Everyone Should Know This
KC and POSE on nytimes.com. check it oooout
“Before they were in, they were out. Before crowds swamped the galleries and celebrities wrote checks, KC Ortiz and Jordan Nickel wielded spray cans, hopped fences, provoked the citizenry, got arrested — all to make Chicago’s streets, rooftops and el tracks their canvas.
Graffiti is a “selfish, stupid, destructive crime,” declared former Mayor Richard M. Daley. Still, the pair thrived — first as criminals, and eventually as artists.
“Graffiti was the best education,” said Mr. Ortiz, 33, now an award-winning photojournalist. His work has appeared in Newsweek, Time and The Wall Street Journal. “I learned to listen to myself and get around barriers that other people set up against you.”
Mr. Nickel, 31, now a painter and founder of We Are Supervision, a commercial art and design firm based in Chicago, said, “Riding the train as a kid and seeing graffiti was life-changing.” The times he spent traveling the Red Line with his father from their Evanston home to see the Cubs at Wrigley Field revealed “a world that invited me in and accepted me and made me who I am,” he said. “It completely electrified my life.”
If Mr. Nickel had the opportunity, he would tell Mr. Daley: “Lighten up. If I didn’t have that outlet as a kid, I wouldn’t be sitting here. Graffiti saved my life.”
Mr. Nickel and Mr. Ortiz’s exhibition inspired by Chicago’s strict stance on graffiti, entitled “Whitewash,” opened Nov. 19 at Known Gallery in Los Angeles…..”
