Artist Interview: GATS

Can you tell us a bit about your background? What inspired you to start painting, doing graffiti, and how have you connected your art to your political beliefs?

I can't remember a time when I didn't draw. One of my earliest memories is stacking wooden blocks to make a wall and then drawing on it. I knew I would get scolded but in my mind I was improving the blocks. I remember drawing what I thought was an amazing owl, then seeing it years later and it was practically a scribble. With that said, everything I did later was just an obvious progression.  

In elementary school I would start secret clubs and we would each tag our favorite Mortal Kombat character's name around the neighborhood using spray hair color. I started sneaking into construction sites, writing in wet concrete and stealing orange marking spray paint.  

I remember the first three tags I noticed when I was about ten years old. One was a name and I asked my mom why someone would write their name in a way that you couldn't read it. I thought if I were writing on the wall I would want people to read it. The second tag was an XIV written vertically. I liked it because I thought it was a squinty smiley face, not realizing it was a gang at the time. The third one was a Circle A spray painted on the sound wall I saw while riding the bus to school. I asked my friend what it meant and he said, "It means you're against the government." It was the first time I had to think about what a government was and why you would be against it. It seems simple but it planted a seed of curiosity that would continue to snowball.  

My early influences with graffiti were really gangs and punk rock. At that age I had no historical context of graffiti or relation to hip-hop. Graffiti stood alone. I didn't know who or what kind of people did it, just that I wanted to do it.  

By seventh grade the group of friends I skateboarded with were all tagging the same thing and unintentionally became my first crew. Half way through the year a kid saw my Operation Ivy patch at school, walked up to me and told me I was now in their punk band. Drawing band logos (influenced by Op Ivy, Link 80, Capitalist Casualties, ect.) was what really began me making art in the public sphere. Obsessing with drawing and putting up flyers later translated into wheat pasting, stickering, and the general obsession with putting things where people would see them.

You’ve stated that in a way, you as a person are disassociated from GATS. Can you expand on that? Is GATS an alter-ego? A project? A symbol? Why have you chosen to keep your identity anonymous?

When I say that I am disassociated from GATS, I mean that I have a life completely separate from it. Many of the people closest to me don’t know that I am GATS. I’m actually horribly conflicted because I recently watched one of my family members die of cancer and I never showed them my work. They vaguely knew I was an artist, but I’ll never know what they would have thought of what I actually do.  

GATS started out as a political graffiti campaign. It wasn’t originally my name, it was a slogan. I had other names and other campaigns but eventually fell into pushing this one the hardest because it had more meaning than a name. It was about something greater than myself. Essentially I tagged a slogan until people started calling me by its acronym.

I felt like I wasn’t GATS. So I started a separate campaign that was the mask character. The idea was to just wheat paste and sticker it really hard so if I got caught I would only go down for that and not all the higher profile GATS graffiti. Of course I couldn’t hold back and ended up spray painting the character everywhere. I started in the Middle East because I thought no one would associate the two. Had a lot of fun and painted some more masks in New York, Mexico, Oregon, and Washington. By the time I got back to the Bay I was addicted to painting it. I hadn’t named it so people called it GATS. The lesson here is if you don’t choose a name people will choose one for you.

Influenced by Anarcho-Punk, the mask became a complex symbol. Punk like graffiti is all about it’s symbols. Circle A’s, Circle E’s, specific arrows, squater signs, Hobo Monikers and band logos… every image was a coded conversation expressing what your politics were and essentially what tribe you were associated with. I use a lot of stylized references to historic symbols. They tell a specific story and history that I don’t tell most people about because it is to personal or incriminating. To sum it up, it represents a struggle of duality and trying to exist between multiple worlds. Between the theorist and the pragmatist, the feral and the professional, the militant and the diplomat, the below ground and the above. Masks are the various roles we all play.

I keep my identity anonymous because I have no desire for fame. I care about the work and getting it to people, but have no desire to be the center of attention or be recognized walking down the street. I suppose that’s another disassociation between my identity and the work. I can walk away from GATS and do a completely different project without anyone associating the two.  

How did you get into pyrography? What about the look or process of burning images into wood appeals to you?

I learned to use a soldering iron to make electrical circuit boards in high school. Then, around 2009, I snuck onto a university campus to help a friend make a crazy street installation. It was a large abstract design made out of semi-translucent porcelain branches they had cast. We had to hand solder lights together to string through the tubes so that it would glow. The goal was to hook it up to a solar panel. Then, guerrilla install it to the dark underside of a high up freeway overpass using a powder charged nail gun. Anyway, while we were sitting around working on it I realized I could burn my character into the side of the table using the soldering iron. It was very tedious but rewarding because I’d never seen someone burn a tag into something. I coined it pyrograffiti. It had a nice toasty glow around it.

Pyrography is a timeless aesthetic. It’s raw and natural. I admire the simplicity of the art form, gathering wood around the Bay and applying heat to it to create an image. It takes me into the real world and out of the studio. When I run out of supplies I go to the beach instead of the art store.

