...I PAINTED OVER 60 MURALS ON THE WALLS AND BECAUSE I WAS ON THE SCENE EVERY DAY THERE WAS NO GRAFFITTI. WHEN NEW MANAGEMENT TOOK OVER THEY PAINTED THEM OVER
... I had so much paint that that is how I began to get store front jobs...I did everything on a ladder with no permit.I ended up renting a 5 bedroom house for a Studio on E Colvin Street. I wasn't thinking to be stationary in the area at the time and I regrettably passed on buying the house for about $7,000. Most of my jobs were right in the area, one was just up the street. As I would be doing one job, someone would ask me to come see them when I finished. My last job before leaving for the capital District and a Sculpture Fellowship was with Syracuse Housing . My highest paid local mural which paid me $1200 ( heavily discounted ) for 4-5 days work. A 40 ft Mural. Sounds like a lot for the money, but you do work like that for the opportunity to get seen by News outlets.
This time I did the Mural, got paid and then the community ( one person ) objected to the Street Imagery which was just on the verge of the Hip Hop Explosion at the time. It was a Black Church Community. They thought it was too Street and there wasn't much discussion that included me. A Local Down Town Alternative Paper picked up the Story as a mural Controversy. The whole thing never really bothered me much at the time because I was grounded in my work...my business was on point and I never wavered in what my business was. The community though I also should have included them in the project, but that was not my arrangement with Syracuse Housing. I contracted to do a Mural...the first day I greeted people and just did preliminary work. After that first day it was about doing what I was contracted to do and getting paid. If I were doing a community project it would have been set up differently. At the time I had been teaching for 10 years as an Independent Educator.