Miami

Late the next day, and through the following morning I took the drive to Miami. I arrived in the late afternoon. I took a driving lap around Wynwood. It felt unnatural to see it from the window of a car, but such is the nature of experiencing new things. I parked a few blocks out from the center of the action, where I would later return to a parking ticket. I took a walk wearing a backpack with drawing supplies in it, dawning a polo shirt that my grandmother gave me at Thanksgiving. I saw many mural artists in various stages of painting. I recognized the difference between walls that were freshly painted and walls that had been around since the year prior. Among the surviving walls was one on 27th street that Johnny and I had painted collaboratively. As I walked by I saw two young women with their photographer-for-a-day friend posing in front of the wall. In passing I said, "My friend and I painted that".  - "O wow, really!? COOL!" - A muralists payment- underage fans posing in front of your work.  I felt bitterness growing within, which I quieted before continuing on to visit galleries. I walked into one with a number of expensive paintings. The gallery receptionist asked me if I was an artist. I replied yes. "Good luck this year."
"Thank you." I said. I felt like a racehorse.
The battery on my phone was dwindling. I had a bit of communication with Johnny (Blues) before the screen went black. He had come to Wynwood to meet me, but we couldn't find each other. I slept in my car that night on a street near the water off of Biscayne Boulevard.

I made a mission the following morning (after a Cuban breakfast and a phone charge) to find a skate shop where I could buy some hardware for a skateboard deck that was donated to me by my friend Morrison in Jacksonville. I made it out to MIA Skate shop in Miami Beach where I bought trucks, wheels, and bearings. This investment paid dividends through the following week plus. I drew that day. In the evening, in Wynwood, I came to a wall that was being painted with graffiti by a group of young adults. The wall, I should explain was the front facade of a stucco-coated warehouse. it had a beautiful pebble texture but the elegance did not go much further from there. I imagine it was built in the early 2000's. It's curious that with all of our advancements in technology and access to information, that we still build such gaudy structures. has the information age left us better off? Are we information rich and culturally poor? Has sophistication yielded to efficiency? Is there a difference between the two? I digress.
 I asked what was going on up top, pointing to a section of wall, which at that point was unaccounted for. They said nothing yet, and asked if I wanted to do a piece. They explained that the production was themed from a 90's cartoon called Courage The Cowardly Dog and that all of the artists thus far were working within a palette. I agreed to do a top piece and went around the corner to get the matching colors at the paint store. I laid down an outline and everyone present seemed impressed and excited. The painting involved a great deal of gymnastics, as there was no ladder- to paint I had to climb a metal gate fifteen feet up (the gate enclosing an aluminum roll door), with one hand and anchoring my feet in between bars of the gate, or in other cases behind metal tube housing for electrical wiring and painting with the other. I got the sketch and some colors blocked in on the wall before calling it a night. I went back to the car (parked still off of Biscayne) and drew under streetlight before nodding off.

Another Cuban breakfast, this time I met Steve and his girlfriend who's name escapes me. They called me over from my table to sit with them. He recognized from the paint all over my clothes and person that I was an artist. As we talked, it seemed to me that Steve was a hunter of talent, and a photographer as far as he had a camera and pointed it at things which he thought interesting or marketable and pushed the picture button. He passed me a pipe with ganja in it, a pen, and a small sketchbook and asked me if I would do a drawing. Steve knows how to milk an artist. He talked a great deal. He jovially explained that he and his friend were divorced, in between mouthfuls of food and self-aware misogynistic statements about who he bangs et cetera. I found myself glancing across the table at his ex-wife, (whom I saw ride in with Steve on the back of his motorbike) when he made remarks like this. She seemed at once strong and weak, though it may have all been a projection on my part. Certainly there were many voices to address in her head, processing the string of ideas presented by someone as self-assured as Steve the outgoing misogynist photographer, took much focus to wade through- or maybe none at all- he was transparent. When I commented on how good they looked riding in together on their motorcycle (which is what flushed the ex-wife fact). The response was a thank you from Steve and a deferment from the woman. She proposed that Steve looked good enough for the both of them, maybe I only saw Steve. I liked her, she was quick witted and introspective at the right times, but damn if I didn't wish to see her and Steve in full debate. I bet she kicked ass. We parted ways, but not before Steve gave me his business card and his tag-word sticker, 'keif catcher'. He was the marketing side of art. It left a bad taste in my mouth.

