gonna do with these, what am I gonna do with these?” And finally I was like, you know what, I’m going to make a CD-ROM. Its gonna be interesting because these pieces are from 85’ to 90.’

And as they were scanning these, the guy calls me and says, “You’re gonna need two CD-ROMS.” And I said, “Why?” And he said because we had about 400 pieces.


We talked about work ethic earlier. And in my observation-being an artist does involve natural ability, but most importantly, as cliché as it may sound, it involves hard work. You guys are the artists because you’ve done those pieces, or those throw ups more times than anyone else.


Yeah, that’s what it is-the commitment and the discipline. Yeah, its fun hangin’ out and partying and drinking and having a good time, but when everyone goes home, somebody has to work.


Don’t sleep.


Right. Somebody has got to get into that studio when no one is around and no one is lookin.’


That’s a good lesson. Because its seems like the younger generation has lost the value of work a little bit. Everyone wants to be an artist or a DJ or whatever. But it doesn’t just happen. So its good for kids coming up to hear from someone who has achieved success doing what it is they love to do. And its not just talent, it is work.


In high school, I went to Art and Design, which was just out of control. I mean Pink, Fable, Wiggles, Doze, Wayne and I could go on with about 15 or 20 more people you might have heard of…And then probably 150 people who didn’t really go beyond, but were part of the culture.
It was like, everyday, you were surrounded by graffiti. Everyday. They made a rule in school that at lunch, only six people could sit at each table. Because at our table, the writers table, had 25 or 30 people at it. Just black books going by. The bathroom in that school, you couldn’t go in there with a ballpoint pen and find a spot. There was this one guy, his name was Mixer and I remember telling him, “You’re lucky, cuz you’re a lefty and if you stand on top of the divider and hold on to the light bulb, you could reach that spot!” [laughs]


What about Wiggles, he’s ill.


He’s one of the true ambassadors of hip-hop. Because he’s really humble and he doesn’t need to be because he can do it all. I can’t dance to save my life. He can dance, choreograph, he can piece, he can MC, he can DJ-he can do it all. And I’m like, “I can piece. And give me enough time and I probably can get the bartender to buy us a round of drinks.” [laughs]

Graffiti was 24 hours a day-it was all day, all night. That was the root of it. And now, I see people passing around black books and all it is is throw ups and tags. That’s not what it was. It was easier in high school you know. I remember once, Doze came in with eight black books and he did the same piece in everyone. At one point, I had like 19 black books at a time at my house. And you try to do a nice piece because people will get mad at you if you don’t do a nice piece. I almost got into a fight with Sharp and Delta from the old school. They rolled up on me and I was like, “What are you so mad at me for?” And Delta said, “You did a whack piece in my book.” [laughs] And I was like, “Give it back to me. I’ll do a better piece, but I got like 20 books at my house!” [laughs] I mean I was good, but that doesn’t mean that every piece comes out good.

Back then, had you just done a throw up in someone’s book, they would have been like, “Yo, if you didn’t want to do something, you should’ve just said no.”

And then it would get to the point where the book got really good. You’d give it somebody and they would never give it back. So that’s why everyone is just doing tags and throw ups cuz no one will give you their book. In my first book-I have like three Daze pieces in it, I have two Crash pieces, a Dondi and Futura piece in it. So at that point, it was time to get a new book. And that was my oldest book and my pieces were horrendous.

It’s kind of cool though, its just proof.. of an artists evolution.


You have to have a start. And that “Subway Art” book came out and it kind of destroyed the evolution for a lot of people after that because people took a bunch of different styles and made their own style. Then you got these pieces that you didn’t know who did them. But before the book, when you were looking at trains-if a Case 2 piece went by, even if it was at 40 miles an hour, you knew. You were like, “That was Case 2.” Cuz that was his style. You couldn’t read ‘em, but you knew it was him. If a Seen piece went by it didn’t matter what word he wrote-it was clean, it was tight. You knew it. You don’t have that so much anymore. Again, you see one of Daim’s pieces maybe and you’re like, “That must be him.” Or Loomit or any of those guys who are concentrating on individualizing the artist. Another thing that they’re doing, that’s really important…Its something I learned from reading Andy Warhol’s book, his diaries and reading Keith Haring’s book. Andy Warhol didn’t like working with other artists, but he understood it was important for pop art to work with up and coming artists and he worked with Keith Haring. And you read his diaries and he’s like, “I can’t stand that they’re getting so much exposure.” It would drive him mad. But he still knew it was important. I collaborate with a lot of different artists, mostly non-graffiti artists. The only graffiti artists I collaborate a lot with now are Pink and Smith. Because they like to be out doing these walls and they want to do nicer murals. A lot of other graffiti artists don’t want to do that so much, they want to get their name up, they want to do a nice piece.

Those European guys really work with each other. They help each other and now look what they’ve done in their career because of it. Now they’ve created some kind of a movement, they created a unity and I don’t even know if those guys even get along-it doesn’t even matter. They know that professionally, it’s your job. And if we want to do this as a living, we have to support each other. That’s why I will only say positive things about graffiti, about graffiti artists. For example, if there is someone I don’t like, and there are people I don’t like, and people ask me about them-I usually say I don’t even know them, I’m not familiar with their work. Because I’d rather just say that than say something negative. Because saying something negative, ultimately, hurts me in the end. And that’s pointless.

Erni - Oil on canvas.