With a high-profile arrest, Santa Fe's graffiti scene takes a blow.
Aezrock is cautious.
A graffiti artist has to be if they want to ply their craft in Santa Fe these days. Aezrock should know. He is a veteran who has been scrawling on walls long enough to remember the halcyon days of Santa Fe graffiti a decade ago amid the stifling modern atmosphere. He doesn't paint much anymore, but it isn't because of a guilty conscience.
"I love the street aspect of graffiti and I'd still like to do it but I already have a pretty bad police record," Aezrock laughs. "I've pretty much stopped on the illegal scene. Now I'm just looking for ways to display my art legally."
Then again, it's difficult to move forward when you're constantly glancing over your shoulder. Aezrock is plenty paranoid. He has agreed with reluctance to meet with SFR at a downtown coffee shop. He arrives sporting beard stubble, dark aviator sunglasses and camouflage shorts, lest we get too good a look at him. He insists on being referred to only by his street name, a wariness bred from the occupational hazard of spraying in Santa Fe.
"It used to be a free-for-all," Aezrock says. "You could paint wherever the hell you wanted. Santa Fe is barely on the map now. The cops have this place on lockdown. There's a graffiti task force, a graffiti hot line…and everything just gets buffed right away anyway. It's almost not worth it."
Almost. But local graffiti culture was shoved out of the shadows on May 18 when some 60 markings were found on retaining walls along a one-mile stretch of US 84/285 north of Tesuque Hill. It was arguably the city's most visible graffiti display in years, particularly given that the tags painted over and around controversial murals of hypercolor wildlife created by Santa Fe artist Frederico Vigil. The price tag of cleaning up the suspected work of "Dr. Sex" has been estimated at as much as $10,000. But it was hardly the first operation the good Doctor has performed in Santa Fe.
"[We last saw Dr. Sex's work] about a year ago," says Gerard Mart'nez, marketing and special project manager for the Parks and Recreation Department. "[It was] around the DeVargas Mall area in the arroyos. It was somewhat extensive but our crew covered it up pretty well and we haven't seen that tag since then." Probably because Dr. Sex has been a traveling physician as of late. He purportedly runs with a crew of graffiti artists called the Pigs crew, but his solo work has been featured in underground magazines like Catch Me If You Can while Web chatter and photos have placed his work all over the country in the last year. New York City. Cleveland. New Jersey. And now Santa Fe.
"[Dr. Sex] has been around for a while but he's definitely been getting his shit out there recently," Aezrock says. "I'm kinda worried for him. He's going to get busted if he keeps doing crazy shit. But I guess that's the name of the game."
The game had apparently already caught up with Dr. Sex a few hours before SFR's May 26 coffee shop rendezvous with Aezrock. Detectives with the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Department executed a search warrant at a home in Santa Cruz earlier that morning and arrested 25-yearold Karta Khalsa on charges of criminal damage to property over $1,000 and unauthorized graffiti on personal or real property greater than $1,000. According to a press release, the Sheriff's Department recovered 550 cans of spray paint, numerous photos of "Dr. Sex Graffiti" and media articles and notes which detailed dates and times the 84/285 incident was reported on local television broadcasts.
The arrest reportedly came after detectives followed up on several tips phoned in to the Santa Fe Crime Stoppers Line. The hotline is just one tool in the City's graffiti arsenal, but even with vigilant law enforcement arrests have been infrequent. According to Miquela Gonzales, a crime analyst for the Santa Fe Police Department, there were 87 individual incidents in 2004 that caused more than $1,000 in damage, but only one arrest and one citation.
Aezrock says the heavy police presence has already had a chilling effect on the graffiti community. While anonymity is a golden currency in the graffiti trade, many artists looking to make bigger names for themselves are confronted by the paradox that more exposure also makes them bigger targets. The risk of becoming a household name requires an artist to be talented, daring and able to stay one step ahead of the law."
"You definitely want to keep your stuff under wraps, especially these days," Aezrock says. "Santa Fe is a small town so eventually you're going to run into everyone at some point in time. It's dangerous for anyone to know who you really are. You could have close personal friends and have no idea what they're painting."
There was seemingly little ambiguity in the work on US 84/285. Dr. Sex's name was, literally, all over it. But despite some assumptions, Aezrock says it's unlikely that dislike for Vigil's murals was the motivation behind the barrage.
"I can't quote [Dr. Sex]-I haven't talked to him-but I don't think it was a personal attack," Aezrock says. "Then again, those [murals] are ugly. I would rather see him do some cool shit legally then what they have up there. I think they're ugly as hell. [Vigil] may be a good artist, but those things don't go with the land at all."
Although when Dr. Sex tread over Vigil's work, he also raised significant ire both from within the community at large and from some quarters of the local graffiti scene.
"I don't really have anything positive to say about stuff like that," says veteran Santa Fe street artist Cebzer. "Tagging murals-I just think that kind of shit is wack. I've seen stuff where people add to the mural and I can get down with that a lot more than someone throwing tags over something the City made."
Aezrock says there is some animosity within the ranks of the city's graffiti scene, but it has more to do with generational gaps-veterans versus newcomers-than it does any territorial turf war. He says the notion that much of Santa Fe's graffiti is gang-affiliated is bunk and that the real professionals of the craft are not the vandalizing hooligans they are painted as.
"The true writers in this town are really intelligent people," Aezrock says. "They're not a bunch of punks with nothing better to do. Most of them have jobs, are going to college and trying to produce artwork legally for public display. Maybe if the city gave people more room to paint legally, there wouldn't be as many problems like this."
Laura Parisi contributed to this story.
Santa Fe Reporter