I made contact with Johnny at some point. Late in the night we drove into a poor neighborhood where dealings take place. We got out of the car to meet with Mastro and some other graffiti writers from New York and Montreal. Cars were parked in a semi-circle around a plastic fold out table, on top were rows of boxes with paint cans in them. Mastro, naturally, was the master of ceremonies. "Alright, here's how we're going to do this." Two hundred and fifty pounds of Bronx muscle under a tight, brightly colored tank top, flip flops, reflective sunglasses at night, Bermuda shorts and a sun-defying tan. "I pick four, you pick four, back and forth. That's it. I know it sounds simple, but trust me, I've seen cats mess this up and get ugly."
Mastro picked his four cans. Blues picked his four cans, and back and forth it went until the paint was distributed. We loaded up our car, then hung around for a while with a couple skateboards, talking graffiti and jumping over stacked paint cans. We had paint.

The following day John and I went to the wall. What I was envisioning.. didn't matter. The wall was better than I'd anticipated. It was located at 2nd Avenue and 36th Street, in Miami's design district. It belonged (for the time of the art fair at least) to The Kavachnina Contemporary Gallery. I was introduced to Alejandro, a gentleman younger than myself who'd just graduated from art school in Ohio and had committed himself (along with a few friends and classmates) to curating a showcase of "Wynwood Graffiti in the Age of Gentrification". It was a satirical art show, which aimed to gentrify while simultaneously acknowledging its devastating impacts. The show felt like a fun house of ideas. To criticize was to miss the art, which hit the target directly in the center, but it still felt so good to criticize, like a snake eating its own tail. I believe it was the best show at Basel. Alejandro's relationship with the gallery was a curious one to me, and I never quite figured it out, but he was treated like a little brother by everyone aboard the Kavachnina. In ship speak, he was the first mate. Beside him was Ryan, a painter and great guy who'd also graduated from that Ohio art school. When I first met him, he was in the middle of selling one of his paintings from a collector from Barcelona for a couple thousand dollars. He'd moved to Miami a few months prior to paint for this show using missed tints and cheap nylon brushes in a small apartment in little Haiti. Jesse James and Mike were from Philadelphia and were given a stipend to paint the front (courtyard) facade of the gallery. They drove a rented car, used good equipment and stayed in a hotel. I did not envy them. The paintings came out well, though seemed dry. Inside the gallery were a handful of beautiful oil paintings, portraits from an artist named Saulustiano. Upon meeting him, he had a Saint Nicholas air to him, he was beautiful and full of love. I felt kinship. I could sense deep loneliness, which comes with studio practice. I was compared to him and had a round of photographs under his arm to the delight of the room of grown ups, comparing our likeness.
Gala. Gala was the captain of the ship. A spirit. I heard her described as a nihilist several times. She had style and class. She was the type of leader that signed the papers at the end of the week, but did not worry about much else. I loved her.
In the second stage of the gallery, beyond the foyer where Saulustiano's show was installed, was Alejandro's street-art show. It was loaded with work. The space, divided between two rooms was hung salon style (though not really salon style as there was wall showing around all of the pieces) throughout. More than a dozen artists were featured and the ties between them, at least to me as a groundling, seemed loose if that. Few of the paintings captivated me, though one of Ryan's paintings felt interesting. I recognized a couple of artists who were displayed among them Atomiko- a Miami staple competing from the ground up with Britto for visual real estate. It was somewhat validating to have an affiliation (though Atomiko did not come by at any time during the showcase or events surrounding, likely because his work was featured in what seemed to me once every other block in this show or that- he was in a fully expanded production mode. I imagine he had one thousand paintings of the same Florida orange character floating around the art fair that week) to such established artists blah blah.
Johnny and I sized up our wall. There was a sign that read 'Design Studio' across the top of one half of the wall, our allocated half. I proposed that we paint a mural below it as a cropped rectangle so that we wouldn't have to fuss with painting around it or taping. Johnny agreed and with a level and a tape measure, I drew us a nice big long rectangular box on the wall. We set to painting. Perhaps due to my ample time in a studio setting, or no doubt my experiences painting with Shaun in Jacksonville, I directed the mural process. We started in monochrome grays, painting on a white background in light values. We refined the sketch using progressively darker tones, until we made it to black. To conserve paint, we indicated shading using hatching and stippling. the sketch had good rhythm, and balance. I advised now that we paint simultaneously from dark to light and cool to warm, so that our process would remain linear. The world of color is certainly a different animal and there were a few layers of paint applied in some areas to achieve the balance that seemed to come so easily in the monochrome sketch. Regardless after hours of back and forth within the palette, and some 'bonus colors', (from our personal stock) added in, we achieved a balanced feeling once again. The mural looked wonderful, it was like a window into another world, complete with surreal landscapes, vignettes, symmetry, impasto applications, abstraction. It was really singing. As John and I were talking about the painting, a woman driving in a car on 36th street pulled into a bus lane to get out and yell at us in Spanish. Johnny, being fluent, translated that we were painting the wrong wall (this has been a theme for me in Miami), or rather, we were painting the wall wrong. Instead of the mural being one panoramic rectangle as we had done, the owner of the building envisioned two vertically oriented murals, capping in the 'Design Studio' sign. This was the first time that John or I had heard this. We packed up our things and decided that we would talk to the Kavachnina crew about it the following day. We considered ourselves more than half finished with the mural.
I moved my car to the gallery courtyard that night and slept inside of it.

