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Ekorb Interview

How did you first get into graffiti?

When I used to live near Birmingham city centre, just goin to school, when my mum would drive me an that, I just used to see tags, tags everywhere, I used to try and read em, and from lookin at them near enough every day of my life I become more and more interested in starting to write.

So you were inspired by all ready practising graffiti artists?

Mostly yeh, aswell when I used to catch the train into the city with family I would see all the graffiti around the factories and in spaghetti junction. I didn’t think anything of the tags I was just interested. I didn’t realise it would lead to me being a writer but knowing these things did eventually made me want to start.

When you first started graffiti were you alone or did you do it with friends?

No not really but after a bit I did introduce my mate and we just used to practise sketching different words and stuff like that. I was never really into tagging, Just the more complex style of graffiti, Pieces etc.

Would you say living in Birmingham helped you develop your style?

I think so yeh, I used to see one artist about a lot, But what I saw was very simple compared to the way I first imagined graffiti. But after seeing his style I became more and more aware of that style around by more than just him. I used to create visuals in my head of words that I would relate to for my style. When getting home I tried putting them to paper and actually coming up with the piece in that style, Adding bits here and there to make it more of unique to me.

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So after creating these pieces on paper in the ‘Birmingham style’ did you just go onto the streets?

At first no I was always nervous about leaving my house just incase my mum and dad found out, But after a bit I built up the courage to start goin out taggin with my pal. My mum and dad used to ask me why I was coming in late and I used to just tell them I was chilling. Answering your question yeh, after a while I used to take sketches with me so I would know what I was paintin because I still hadn’t developed a style I could do off the top of my head.

Have you always stuck to painting walls or did you take your passion for graffiti any further?

At first it was only walls but going past one of the train yards and seeing a couple of pieces on the steel , I thought that I would be pretty cool to paint on a train as well.

Did you ever actually paint a train then?

I don’t really want to say any details but for the sake of the interview, one night , yeh. This is a bit of a funny story. Me and my pal managed to finally get to the train yard and faced with a massive fence. I managed to climb over then told my pal to throw the bag of paint over so he could climb. He managed to get to the top but got the bottom of his trousers caught and slipped off losing his shoe and ripping his

trousers basically off.

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Birmingham Graffiti

“Birmingham has a diverse and interesting graffiti scene, every corner you turn has something different to offer.”...

Gesa 2011

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Hoakser, Graffiti

While Birmingham offers a wide range of Galleries and Museums showing work from great artists such as Pi-casso and Henry Moore, an aspect which is often over looked is the street art which is present throughout the city and its neighbouring towns.

An artist who spends much of his time creating this Graffiti is the Birmingham-born, 29 year old HOAKSER. Working on a variety of different surfaces, from toys to walls, clothing to canvasses, HOAKSER creates a beautiful selection of vibrant art; including fascinating, imaginative 3D sculptures.

“there’s so much to learn… things like making your own style, how to connect letters, making them flow, how to put on 3d’s and highlights, what colours go together… The more you learn the deeper the rabbit hole gets, and the more skilled you get the more possibilities you have of what to paint”

Furthermore, this passion for street art has allowed him to explore a broad range of techniques in turn providing him with the knowledge and experience to develop his own recognisable style through the use of characters and let-tering.

When asked what got him into street art HOAKSER often refers back to his childhood, describing his dad’s hobbies:

“My dad used to draw a bit… He would sketch characters; the main ones I remember were of Vikings and rabbits, and as a kid that fascinated me. My dad is also a keen pho-tographer, and used to develop his own photographs”

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Since becoming fascinated with Graffiti all those years ago HOAKSER has now begun exhibiting his work in his very own solo show at the Moseley Exchange. The show con-sists off a good selection of one of unique pieces which have been created all over the world and are one of the many reasons for his international fame.

“My first exhibition, called Graffiti vs Art includes a range of old paintings and prints which I have either vandalised or added to… for example Whistlers mother with a ban-dana and a spray can sat in front of a Hoaks throw up”

As well as displaying his work, HOAKSER also has his very own web page, blog and shop which he uses to broadcast his most recent street art. Another website which he is featured on is ‘The Blok. Here he does a lot of branding; creating prod-ucts ranging from custom t-shirts, one off designs, hoody’s, vinyl models, canvasses, custom artwork, design, custom graffiti cans and logo designs; all of which can be made to order.

