Issue 04
MONSTER PROJECT
By Caleb NeelonPhotos By Monster Project
Street art will forever be the rollerblading to graffiti’s skateboarding. Like rollerblading, street art is safer, more readily understood by yuppies, and takes about an afternoon to learn. Like skateboarding, graffiti is a risky, closed system. In contrast to the cushy learning curves of rollerblading and street art, it is entirely possible to skateboard or write graffiti for 10 years and still suck at it. This combination of ease, accessibility, and safety means that to be half as cool as graffiti, street art needs to be twice as big, twice as risky, and twice as technically difficult.
Accordingly, the best street art is often made by graffiti writers looking to expand their practice to new media. Enter Monster Project, a small team of artists-many with strong graffiti backgrounds-operating in Boston, Providence, and New York since 2000. The Monster itself is a brown, black, and white beast that pokes out only its head and paws, eating urban sites that the team has carefully chosen, scouted, measured, and documented.
Alex and Ned from Monster Project were on the abandoned High Line in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood when they first saw that the water tower at 10th Avenue between 29th and 30th streets was somewhat accessible. As Alex recalls, “this water tower was great, because it allowed us to work on two surfaces, the actual tower and the walkway. Using the whole space and letting the monster make the most of what’s there is what we strive to do. We take pride in making each Monster from scratch and custom-measured for each spot Ð we don’t silkscreen or mass-produce them.”
Installing a Monster is often an involved process; bringing the Monster to the site is half the battle. “the water tower Monster’s paws are each about four feet square, along with a rolled-up 10-foot Monster head, some brushes, five gallons of wheat paste, drills, bolts, and a camera.” All of this had to be carried by two people up the 10-story series of fire escapes. The installation was no easier: “the wind made the paws like sails, and getting the head to stick to the tower was no fun at all.”
The tension between graffiti and street art is obvious, as Alex points out. “all of these street art types will say ‘I really like graffiti,’ but how many graffiti types are out there saying ‘I really like street art’? Graffiti writers on the whole think that street art sucks, because people just do such a shitty job of it. The Monster Project is about using the same ethic that we learned in graffiti, but applying it to a different end.”