Interview with Tom & Craig aka Static – Stencil, Print, Graffiti and Sticker Art

Interview with Tom & Craig aka Static – Stencil, Print, Graffiti and Sticker Art

World Graffiti got the chance to speak to the Static lads at the recent Art Republic street art competition, so I asked them a few questions…

Static Art – ‘Silver Luxury Vandals’

Static Art – ‘Black Star Chinook’

WG – How do you know each other?

Tom - We grew up together in the same town in the North, and went to the same art college together, we went to different unis. He did graphic design and I did Fine Art, and after that we got together and shared some ideas and went from there really.

WG – Where are you from?

T – Scarborough.

Static Art – ‘Re-working Old Masters’

Static Art – ‘MexSOi’

WG – Much art around there?

T – Not really…

WG – Where do you like to paint?

Craig - At the moment, we’re doing a lot in the studio. The better you do, the more you’re in the studio doing commissions and things but we love to do things on the street. So yeah, a bit of both, some on the street and some in the studio.

WG – What are you working on at the moment?

T – We’re working on 2 new bodies of work, because there’s 2 of us we reckon we can get away with 2 bodies of work in a solo show. Either we’ll have an upstairs and a downstairs or we’ll mix it in together.

Static Art – ‘London Bridge #1′

WG – Do you paint together or separately?

T - There’s a bit of a cross-over, so (Craig) will come up with ideas and I’ll come up with some and there are ones we have together, then we develop them.

C - Nothing’s ever like one person, sometimes one person will have the idea and the other picks up on it and takes it somewhere else.

T - Tells them what they’re doing wrong…

C - A lot of the new stuff is going to be hand painted hopefully, instead of screen printed stuff.

Static Art – ‘Pop Cap’

WG – What do you like to do best, what is your favourite medium? Stickers, stencils?

T - We kind of work across the board really.

C - We love screen printing, when you build on loads of layers on screen prints you get a great finish and there’s nothing better than that. But at the same time spraying is great.

T - We did some pieces on aluminium, they were spray painted then screened then hand painted. It was nice to combine all those different elements. The larger pieces we did were a little bit tricky because we sprayed a bunch of layers then we took them to a different printer and when we took them somewhere else we weren’t sure if they’d match up or anything. But fortunately everything came together.

Static Art – ‘Going Once’

WG – You’ve got your own screen printing gear?

T - Yeah, and we print for a few other people as well.

C - Sometimes it’s nice to take a break and do someone else’s work. We did some for Luke Insect, some forSick Boy, Peter Kennard, and did some for the Mutate Britain show, so it was nice to work on that. A bit of a change.

WG – So you can only paint with 2 colours for the rest of your life, what 2 colours?

T - Black and Red. And white.

WG – Favourite trainers?

T - All sorts but Adidas or Onitsuka Tigers. C – He’s got some really colourful Adidas… T - A bit too colourful…C - We’re usually adding new colours to our trainers. T - That’s why I’m wearing these ones, they’re the only ones are like gold or whatever on the front.

Static Art – ‘By Royal Appointment’

WG – You ever done any customising of shoes or clothes?

T – Not on purpose! C - We done something recently for a Japanese guy, some caps. They were doing an exhibition alongside the release of these hand-painted caps, so we had to paint a cap which was harder than you’d imagine it to be. T - It moves differently because it’s material. C - We took it apart but couldn’t put it back together but fortunately we have a friend who does stitching and stuff and she put it back together for us.

WG – So what’s the new stuff, any particular theme?

T - There’s 2 bodies of work, so one’s about nice objects that are made of things that you’d normally throw away. The other is based around riots.

C - When we started off, one of the first screen prints we did was a piece to do with the Paris student riots, so we’ve always had a bit of an interest in that and tried to subvert it, see what we can do with it, make people look at it differently.

Artists ‘Static’ Stencil on Canvas

You can see more of their art on the Static site, it’ll keep you up to date with what they’re doing too. Their art is for sale on their site or on Art Republic online, good stuff.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 at 3:36 am. It is filed under Artist Interviews, Britain graffiti, England graffiti, Europe graffiti, Latest Features, Static, Stencil Art, UK graffiti, Urban Art and tagged with Static art, static exhibition, static interview, static london stencil, static stencil, static stencil art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.