The following morning, a big hastily painted gray rectangle stood in place of where our mural-in-progress had just been the night before- the buff. We talked to Gala. She said it was the neighbors and with a sly grin explained that we were now at war with them. Further, we learned that the wall next-door (the bigger of the two spots) had just opened up for our use too. Allegedly the artists who were scheduled to come in and paint it dropped out of the deal (with the neighbors), and the spot was now liberated for our use. John and I were pawns in a petty territory dispute. We were not being paid and we now had a new mural to paint. We talked about what to do, and decided that it would be funny to paint the word 'MURAL' across the buff patch. We took a can of black paint and handed it back-and-forth M, U, R, A, L. The letters got sillier and sillier from left to right. Satisfied, we mapped out a new rectangle on the adjacent wall and buffed a big, black, oil-based patch where we could start painting anew. During the buff session, several photographers came by to take photos and hand us business cards, also a promotional coconut water van drove up to hand us samples and to take a round of pictures for their social media campaign. The streets were filled with bar-goers and yuppies. It must have been a Saturday. Johnny left to go work on another mural project that he had across the street. During his absence, an activist march pertaining to murders of Eric Garner and Mike Brown by police marched down 36th street. I set up our ladder in the middle of the road to provide a perch for photographers. A news crew came by and asked to use it. "Of course, it's for you." I said. They got their shot and asked to interview me. I agreed. I'd just smoked weed with our gallery crew so I was feeling inspired. The interviewer asked how I felt about the protest. I said it is important because the majority feel a lack of representation among those who control power. They asked me what I thought about Basel and I said it's a total crock. "Why?", "Because it's corporate". That was the end of the interview. They asked me my name and I replied Kemeys. They inquired, "Is that it? Do you have a last name?" They were missing the point, but I told them Goethe. They filmed me folding up the ladder, moving it back to the wall, unfolding it, moving it into place, sorting through a few cans, choosing a color, shaking a can, climbing the ladder, and looking back at them to check what the fuck they were still doing filming me. I asked if they had enough. "Yup, we got it."
Johnny returned and I explained that I was done painting. The spot was blown as far as I could tell and the black rectangle looked good on its own. We talked about it for a while before deciding that yes, the black rectangle looked great next to the gray buff which read 'MURAL'. Before we called it a night, Johnny wrote in black across it 'Don't Shoot', which was a theme within the protest march. I spent the rest of the evening at the Courage the Cowardly Dog Wall, painting the top-spot.

