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Recently the Villager announced that East Village graffiti legend Antonio Garcia (better known as Chico) would be retiring to Florida to possibly teach art, custom-paint cars, be with his kids and "start my life. I’m going to miss the community. But it’s time to spend time with my family. I’m already 45.” He has spent 30 years using a spray paint can to generate positive messages and memorial tributes throughout the neighborhood, where he has lived since the age of two (he got his start tagging old redbird subway cars). Think of him as the Keith Haring without the art-world accolades (he calls the artist a "faker").
As a farewell to his community, he put up a new mural on Houston and Avenue B (here it is as a work in progress). He told the paper that another recent one, on 6th Street and Avenue C of Barack Obama, exemplified how things are changing—explaining “Almost 20 years painting there—the building owner wanted to have me arrested." Luckily the cops knew who he was.
At his recent going away party the Housing Authority even presented him with an honorary plaque for his art. In return, he leaves behind Jairo, a young twenty-something graffiti artist that he has been mentoring, declaring: “I think he could be the perfect one to continue my legacy. You get rid of the big roach—you got to follow the small roaches!” Spoken like a true New Yorker.
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Chico My Man You will be missed!! Enjoy your retirement Hermano!!
Took the words out of my mouth er..keyboard.
I've read a couple of people's blogs saying his work is crap... I say it's patrimony!
Lennon looks like Johnny Ramone.
Is he taking his teenage girlfriend with him to Florida?
Is he taking his teenage girlfriend with him to Florida?
Aw, drats. Chico and Pete are EV living treasures. (I wonder if Pete is planning on becoming Jario's assistant?) Really nice guys who do a lot of very generous things--above and beyond Chico's murals--for the neighborhood. However, Chico in Florida? Dude. I'd bet he'll be back in the EV in year or so.
Chico's aerosol art has been a staple of the LES. Sad to see him go. However, please do NOT categorize him as a "graffiti" artist. Using spray paint as a medium to do legal art has nothing to do with graffiti.
Chico also painted the mural at the entrance of La Bodega de la Familia on East Third Street at Avenue C. (Sadly, the building owner painted over it after La Bodega closed in November.)
You can see it here:
http://tinyurl.com/a9uuc7
Chico, if you see this: Good luck and thank you for everything you gave to the community and the participants at La Bodega...from all of us at Family Justice.
Jules Verdone
www.familyjustice.org
Chico, you're murals are part of life on Avenue C. I love the one on East 10th between C and D. The hood will miss you.
Driving Down Toward Florida
[it is not snowing yet - but it soon will be]
Fleeing a world that is cold,
because up North it is snowing on our
self-absorbed lovers who abandoned us
never realizing we would flee their wintry tongues.
Foregoing final acts of desperation
as we pass oasis after oasis.
Marking the outskirts of a civilization
full of highway bandits -
food machines and fuel fillups
where extortionate prices
are mixed with leering smiles.
And cheese sandwiches
are only white or yellow,
glistening moist and ominous.
In obscenely bright neon lights
glaring from service center islands
as if from a dentist's office,
eerily provoking pain from sharp steel probes.
Causing you to imagine whirring drills
with no sufficient anaesthetic.
On the road passing little dwellings,
shacks really, made of rusted corrugated tin,
dented, pock-marked, where ghosts are seen
between breaths of intermittent rain.
In mile after torturous mile
of blackened rubber strips
from exploded truck tires -
which look like discarded alligators.
Flushed-out, abandoned presents
left to bake and sizzle without love
existing in the cooling snow of our yesterdays.
Dried-up carcasses cast
alongside swaying clumps of palm trees.
In whose leafy shadows hide strange lizards,
who it is said breathe from their eyes.
And we know we are getting closer,
far from frozen hearts.
We wish we could stop.
GOOD RIDDANCES
DON"T DO IT CHICO! I'm telling you for your own Good.
You'll regret every second you breathe out there. I know from experience. Your Too young still & the city makes your heart pump. There is Nothing to do, Even in Miami & thats the Best City out there. All you see is young latin kidz on the run. No talent or Life. its ok for them. But an Artist!. Wait a While Papi