“These cats were the epitome of that early ’80s b-boy kid,” Wills said. His apprehension faded when he saw the kids were dressed like RUN-DMC video extras, covered in spray paint. They got off the train and started yelling at him from the platform, slowly heading in his direction. While working on that piece, Wills noticed a train with four Black guys staring at him out of the window. At the time, graffiti artists like the United Kings were not doing pieces on train cars, but they rode on MARTA to scout walls at nearby stations. He and Pest were doing a piece at King Memorial MARTA station. In college, Wills would venture out with a student from New York, who used the name Pest. They played him cassette tape mixes they made from local Atlanta radio stations, which included some rap. He grew up motorcycle racing and befriended Black students and Latinos who talked about graffiti. A white kid living in a predominantly white town eons away from the block parties in the Bronx, Wills found his intro to hip-hop at the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham. He came to Atlanta from Sycamore, Alabama. Meanwhile, in winter 1983, Wills was a student the Atlanta College of Art in Midtown, studying graphic design. He had all the money,” jokes Alexander.īefore long, they were getting better, hungrier. “We looked at a lot of cartoons back then. Above the text they painted Disney’s Scrooge McDuck. Their early pieces included one at Big Star grocery store on Columbia Drive that read, “Deque,” which is Gilmore’s tag, short for his first name, Dexter. It pushed through the fog of all of what was against us.” ![]() You were going to get in trouble, you were going to get in jail, people were out trying to do things to you. “It was an oppressed culture,” said Hackwin Devoe, when asked why, as young Black men, they were drawn to hip-hop culture, especially graffiti. and the risk of getting arrested, but the art and act of doing it spoke to them. They understood the danger of being out till 3 a.m. Despite news and radio warnings about the danger for Black children being out past 8 p.m., their runs typically started after midnight. ![]() The Devoe brothers, Alexander and Gilmore attended Columbia High School.Įventually the teenagers set out to start bombing (style writer speak for painting on several walls in short periods of time). In Atlanta, Black and brown children were living in a state of fear because of the Atlanta child murders. ![]() In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, hip-hop culture was taking shape in New York City. The family eventually moved to Eastwick, a townhome complex near South DeKalb Mall. “So seeing all of that, it was just a Monday evening in East Lake.”īut the brothers stayed out of trouble and focused on creating art. “Some of the teenagers would take an empty plastic bread bag, spray paint in there and then get high that way,” Hackwin Devoe said. Living in a place dubbed “Little Vietnam” for its violence and war zone-like feel, their intro to spray cans did not involve graffiti. They would spend time sketching their own versions of Bell’s NSFW, unapologetically Black imagery. ![]() It was the late 1970s, and the Devoe brothers were drawn to art from Marvel Comics and Parliament Funkadelic albums created by artist Pedro Bell. The words are accompanied by a spray can with a menacing face and a Martian holding a laser gun.Ĭredit: Rodney "Rad1" Wills From boys to ‘Kings’īrothers Dwayne and Hackwin Devoe can trace their artistic roots to growing up in Atlanta’s notorious East Lake Meadows public housing project. Painted in yellow are the words “Yard Kings.” It’s a reference to writers painting cars in train yards. Four of those artists stand in front of a piece that stretches at least 40 feet wide and upwards of 20 feet in height. The free event spans three days and features 25-plus graffiti artists whose heyday was the mid-’80s to the mid-2000s painting walls on the Westside Trail. The style writers are taking part in the Art on the Atlanta Beltline’s second annual ATL Jam. Bikers whizzing by, joggers lost in earbud orchestras and lovers bundled in hoodies holding hands stop to admire the work of the artists tinkering with their pieces. OutKast “ATLiens” blares from a loud speaker. It’s a Saturday afternoon, early November 2023, and the wall is covered from one end to the other with spray painted works in progress. It’s called “The Party Tunnel.” Well, that’s what its temporary inhabitants, graffiti writers, call the stretch of concrete on the Atlanta Beltline’s Westside Trail, behind the Lee + White development.
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