Crash Splash and Teenage Trash
I was very generously invited to be part of a group show in Hudson NY that features the legendary Artist CRASH. So, I gathered up and finished a few small pieces to pitch at the curators Haleh and Luis to then select one from. It wasn’t until I was driving the pieces up to deliver them for hanging that it began to dawn on me how odd and special the spontaneous invite for this particular show actually was.
Memory is funny. You forget certain things. You rewrite others. You tuck even more away and call them just part of “you”. Of course I knew when I was asked who Crash is and much of what he has done in his creative life. And I was honored to be invited. But as I thought more on it, I began to remember just how much he and his friends had actually influenced me as a young kid.
You see, John “Crash” Matos was one of a group of young artists who shaped and formed the NYC cultural and art scene of the 70’s and beyond, just by making what they wanted to make, and being daring in the process. Purely living in the moment. He and his friends indirectly influenced a teenage me and his friends living in a small sleepy beach town on the other side of the country. And it took me a moment to put all of the scattered pieces of memory back together.
I had an art mentor as a teenager. He was a screen printer, among other things. But he believed in screen printing as an art form, not just a product making tool; despite the fact that the local soccer league just wanted names and numbers and a tiny logo printed on all their jerseys (which we did). The surf community on the other hand, only just becoming a business venture, loved the “arty” stuff. And he was happy to oblige. Designs for board companies, decals, shirts, fabrics, etc. We did it all alongside him and learned how to design, produce and make every single print slightly different. He was flamboyant, eccentric and an artistic adventurer, sparking a small group of us with the idea that we could make stuff of our own, while using us as cheap hard working labor for his own ideas. He was wonderfully complicated, with a kind wife who was his creative equal. Their space was messy, cluttered, and powerfully electric. Their influence is one of the building blocks of everything that I’ve done in my creative life. In both music and in art. Probably even how packed with books, pictures and records I still like my studio space to be to this day. And come to think of it, the influence of New York street art through him, and I’m sure many others, had a direct impact on what would become the West Coast Surf Culture.
Anyway I digress. While we toiled for him, he shared the wealth of his musical and artistic knowledge with us. Maybe more accurately, he inundated us with it. Records played over and over on the player, art from different eras and places always in our faces. Tacked all over the studio walls. And he was obsessed with the NYC street art of the 1970s. As it was happening, and as it had already happened; so he shared it with us. Magazine articles, books and pictures taken on his own trips to the mythical place of grit, subways and daring cop-dodging teenaged artists. He would regale us in depth about it all while we pulled shirts from off of his handmade screenprint presses in a garage sheltered from the Southern California heat.
He was particularly obsessed with what Crash and his comrades were doing to the trains of New York City. As he explained, they were “bombing”. Sneaking into the train yards at night after spending days, weeks or months of planning, to paint a piece, create something of personal beauty before disappearing into the dawn. They would plan it in detail, break into the train yards, create and paint these amazing huge rolling works of art on trains that had to take to the tracks on schedule the next day. Dodging security. And they knew that their work wouldn’t last. It would be painted over within days. Gone forever. The act and the one roll down the tracks was the thing. It was a revelation to our young minds! It was the greatest example of commitment to create something purely in the moment with the act as the only outcome.
That’s the secret of all great artistic adventures. No outcome. Only the act in the pursuit of what only you can see in your minds eye. I grew up envying that distant world of CRASH and his friends and all of its adventure. It has influenced me ever since. It’s why I prefer a piece of art that is personal, somewhat fragmented, broken & worn, bleeding a little and effected by the surface or the materials, limited and powerful because of those very limitations. When I see street art tags down an alleyway, I will turn and follow them, or i’ll cross the street to check out the torn wheat pasted hand painted posters. And when I’m faced with a lack of gear or fidelity in a recording studio I am inspired to lean into that very fact. Use it. The paint runs, the guitar stumbles. It’s present in the moment. You plan. Then you act. The Great Act of creating with the tools and the time you’ve got.
And the timing of being included in The New Gallery Hudson’s ‘Crash Splash & The Art Bazaar’ just as I am making public what I’ve always kept private, my painting, is not lost on me. I’m beyond honored to be included in some small way in this show of a gathered group of artists and Crash himself. My thirteen year old self is stoked at this full circle moment!
If you can get to Hudson, NY I hope that you will stop in and enjoy it.
-Patrick