Gaia
www​.gaias​tree​tart​.com
Bal­ti­more, MD

Curbs and Stoops: Let’s start with a few quick ques­tions. Where did the name Gaia come from?
Gaia: Gaia is the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of earth in greek mythol­ogy. When con­sid­er­ing a pseu­do­nym to assume for my street work, I wanted to find an iden­tity that rep­re­sented my inter­est in using ani­mals as the fun­da­men­tal sub­ject of my art.

Curbs and Stoops: Where did you grow up?
Gaia: New York City

Curbs and Stoops: What is your back­ground in art?
Gaia: I am cur­rently enrolled in art school.

Curbs and Stoops: How long have you been doing street art? To what do you attribute your quick rise in popularity?

Gaia: I have been doing work on the street for a lit­tle less than three years so it really has not been a long time. The very nature of get­ting up is to be widely dis­sem­i­nated; its most pow­er­ful fea­ture is exten­sive cir­cu­la­tion of an artist’s imagery. Beyond the art, its appli­ca­tion is a prac­tice in mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tion. Its mar­riage to the Inter­net makes it expo­nen­tially more effec­tive for spread­ing street arts com­mu­ni­ca­tion. I think the pri­mary rea­son for the quick rise in pop­u­lar­ity is social net­work­ing com­mu­ni­ties such as flickr and its pub­li­ca­tion on var­i­ous blogs.

Curbs and Stoops: You read and write a lot about social art and the pur­pose of street art. What do you con­sider the role of street art at large to be? How does your art in par­tic­u­lar relate to this con­text?
Gaia: I believe that street art’s defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic is its ille­gal­ity. It is a means of work­ing that is not hin­dered by any obsta­cles beyond the artist’s desires. The weight of pros­e­cu­tion under the law main­tains that artists must work directly and with­out sanc­tion in the spaces in which they want to apply their work. No per­mis­sion is nec­es­sary for the work to exist and the artist is in com­plete con­trol of how they imple­ment their art.

It is prac­ti­cally impos­si­ble to des­ig­nate one par­tic­u­lar pur­pose of Street Art given how var­ied and broad the com­mu­nity is. But if I were to make an effort to locate street art’s func­tion within soci­ety, I guess I would say its aims and meth­ods are based in subversion

Street Art is a call to alter­na­tive engage­ments of space and pro­vides a gen­er­a­tive reac­ti­va­tion of neglected prop­erty. It is a chal­lenge to our notions of space, and a chal­lenge to insti­tu­tional con­trols. But its aim is not to dis­man­tle any of these sys­tems, nor does it have the power to do so. Instead it is sim­ply pro­vid­ing another method of work­ing. It is expand­ing the mul­ti­plic­ity and inter­dis­ci­pli­nary nature of con­tem­po­rary art today.

Curbs and Stoops: I recently read that you are going to do a piece that will take the light­ing and shadow in a par­tic­u­lar place, at a par­tic­u­lar hour as a com­po­si­tional ele­ment. How many of your pieces are this site spe­cific? What goes into that form of explo­ration?
Gaia: Most of the pieces that I have cre­ated for the street are not site spe­cific but are instead a mul­ti­plied, uni­form image that is applied to dif­fer­ent con­texts. In the past I would print one fig­ure about twenty times from a linoleum block and then put it up in as many spots as I could all over New York.

Recently, I have not been as sat­is­fied with the very rigid lim­i­ta­tions that are set by the time inten­sive approach of carv­ing a block. So instead I have been explor­ing new ways to make the pieces more unique and flex­i­ble, while simul­ta­ne­ously increas­ing out­put. This new strat­egy com­bines a printed head with a painted body, so that I can make a piece specif­i­cally for a spot and pro­vide small vari­a­tions within the work. Also it allows for an out­put of newer imagery. Unfor­tu­nately, I have not been able to pro­duce as much street work as I did in the past, but I am slowly dis­cov­er­ing refin­ing the logis­tics of this process using pro­jec­tors, bet­ter brushes, dif­fer­ent paints and approaches in drawing.

