FIRE AT WILL: JUAN

• Name: Juan, Hot, Juanito, Jot, Jots...
• Crew: I don’t belong to any crews, but a huge shout out to the crews I’ve gone through, I love you even if I never tell you.
• City-country: Benicàssim/Castellón, Spain
• Active since: The middle of the 90s. The second wave of hip-hop in Spain, coincided with my adolescence and I guess it was the movement in which I fit in best. I listened to the tracks of the time and painted; at first tags with markers and home-made mops, but really painting was what attracted me the most. Years later when I discovered other types of music, and even today, I give more value to those demos and albums, but at the time they were normal, they were there, you listened to them and that was it.
• First piece: I remember it perfectly. It was with a kid who stopped by the skate park in my city. We racked cans, at that time T-Krom, which you could get near the wall of fame in Galindo where we were going to paint. After some shit went down at the wall, the owner got sick of graffiti and stopped people painting. We painted a peace sign with a blended red and blue background. Shortly after, some older kids who painted a little better than us crossed it out. They wrote something embarrassing like “Peace, love and unity.” I think that for this reason today I try to be very respectful of other people’s pieces, especially beginners. I don’t want to be the asshole that covered someone’s first piece.
• Favorite piece: I don’t think I have a favorite piece as such. There are a few that I like how they turned out, or that have a good background story. What if one day you do your favorite piece? What’s next? You paint worse? I prefer to think that my best piece is yet to come, that I’m still searching, although it may never come, but that doesn’t worry me. Looking back, it’s clear that there are walls that I like more, from the productions with the EDS writers from Alicante. Huge walls, a theme and coordinated colors with a very consolidated group mentality. Improvisations with Miros, where we painted with whatever we could find. Painting characters between Opium and Cist always came put nice, beside two very solid pieces. The sense of humor and determination of Herer, the walls with Hase, with Leo, Nokes and his people, or just painting alone and Andrés dropped by to keep me company. Because there are always productions that seem cool, but in many cases it has more to do with the vibe than the piece itself.
• Style: Naïve cartoon terror, something like that, ha ha
• Partners in crime: I’ve got a list of people who I’ve enjoyed painting with, but I’m forgetting many more. Basically, I like painting with people who feel passion for what they do, have respect for others and know how to arrive at a specific place on time. Really, I paint the most with my partner Jana. It’s a way of combining several activities in one - a day trip, spending time outdoors, having a picnic. She comes from the world of muralism, so she finds all the stuff we need to paint more elaborate things. It feels very artistic to experiment with brushes and such. We share a wall, together but not clashing, going through the usual mutual artistic frustrations.
• Favorite cap: In my bag there are usually no more than three different types. In fact, they say that if you carry more than three caps, you become an urban artist automatically. I use the Astro, Needle and Universal caps, but if I had to pick just one, I’d go with the universal cap. It’s not as fun as the Pocket or the Lego caps, but I like my pieces to look quite dirty overall even if the strokes are clean.

by mtn-world via Montana World