I met Willy Rose the year prior while painting a graffiti wall in the design district. He taught me how to weave his Charleston Palmetto Rose, on which he has carved himself a living one-dollar at a time over the years. It was a joyous reunion. Willy is a true friend with which time is obsolete. He handed me a bunch of fresh green fronds to weave for the night. He said he was turning in. I rode the skateboard to Wynwood and sat on the sidewalk, weaving roses and handing them silently to passers by. Mostly, I received thank yous, but I also got a good little pile of money, especially as the bars let out. I made eye contact with one young woman who found a miracle in me. She was torn to leave me and asked where I would be in an hour, or maybe two. I said I didn't know. She asked for my phone number and I obliged. I finished weaving roses and helped a gallery bring paint inside from a mural that had been painted that day by Nychos (I was not-so-secretly waiting him out by posting up by his supplies, while simultaneously watching the paint in case anyone came by with sticky fingers). This is the same artist whom I traveled to Vienna to visit, only to realize upon arriving that he was away in Rio at the time. I rode my skateboard to a corner store and got a veggie empanada.  On my way back to my car, I saw a young man, face down on the sidewalk, bicycle beside him, looking dead. I approached him and asked if he was all right. It took a short while, but he came to and sat up. He was very drunk. He explained that he'd just been fired and that he needed to ride to 181st street or something ridiculous. I thought he would surely crash his bike again or be hit by a car. An ambulance drove up to us. They'd received a call for him. I told him that we were fine and the ambulance drove off. We stood up and began walking north. We came to a hotel. I asked if he would like to stay at a hotel, and he agreed. I checked in to a double. I asked that he make himself at home, and I took a shower, my first in over a week. I slept very well. My friend’s departure in the morning was unceremonious.

 Another day, perhaps the following day, Willy and I took a walk to harvest more materials for roses. We stopped by several trees, which Willy knew would be ready for harvest and got a fair amount of fronds. We took a seat on a pair of landscaping rocks in Wynwood and set to cleaning fronds and weaving roses. Willy did all of the talking, which I was grateful for. We made twenty dollars each in under an hour, which was enough for Willy to go and get his daily bread. I stayed and made more roses, but not much more money. I sat out like this once-per-day since, either drawing or weaving roses, and always made surplus of my food costs.

I stayed up through the night and drew outside of the supermarket while the sun rose. I met a new friend, Somn, from Philadelphia who'd just been released from prison for graffiti the night before. We had some mutual friends and exchanged drawings. I returned to my car and slept.

The Kavachnina crew proposed that I paint a shipping box of one of Saulustiano's paintings. I agreed though had no supplies. Ryan drove me to his home/studio in little Haiti where we picked up some colors and brushes for me to use. It rained that night. In fact, it flooded that night, but seeing that we were working on a deadline, and that I had a sense of humor about the ordeal, I took off my shoes and made the painting during the downpour in four inches of water. During the painting, I could kick water onto the wooden box/panel to create wash effects within the composition. I was pleased with the results. The box was a five foot by five foot square and seeing that none of the paintings in the show (in my opinion) fully captured the idea of 'Wynwood graffiti in the age of gentrification', I set to creating what I saw to be an illustration of the show's intent- the 'cover illustration' if you will. I drew a vanishing point front and center then some industrial warehouses depicting the feel of Wynwood past. The warehouses also took on the appearance of moving boxes with their folding tops agape in different angles, creating movement cues. A graffiti-style bubble letter phrase in the upper third of the painting read "Wynwood Moving Sale", then in tag-style, "Everything must go!"  Then, on the facades of the depicted buildings, I painted store names and implied signage. One said grocery. Another had the word 'Shoestrings' superimposed onto it, following the perspective grid. The 'Shoes' in 'Shoestrings' lined up with a building/box (box store), while the 'trings' bled over the illustrated alleyway and building/box adjacent. Trings, a non-word, served as a nod to dada, a verbal ready-made. Further, the word 'Shoestring' shares an association with 'Budget', again referring to the gentrification cash cow in Wynwood. Closer to the foreground, between two of these 'box/stores' is a thin structure, which looks in one regard as a narrow architectural phenomenon and in another as a book, the spine of which reads 'Appraisals'.
In the gap of an alleyway, sits a dog, painted in the fashion of the highway men, an allegiance to the tradition of the Florida painter (and just a charming bonus). In the background of the painting, like a god or like T.J. Ekelburg over the Valley of Ashes was depicted a figure holding a spray paint can, poised to vandalize, or to paint a mural perhaps, or to improve, seeking fame or fortune at the behest of the haves. The hero and villain incarnate, the artist.
Behind the scenes: the depicted artist silhouette was modeled from my backlit shadow as it was cast by streetlight onto the surface of the painting. I held a can in my right hand and painted the figure in with my left, (actually accurate to my preferred dexterity). A few washes, some liberal applications of color implying light hitting the scene and the painting was complete. A masterpiece if ever there was one.