Currently HOAKSER is working on a new project combining both his love of Graffiti and toys; so re-member keep your eyes peeled, you never know what you might discover!

“Graffiti is good for work ethic- it keeps me constantly changing and developing, in as many ways as possible, just to get my name up in some way or another, on any surface”

13“Quick freestyled chame-leon around Fluid.. Painted using loads of scraps, with a little hoakser piece run-ning down his back and some dinner flying around..” HOAKSER 2011

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Julian Beever Art Julian Beever is an internationally renowned English Art-ist who’s work is centred around pavement art. Most com-monly known for his trompe-l’ceil chalk drawings, Beever has been creating these 3D pavement sketchings since the mid 1990s.

To achieve this effect he uses a projection called an-amorphosis which in turn creates an illusion of three di-mensions when viewed from the correct angle.

“The secret is to set up a camera on a tripod and keep it in one spot and check every mark you make. It’s really just playing with perspective to make it appear different to what it really is.”

Besides this pavement art, Beever also paints murals with acrylic paints and replicas of the works of masters and oil paintings, and creates collages. Amongst his other work are wood panelled drawings, usually themed around music, measuring 7 metres long by 1.5 metres high.

As well as this, he has also worked as a freelance artist creating murals for companies in countries such as, the UK, Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Spain, the U.S., Australia, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.

“My art is for anybody, it’s for people who wouldn’t go into an art gallery. It’s art for the people.”

Most recently Julian Beever has released a book, ‘Pavement Chalk Artists’ which includes photographs of many of his works from around the world.

17Julian Beever has been dubbed as the “pavement Picasso” for his talent at creating mind-blowing im-ages on the sidewalks

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Savvas

Papadopoulos:

Inside The Mind

I’ve been officially an artist for about five years. But I have always drawn and painted since I was a young child. First I started doing pencil portraits and paintings of nature and people. I took my first steps at a small art shop in town, doing Byzantine Icons. I had a fantastic couple of art teachers that encouraged me to go on. Then I continued doing portraits and more paintings until I saw a huge improvement in my work.

Then following my parents advise I started posting some pieces of my work on eBay. The respond I got was enough to make me keep on with my work. I was also earning some money from this job, witch was very im-portant for me as a young artist that I was. Then what I did , was I tried to find some clients and sell them Icons portraits and paintings. The respond I got was amazing. I started reading books about the arts and I was seeing amazing improvements on my painting skills.

After I made some money, and got some experience I decided to start working in a more free, artistic way. I started looking at peoples work on the internet especially illustrators, and what I did first was , I tried to get some elements from their work and combine it with mine. I also learned how to use programs on the computer such as illustrator Photoshop and in de-sign. I started making compositions on the computer with those programs based always on famous illustrators and graphic designers work. One art-ist I got an influence from was James Griffin.

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His work always combines the reality with art. He uses bright colors and his esthetic is always very good tasted. He is also obsessed with detail. I admired his work so much that I tried to work hard on the details as well and sometimes use the same colors as he does. I think the influence I had from him is more visible on my latest work.

My latest work is based on Birmingham’s architecture. Basically I created some compositions including hand drawing pictures and photographs I took. The pictures I use as background most of the times are showing the night sky. The reason I do this is because I think night sky, transmits a mystery and also it makes the whole composition look more calm. The main idea of my compositions was to combine some old and some new buildings of Birmingham. The reason was because I wanted to show thecontinuation of architecture through the years and point thedifferences between new and classic architecture. I think the combination of those two different styles of architectureincluding the night sky brinks out emotions as nostalgia of the old city and admiration for the contemporary style of architecture.

And is really important for an artist to be able to communicate thought his work with the audience and provoke them to bring out certain emotions. That’s why we need to check other artists work all the time and borrow some elements from their work , to improve our work.

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Birmingham

“It is really important for an artist to be able to commu-nicate thought his work with the audience and provoke them to bring out certain

emotions. “ Savvas 2011

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Designed By

Darren Holden

Savvas Papadopoulos

Lucy Watson