Curbs and Stoops: As a street artist you are forc­ing your art on the pub­lic.
How do you feel about hav­ing such a pres­ence in a com­mu­nity and how do you make sure your work is wel­comed there?

Gaia:  I don’t usu­ally inves­ti­gate deeply into whether my art­work is wel­comed. While its recep­tion into a com­mu­nity is a con­cern of mine, I gen­er­ally do not con­sult for per­mis­sion to put up work. I think that the impo­si­tion and force within putting up work ille­gally is very impor­tant because it gives the artist total agency and does not hin­der their cre­ative process. This power demands a cer­tain respon­si­bil­ity on behalf of the artist.

What I have found with exten­sive con­ver­sa­tions with passersby and quiet obser­va­tions is that you will inevitably have the bell curve: most peo­ple are com­pla­cent, a few despise the appli­ca­tion or the image, and a few take notice and adore the piece. I try not to worry about it and just put up a piece in a rel­a­tively innocu­ous loca­tion such as an aban­doned build­ing or place of disrepair.

Curbs and Stoops: Your work varies between pieces that are aes­thetic to pieces that are social. What kind of prece­dents do you use for your work?

Gaia: Gen­er­ally my work is inclined towards an aes­thetic, more ambigu­ous image. At times the work is informed to a cer­tain degree to social issues con­cern­ing the urban envi­ron­ment, but gen­er­ally my approach is one that is not as imme­di­ately acces­si­ble as polit­i­cal work.

My prece­dents are the body of work that I am con­stantly build­ing. The pieces suc­ceed each other in a process that is very much based off of response and intu­ition. I am very much inter­ested in sit­u­a­tions of dom­i­na­tion and power and I believe that this dichotomy is man­i­fested very clearly in our rela­tion­ship to ani­mals. So any mate­r­ial that relates to sub­jects of con­trol whether it be found in the­ory, lit­er­a­ture, visual rep­re­sen­ta­tion or per­sonal inter­ac­tions are what serve as the foun­da­tion or ini­ti­at­ing points of my work.

Curbs and Stoops: Who are some artists that inspire or moti­vate you and what aspects of their work appeals to you?

Gaia: Phillip Glass is an indi­vid­ual from whom I derive con­stant inspi­ra­tion. His staunch beliefs and con­fi­dence in his work and process are char­ac­ter­is­tics that I find very moti­vat­ing. Since carv­ing is such a med­i­ta­tive process, I also find his music per­fect for lis­ten­ing to while work­ing on a block.

Swoon, because of her superla­tive line qual­ity and because her work is the sim­ple rea­son why I have begun pro­duc­ing street art.

From a the­o­ret­i­cal stand­point, Foucault’s explo­ration of Power and its mech­a­nisms in West­ern soci­ety have been a great indi­rect influ­ence to my work. Also, while she has an unfor­tu­nate name, Erica Fudge’s stud­ies of Man’s rela­tion­ship to Ani­mal are essen­tially con­sid­er­a­tions in writ­ing that reflect what I am cre­at­ing visually.

Curbs and Stoops: I have seen a lot of your work in New York City but now you live in an area that is not as urban, how has the change in envi­ron­ment affected your work? Do you work bet­ter within the urban fab­ric or do you find that a sub­ur­ban area responds to your work just as well?

Gaia: Actu­ally Bal­ti­more is very urban. I have never done work in the sub­urbs because I have no access or famil­iar­ity with that land­scape. I think that the urban envi­ron­ment lends itself more towards coin­ci­dence and chance encoun­ters with the piece on the street although that is cer­tainly a remote pos­si­bil­ity in a more rural or sub­ur­ban area as well.

Curbs and Stoops: Any­thing big in the works?
Gaia: Lots of legal murals, ille­gal rooftop spots, a return to some good old street bomb­ing, some new, more spe­cific pieces, and a move towards ceram­ics and wood in an effort to expand sculpturally.