The process is inherently ceremonial, like burning Palo Santo. It’s painstakingly time consuming and yet meditative to watch the smoke dancing as you push into the wood and struggle against the grain. The resulting texture tells the story of your labor.

How did you get into pyrography? What about the look or process of burning images into wood appeals to you?

I learned to use a soldering iron to make electrical circuit boards in high school. Then, around 2009, I snuck onto a university campus to help a friend make a crazy street installation. It was a large abstract design made out of semi-translucent porcelain branches they had cast. We had to hand solder lights together to string through the tubes so that it would glow. The goal was to hook it up to a solar panel. Then, guerrilla install it to the dark underside of a high up freeway overpass using a powder charged nail gun. Anyway, while we were sitting around working on it I realized I could burn my character into the side of the table using the soldering iron. It was very tedious but rewarding because I’d never seen someone burn a tag into something. I coined it pyrograffiti. It had a nice toasty glow around it.

Pyrography is a timeless aesthetic. It’s raw and natural. I admire the simplicity of the art form, gathering wood around the Bay and applying heat to it to create an image. It takes me into the real world and out of the studio. When I run out of supplies I go to the beach instead of the art store.

The process is inherently ceremonial, like burning Palo Santo. It’s painstakingly time consuming and yet meditative to watch the smoke dancing as you push into the wood and struggle against the grain. The resulting texture tells the story of your labor.

Your lettering style is really distinct. Can you tell us about how that developed and what inspired it?

That’s a long story. I’ve been developing it my entire life. I remember getting in trouble in first grade for curling the tails of my letters and over stylizing everything. I was always drawing letters instead of writing.  

I pull influence from everywhere, its hard to sum it up because it’s the story of my life and travels. Punk, gangs, hobos, architectural lettering, art deco… I travel the world studying hand painted signs and going through the flat files at museums looking at old relief prints. The calligraphy of other languages influences my movement in abstract ways.

Long conversations about style with Hero HA, Miguel 640, and Ras Terms PTV had massive effects on me. Hero taught me how to appreciate the boxy yet ornate skill of Cholo scripts in Southern California and forced me out of piecing and into higher profile freeway bombing. Miguel really pushed building off of Cholo script, combining it with Bay Area styles and telling a story of where you're from and who you are through font. He convinced me to take tagging seriously and to get up by any means necessary. Ras Terms grew up painting Miami in the 80’s and invented a lot of early styles, flipped and modified a lot of scripts that came down from New York. He made me want to write cryptically, to abstract contemporary styles into something timeless and other worldly.

Your work has an air of mysticism. Your art involves a lot of symbolism, like hidden words and names of other artists in the detailing of your mask. Can you highlight a few of these motifs and elaborate on their meaning?

I would need to be looking at a specific piece to break it down. I recently painted a mask about thirty feet tall at the center of where the Oakland Art Walk started back in the day. The detail in the nose lists the 36 initials of everyone who perished in the Ghost Ship Fire. It was meant as a subtle memorial. Not an obvious one aimed at the general public but a personal nod to the art community. Many of the people who died hung out, lived, or worked around that place spanning back to when it was a cafe called Mama Buzz. Oakland is a tight knit community and that fire affected everyone… even on an international level.

Some of the symbols are too personal and are best left vague so that you can interpret them into your own life. When I draw a tear it is for a specific person who was killed by the police. When you see that tear it may symbolize a person that you personally lost. Knowing the specifics isn’t always relevant because we are both experiencing the same thing. The personal fits into a larger universal experience.

Are there any pieces that you are particularly excited about? Do any of your new works have an interesting story?

All the pieces have a small story to them. Where or how I acquired the object and why I chose it. Most people get excited about the larger or more detailed pieces but I’m more attached to the sentimental and simpler pieces. I have more fun assembling the objects than actually painting on them. Painting on them is more to make other people appreciate the object as much as I do.  

One of my favorites is “As We Trespass Against You”. It’s a pair of rusty, post-WWII, Japanese bolt cutters wired to drift wood. It has almost a reverse crucifixion vibe as if they were being capitally punished for trespassing. They frame a classic GATS toothed mask burned into the wood. The mask is behind a spider web of miniature barb wire. Below the face is an IT, standing for International Trouble, a subtle reference to my recent visit to Japan.  

There is also a diamond shape of rusty steel floating below the piece that makes the web feel like a dream catcher. I found the metal in a specific train yard where people paint and hop trains up to the Pacific North West. It represents the dream of traveling without restriction. Its shaped like that because people associate diamonds with wealth. However, true wealth is freedom and it’s often unrecognized because it’s not glamorous. It’s not owning a yacht, it’s living simply.

Most my pieces have a macro and micro meaning. On a micro level I’m thinking about the chain link fence standing between me and the wall I need to paint. On the macro level I’m thinking about the conceptual borders between nations preventing us from collaborating as citizens of the world. My gallery work is usually referencing graffiti and thus naturally questioning the social construct of property.