The Kavachnina crew was pleased with the painting and we moved it out onto the sidewalk as a call-in for the work inside of the gallery. It sat next to the sign of the show- "Rob-Wynhood", it read.
It became clear that Alejandro had done a lot of leg work for the show. One day after watching the sunrise on the back-end of a sleep schedule, I sought to take a nap in the sculpture garden in front of the gallery. While circling the garden like a dog looking for the ideal place to rest, a man came by in a nice car to drop off a pillow for me in the form of a stack of magazines. The publication was titled Art Districts of Florida, No. 33. He referred me to the article about the 'Rob-Wynhood' show then set out to deliver the rest presumably. I flipped through the magazine and saw an advertisement for the show, and among the billed artists, there I was. Twenty or thirty pages later, was an article written by Alejandro about the show. It was well written and again, my name appeared. I was written into the show, like a shoe-in. There was no accompanying description, as I don't believe that anyone with exception of Johnny knew what my paintings looked like. I'll take it, I thought, and went to sleep in the early morning light, head propped up by a stack of magazines with my name in them.
Alejandro and Ryan came by the gallery a few hours later and took photos of me reclining by the front door of the gallery I was not short of basking with a permanent grin across my face. The photo went viral amongst the Kavachnina crew, referred to as the Kavachnina artist-in-residency program.

All at once the day came for the opening at the Kavachnina Gallery. There was plenty of wine. Johnny and I decided that our black rectangle was too enticing to not paint on it. We broke out the paint and began going in. I hadn't much experience painting from a black background so much of the initial scratching was done by John. We began to bury the black, which I was not fond of. The mural began to look like an unrooted space scene. John and I stepped back and I convinced him that it was a good idea that I go in with roller paint and do some flat, two-color illustration on top of the layers of misting. I applied the paint in blotchy sections creating a sense of depth and motion. I became inspired to paint a tree house suspended in an oak on one end and on the other a tall cypress-type tree. Patches of grasses styled like those from Bill Waterson line drawings echoed from the bases of the trees. A dialogue was formed between the background and foreground and I felt much better about the wall. Johnny was ready to accept my moves as improvements and move on too. We packed up the paint. I went inside the gallery with the party-goers. It was quite an international crowd. There seemed to be a lot of money in the room, but it felt static. I became bored, so I snatched up my red dress that I'd found in a pile of books and clothing left out in front of a thrift store, ran into a gallery across the street where I let down my hair and changed garb. My second entrance to the Kavachnina gallery, now in a dress, felt much better. I became a touchstone for the party, hearing my name called by one person or another. I took many pictures with women that night, and gained an admirer or two among the artists. A couple of bands played, they were both great though as it goes, the first one was better.

I met a beautiful woman the following day. Her name was Heather. We took a walk through Wynwood together exploring galleries. I'd planned to leave, but things were going smoothly between us so I didn't rush it. I really enjoyed the way she picked apart paintings- she was very objective about the production of the work, and critical about the shortcomings of the artist meeting his/her statements. Together we talked about the misogyny in a series of photographic nudes which aimed to 'explore our spiritual nature blah blah', and we found some bad abstraction to boot. We did come across some wonderful photography of musicians, paired with lyrics from songs they'd written from Brooklyn in a large industrious space. It was my favorite gallery at Basel. We walked into a junk emporium on 27th street where I felt inspired to draw an African head sculpture. I asked a man working at the store who seemed like the owner if I could draw it. "Be my guest." he said. I noticed a pen and notepad next to the sculpture and asked if I could use a pen and paper. "You want to draw it, but you don't bring your own supplies huh?" he asked rhetorically. Under my arm, I had a large poster of a photograph that I'd picked up on the street just ten minutes prior, and in my pocket, a large marker. "I've got it." I said, as I unrolled the large sheet of paper and spread it across the floor. I began to draw and a small crowd gathered around to watch. I achieved a likeness after some time and bid the gentleman goodbye. Later that night, I walked Heather back to her car. I gave her the poster and we exchanged information, that I might visit her if I make a trip to DC.
I stopped by the spot where I thought I might see Willy before I left town. He was there and in good spirits. He gave me some material to weave roses with and gave me a big hug. Melissa, a friend from my trip to Miami in the year prior came by the spot to say goodbye as well. I painted a little graffiti piece on a nearby wall where Johnny and his friends were going in on a production, then left town for Jacksonville.