Artist Interview: Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp

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Dave Hupp: My Name is Dave, David Reck. I'm from Baltimore. Been painting 15, 20 years.

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Tim Conlon: Tim Conlon, I write Con, been writing about 15 years.

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Benjamin Bloom: Do you remember the, uh, the first time that you did a piece?

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Dave Hupp: Uh, yeah it wasn't pretty. One of the-- one of the early ones, I got a place I can go and it's still there, and it's funny to see it.

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Dave Hupp: It's this, tucked away in some woods on the side of a highway, that's still there, and I haven't been there in a long time.

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Dave Hupp: But, uh, you know. It, it wasn't a pretty thing. Actually, it was one of the first times we took a magazine.

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Dave Hupp: It was a book that came out. It was called, "Subway Art", and there was a piece in there and it said "Repel".

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Dave Hupp: And at the time, I didn't really know nothing about graffiti. I was like, I said, I was maybe 14 at the time.

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Dave Hupp: We went up on a shopping center in broad daylight and we kinda just bit right out the book; this Repel outline, me and a buddy of mine.

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Dave Hupp: trying to duplicate it, you know. I didn't know. I was like hey, we're doing graffiti. You know, it's all day time. Didn't know that you're supposed to sneak out at night and be all discrete and ninja-like.

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Dave Hupp: But, you know, that was probably one of the first times that I ever did anything like that.

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Dave Hupp: And, behind my grandmother's old shed.

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[[Laughter by both men]]

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Dave Hupp: Which still has something on it now.

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Benjamin Bloom: That was your first spot?

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Dave Hupp: [[Laughter]] Yeah, that was the first spot I took. Behind my grandmother's shed.

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Dave Hupp: And behind the shopping center of Safeway.

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Benjamin Bloom: Is that still there, or is that gone?

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Dave Hupp: No, that's gone. The shed's still there.

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Benjamin Bloom: About how old were you?

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Dave Hupp: Ah, like, maybe 4. By that time, 13. I was just runnin' around with little markers in the daytime. Maybe 13, going on 14, behind the shopping center.

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Dave Hupp: Um, and then probably when I was about 16, and I'm-- I'm not quotin' the years, probably late 80's, 87, 88, 89,

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Dave Hupp: maybe's when I was finally started really looking bigger. I only do it at night; and connecting the dots. And then it was probably not 'till 88, 89, when I really got into letter structure.

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Dave Hupp: And I actually had a friend of mine that said, "Hey man, can you do me a alphabet?" I didn't know any better. "Like do me like 3 A's and B's and so forth."

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And so, I just started putting that together, like, and so I originally wrote "A-R-A".

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Dave Hupp: But in Borramose at the time, it was like, oh, if you had an "E" it was kinda cool, and then have a "K", or an "R", you could really, like-- your tag could really get funky with your ending of the letter.

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Dave Hupp: So I added a K to it. So I, you know, I say, "Erek, Erick, or I guess technically it would be R K, but that's how that came about.

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Benjamin Bloom: And what about you Tim? About when did you do your first piece, and like about how old were you?

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Tim Conlon: Um, I think I was probably-- It probably was, maybe a year or two after I actually started painting because, uh, I wasn't really comfortable doing, you know, pieces.

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Tim Conlon: I was doing a lot of characters, while my friend Super and Resk, those were my other two partners at the time, they were doing pieces.

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Tim Conlon: But we were mostly just out street bombing; getting our names out there and stuff like that, so.

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Tim Conlon: We weren't really focused at the time too much on doing pieces.

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Benjamin Bloom: So, when did you start with "Con"? When did you start doing that?

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Tim Conlon: Uh, that's the first thing-- that's the first thing I wrote. It's just a short nickname for my last name that my friends called me forever.

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Tim Conlon: So, you know, just seemed the easiest thing to do. I think I wrote, "Defcon" for awhile too, but uh-- yeah just stuck with "Con" 'cause three letters-- easy to do.

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Benjamin Bloom: What makes your guy's style each of your styles? What sort of makes it your own or kind of differentiates it from other people? Tim?

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Tim Conlon: Um, I think just of course the letters. The name that you choose that's gonna set you apart from anybody else.

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Um- I guess style wise, my style pretty much reflects mostly you know New York street letter style that- I mean or street letter wild style.

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You know something that's bar letters very readable you can tell what it says. Um, it probably has a little bit of Baltimore influence to it.

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Um, and there is some west coast stuff that I've added to it just when I lived out in LA for a little while, just some little tidbits a little pinning techniques I do that I remember from out there but uh-

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Yeah, I'd say it's pretty generic but I mean I've done enough, you know, I've painted enough over the years that people recognize it. You know, even if they just glance at it they probably know it me before, you know, if they actually read the letters. The same probably goes with Dave's style too.

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Benjamin Bloom: Yeah, so how about your style Dave? [ 00:04:35]
Dave Hupp: Just a Bari style- I mean it's changed over the years just, uh, I mean but I pretty much I don't do a lot of connections lot of single letter bar style, you know. I want it to be readable so when it flies by I want a truck driver to be able to read it you know the average person. I don't want it to be some wild crazy stuff that you can't read.

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So usually my- each letter is separate for some- there may be some simple connections, but just a bar real bold bar-style letters.

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I mean it's- you know I'm from Baltimore, I got a Baltimore flair but it's gotta influences just from a variety of people I hang and know with. You know, you just you get influenced. I get influenced from a lot of different things I mean and a lot of different people from all over.

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Benjamin Bloom: Well, can you make any generalizations about like an LA style versus a New York style versus a Philly versus Baltimore? Like what are the things that kinda jump out really generally?

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Dave Hupp: Well, Philly has a tall print tag, uh, it's real tall and skinny. They call them wickets, one of them, it's the name that they choose. It's just real tall and skinny. Real flairy, certain ones.

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Which- whereas a Baltimore tag is more long left to right whereas theirs is up and down long. Um, you know when you get into other cities New York, San Francisco, um-

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Tim Conlon: LA has like a chollo gangster style um, you know Mexican gang influence type of thing. Ummm that's kind of spilled over into graffiti writing.

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Dave Hupp: San Fransico has a bus hopper-style tag, which is like a, it's like a one str- a lot of it looks like a one-stroke loopy tag, like I mean without showing you it's hard to explain but I mean a lot of cities have unique styles that are, you kinda know "hey this is such and such city tag".

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I mean then there's ones that you don't and like Tim said due to the Internet, uh, a lot of people you don't know where they're from just do their influences from the Internet.

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So they get it from, you know, from Europe to California to Canada. They really don't have any- You know, it's just kind of Internet-born style.

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Benjamin Bloom: How do you feel about, um, about graffiti being in a museum, Dave?

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Dave Hupp: Well, I'm glad to be alive and be in the Smithsonian! 'Cause I guess prior to that, I don't know much- how long ago you had to be dead to be in a portrait gallery right?

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Benjamin Bloom: That's true.

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Dave Hupp: [Laughs] So to be alive and to be in it is good. Um, you know, it's a sign of the time- you know, some people may say "Hey, you're a sell-out."

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I look at it like being a musician and never wanting to make a rap- uh, never make an album or put a CD out. I mean, you know, why are you strumming on a guitar for 20 years if you can't make a buck or be seen or be heard.

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You know, and uh, this is a way to be seen and be heard. Uh you know how many people- uh, this is huge.

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I guess when I walked down that marble floor and through the pillars and see this- these huge panels fixed to the wall like "Damn, that's our stuff."