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| KORN | |||||||||
| “I decided to be in Autograf because it’s different from graffiti books of the past. Peter Sutherland captured the writers themselves—instead of just the writing on the wall. The fact that Peter takes amazing flicks doesn’t hurt the book, either.” —KORN Born in Queens, New York in 1976, KORN first got into graffiti at the age of 11, when his mother gave him a copy of the landmark volume Subway Art by Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper (Thames & Hudson, 1984). “I had a cousin who wrote META,” KORN recalls. “He had some game in the graff game and I really looked up to him. he was killed by someone who had ‘beef’ with him over graffiti. The dude ran him down with his car. I was thirteen at the time. Graffiti seemed less glamorous after that. When I left junior high school. I lost interest in writing on walls. During high school, I focused on my studies, sports, and fine arts. I then attended St. John’s University on a mathematics scholarship. That was 1994. Graffiti was the furthest thing from my mind. “In 1995, I heard a band named, ‘Korn’ and a friend and I became huge fans. We thought it would be funny to write the band’s name wherever we went. We made up a crew called C.O.K. (“Children of Korn”) and by the end of the year, KORN COK was up all over Queens. We thought it was hilarious. People actually noticed it and we got our first taste of ‘street fame.’ I was hooked. My friend decided to take his own tag (ZIC) and I kept writing KORN. “At the end of '96, I got arrested for the first time. It would not be the last. I sat in jail for two days and ate nasty bologna sandwiches. The judge gave me two days of community service and an ACD of one year (if I didn’t get re-arrested for one year, the case would be sealed). I began my studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology three weeks after the arrest. “On May 27, 1997, I got into a scuffle on the street with a few dudes. One of them drove his car at the three of us. My two friends jumped out of the way. I was not as fortunate. The car smashed into me and my left leg was amputated below the knee. I was in Bellevue Hospital for a month. I was fitted for a prosthetic and was off and running in another month. Everyone thought my graffiti career was over. I love to prove people wrong. “I met a girl that liked graffiti. We began bombing together. She got pregnant and I became a daddy. My graff career was supposed to end again but I couldn’t stop. I would sneak out while she was sleeping, to paint around the neighborhood while under the pretense of walking our dog. The dog was a good lookout. “She began to hate graffiti. A lot of heavy stuff went down between us. Let’s just say our breakup was enough to fuel a graffiti rampage this city has rarely seen. For three months straight, I bombed seven days straight. I would rack paint all day and bomb all night. I painted life-risking spots regularly. I didn’t care about life; I only cared about graff. I tried to paint everywhere. I was like a zombie. I was on a mission that I didn’t think had an end. “By this time I hated the band named Korn, but wasn’t about to change my tag. “I would have kept going but that’s when New York’s ‘finest’ stepped in. I had done video footage for the second installation of ‘Graffcore’ (a graffiti documentary video produced by the makes of the Videograff series). The stars were me and SI. The day it was going to be released, the Vandal Squad raided the Videograff offices. Those offices contained literally one second of raw footage where you can see my face after catching a tag. They caught me while doing a legal mural. That piece of evidence was also enough for them to get a search warrant for my house where they seized over 1,100 still photographs of my exterior decorations. I was being charged with nine counts of felony criminal mischief and possession of stolen property (I took an MTA lantern inside a subway tunnel). My case went to Supreme Court. “The final outcome of the case was thirty days on Riker’s Island, 100 days of community service, five years probation, and $10,000 restitution. I had a public defendant, if you couldn’t already guess. I’ve been on probation for the last two years. it’s tough—I’m still very much addicted to graffiti. “I’ve used my graffiti as a stepping stone into graphic design. I studied at Katharine Gibbs College, where I earned another Associates Degree (I got on in advertising from F.I.T.). I’ve been working in graphic design for the past year and graffiti is what gave me the confidence to get into the field. “I’m still on my mission. Hopefully, I’ll figure out exactly where it ends.” |
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