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(Drury Brennan) It's kind of like stream of consciousness poetry,
and then it's also like a journal.
I roll out a blank piece of paper; I create my lines,
I ask myself what phrase can I write down that's going to evoke
what I'm feeling in this moment, and then, I just start.
Generally what happens is, it kind of snowballs,
so I'll write one phrase and then get excited
and be like, yeah, this is the next thing I have to write.
I mean, I've written everything
from love letters to just kind of boasts and like,
you know, freestyle dissing of, of culture and the Internet.
I mean, it really like runs the gambit.
I feel like I'm, I'm free to, to pull from whatever, wherever.
I was born in the Twin Cities; I was born in St. Paul,
and then kind of on a whim, kind of on a gamble, my parents
moved out to Hollywood and like the 3rd or 4th day we moved in,
my mom was like, I have to show you something.
And so we walked around the block to this graffiti yard,
which was just a brick empty lot.
To go from having grown up at the Walker and seeing art
in this kind of hallowed hall environment,
and then growing up next to this graffiti yard,
where there were no ceilings, and like no rules.
It was just incredibly exciting and it kind of literally
lifted the roof off of, of the potential for,
for art for me and what I thought art could be.
It's almost been a singular influence on all of my work,
whether it's music or ceramics or photography.
I've never forgotten the symmetries
and the color palettes that I grew up with.
Entering into this calligraphy work
has really allowed me to kind of explore
the relationship that I have to graffiti.
You know, I'm not a graffiti writer, but I write.
This work is, is an experiment to marry the soul and the music
and the rhythm of graffiti with the poetics and structure
and awareness of Asian calligraphy.
Something that I really enjoy about Asian calligraphy
is the fact that I don't necessarily understand
what it's saying, or like what the meaning of it is,
but I find it profoundly beautiful,
and I wanted to see if our Roman alphabet was capable
of a similar translation, where through abstraction,
we can appreciate the beauty of its structure,
without even having to comprehend it.
Like can the form be the poetics itself,
that's really what I'm going for.
So I'm going to take an M. Right? Nothing too fancy.
Like our structure there is just
here, here, here, here. Right?
So if we come in and we just begin to rebuild that letter...
so it's abstracted, but we're taking the same basic elements
and just adding elements of like wild-style graffiti to them.
Many times it's, it's just, it gets so obliterated that I, I,
I have a lot of trouble reading it, but that's also the times
I step back from it, and I'm like
wow, I've never seen anything like this.
I don't even know what this is.
Like this is geometric abstract rhythm form poetry
graffiti stuff, you know,
and that healthy confusion,
that whimsy, that curiosity about,
about what this work is, really drives me.
And it's, and it's, it's something
that's really exciting and in the way,
I kind of feel like I take the viewer along for the ride,
of that unknown-ness,
and so far, it's gotten a good response.
So I think that it's,
it's something that I'm going to keep going with.
You know, I think I'm on to something, I guess. laughs
blowing very hard