Vandalism rocks

New York can be a piece of shit some days. Most days actually. It’s polluted with trash, junkies, meth heads and nasty whiffs of sewage piss air, but it's fucking rock and roll. And like good New Yorkers rather than clean up the trash, we pick up a can of spray paint and trash talk over it. Graffiti is nothing new, but one artist has redefined its deviance with some sidewalk chalk and an inspirational message as a tag. I had the pleasure of sitting down and talking with James De La Vega, a New York street artist who's as fucking New York and street as they come.

Sitting down to interview James De La Vega in his St Marks Place gallery where the once sidewalk chalk drawings have been transferred from the street to canvas and pictures of his “Mom as Picasso”, or his mom just plain hating on him hang throughout, we are interrupted by a woman with a stroller.

"Excuse me? Do you know what grades that school is down there?" She asks referring to the elementary school a few doors down.

He answers her as politely as he could, both of us expecting her to apologize for interrupting.

Instead she says, "Thanks. I'll be back," as if it offered some sort of consolation for not coming in and browsing. As if that's what most artists would want to hear. But De La Vega isn't like most artists.

"I'll be here waiting," he replied smugly as she shuts the door.

He snickers for a minute, then feeling the need to explain himself he says, "It's not so much arrogance as it's brutal honesty."

And it was honest. As is his work, as is his gallery which stands as what he refers to as an NYC institution. To cut through all the bull shit, to actually reach people- and not just any people, New Yorkers–on another level. It's that kind of keeping it real De La Vega expresses and embodies both in every day life and in his art.

"Pressure to survive in the big city can make you lose sight of your dream. Hang in there." Chances are you've heard this message before, perhaps in inspirational tear-off calendars or coffee table books, but never as graffiti. And according to De la Vega, it's not.

"I never identified with the graffiti movement, there's a certain amount of deviance and negativity that comes with the connotation," he says.

And since avoiding jail time for one graffiti related incident back in his Spanish Harlem days, the artist is sensitive when it comes to the name graffiti artist. Instead, he's a self proclaimed Sidewalk Philosopher or guerilla performance artist, which he admits to not really understanding. When I explain it’s a form of expression that takes on a non traditional outlet, he complies and says, "I guess that's true..."

What challenges De La Vega in his quest for positivity is the audience he's reaching out to. New Yorkers have long history of callous thick-skin. Where messages of "becoming your dream," and "hang in there" are lost in a concrete sea of huffs, puffs and “whatever’s.” But regardless of the message, it seems to be working. De La Vega is an icon in the Spanish Harlem neighborhood where he first started out, and now that very same street cred has followed him down to the village where he now reigns as a kind of St Marks Confucius.

There's a level of hard core no-nonsense that makes New Yorkers listen, or stop to read depending on where the message is coming from.

“I'm not trying to Walt Disney or Sesame Street this shit. That's not De La Vega, but it's creating a unique language that reaches people to tell them to do something with their lives. To push forward. To fight back.” Which is something many New Yorkers already knew or else they wouldn’t live here, but all could stand to hear it more often. And when we’re ready, like the lady with the stroller, De La Vega will be waiting.