Broke and Bespoke

FRIDAY L@TE NIGHT at the BAM/PFA (Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive)

I stopped in to the BAM/PFA last night to hear Peggy Honeywell perform some soothing acoustic numbers. Honeywell is the alter-ego of contemporary artist Clare Rojas, who also happens to be married to Barry McGee, aka TwistOne, whose mid-career survey is currently on exhibition at the BAM/PFA through Dec. 9. If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly encourage you to check it out.

While McGee is a famous contemporary artist, he first came to my attention when I was a teenager working on my graffiti styles back in the early 1990s. I met him once at a “writers” meeting decades ago, but we got to chat for a little bit last night. He knew I was a (former) graffiti artist, and asked me to sign the book above. Though I was without a chisel-tipped pen I managed to eke out something respectable, and even got some nice compliments on my “E.” Not the one in this  tumblr’s masthead, but a different less legible, and more flourish-ey one. Fortunately I copyrighted it on the spot, and so any future use of this “E” ought to properly attributed. ;-) In any case, we reminisced a bit about Berkeley/Bay Area graffiti in the 90s (a high point for the form internationally I might say…), and he signed my book for me (I’ve lost the one he signed for me back circa 1992)—and someone else even showed up with a huge blue chisel-tipped paint pen.