SABER

Frank151: Why don’t you start by giving a little bit of history.
SABER: I started painting in 1990 and met some good friends, which led to becoming the crew AWR and MSK. So basically SEVER, REVOK, EKLIPS and various others are all my affiliates through growing up here. It’s six degrees of separation, really. It’s our will to paint that keeps us together.
F151: You guys have remained intact for how many years now?
S: Wow…I dunno. I met REVOK in ’96, so that’s when I started painting with him. I think SEVER I met in ’97 or ’98.

F151: Somewhere in there you transitioned from graffiti to where we are right now, in the studio making prints and fine art.
S: I’ve always felt the need to explore different areas and mediums. Even before painting graffiti, I always drew and painted—landscapes, skateboard graphics, stuff like that. Actually, doing art is what got me into doing graffiti, and graffiti is what led me to try and push further and push harder.


F151: Talk about the print you’re currently making here in LA at Modern Multiples with Richard Duardo.
S: Right now I’m doing serigraph prints that are made up of about 15 different screens...maybe more, who knows. I guess we’ll find out when we finish it. It’s a representation of a mural that I painted about a week ago [pictured above]. So I go paint the mural and then get in the studio and get messy in there, too. It’s just the way to express yourself in both ways and be professional, in that both take a lot of time and energy to make them look nice. I like pushing myself to the brink.
F151: Are you comfortable coming in here and working around the presses and other machinery?
S: Absolutely. Anything involved with the creative process I feel comfortable with. I even had shitty jobs like faux-finishing for Chevy’s restaurants and all sorts of weird shit like that. I just enjoy paint. It makes me feel like I’ve done something that day.

F151: What else has been going on with you lately?
S: One is this little controversy with Fox News and this print I produced here at Modern Multiples. It was a flag. I’ve been steering towards a political edge, to a certain degree. I care a lot about the healthcare issue because of my current condition. That was one thing that led me to a whole new path—painting a flag—which is something that I never considered before.

But I’m not done painting graffiti, I’m just trying to fine-tune what I’m doing now. There’s always more painting to be done.
F151: Did you have any idea the flag piece would be so controversial?
S: No, I didn’t have any idea that it would get to where it was. It got pretty gnarly with some of the responses. I’ve had a few death threats. These right-wing fuckin’ conservative nutjobs have homed-in on me online as a target for spilling their hatred. It’s pretty interesting when I go through the web and see what’s going on. It’s pretty interesting that it went that far, that it traveled the entire sphere of the Internet on that side. These people really care about that shit, and they really don’t like us!
F151: What’s your reaction to their reaction? Are you more drawn into the debate now?
S: Absolutely. Because when you hear their rhetoric, it’s completely, totally out of the box. It just doesn’t work for something that’s positive, and my job was just to create a piece of artwork. I wasn’t necessarily trying to do anything inflammatory, it was just something that happened. I’m happy to be in that position because I’m not afraid of any of these people. To me, it’s almost a fantasy to be on the news and to be looked at in a certain way. In essence it only hypes me up, helps my career, so I hope they keep doing it [laughs].


F151: Do you feel that this has influenced the direction you’re going in from here on out, or is it just on to the next thing?
S: I have to say letters, in my heart, come first—and SABER is not me, as in, “I’m SABER! Here’s an identity! It’s who I am.” It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the flow and the letter combinations as an abstract painting form. So that’s something I’m gonna do for the rest of my life. But, painting my name has become redundant, and it’s difficult to keep painting the same canvases with the name “SABER,” because in essence, I’m looking for an abstract flow or format, not the identity of my name, so it’s pushed me to try new things. That’s why I’m working on these prints and different styles of painting. I’ve been doing a lot of hyper-realistic landscapes and things like that to cultivate a new personality. What is that personality? That personality is somebody who would be my representation in the fine-art world. I’m a 33-year-old man. I’m not trying to walk around like some comic-book hero, like, “Hey, I’m SABER!” Like I’ve got a cape on or some shit [laughs]. I’m working on a new identity that’s still me, that allows me to work towards a different perspective on fine art. So that’ll be coming soon.

I’m doing a print in the next couple of months that’s based on the money thing and all the drama that’s going on. The only reason I’m even attempting to go there is because of how Bank of America is treating me, so they can suck my fucking balls. In essence I have passion towards them and what they’re doing, so I have some things lined up that I think might work. We’ll see! It’s definitely very detail-orientated. The goal is to inspire trade and bartering between the people around you.
Right now painting illegal graffiti in Los Angeles is by far the stupidest thing I could do. That would be like shooting myself in the foot and charging myself the bill. The sheriffs have focused all their attention on graffiti. Gang violence, murder, rape, fuckin’ speed manufacturers, and they’re worried about graffiti right now. That’s their biggest focus.
F151: Why is that?
S: It’s the new City Attorney, Carmen Trutanich. He’s taken over on this hard-line, megalo-conservative role. He’s trying to create a new injunction on anybody labeled as a “tagger.” It allows the authorities to search and seizure you and take you away for as long as they want for conspiracy. Some of this is starting to show its light, because some of us—not me specifically—but some people have been arrested and some crazy shit’s gone down. They’re definitely trying to prove their point, but the funny thing is, when it reaches some of these judges they’re like, “Wait a minute, you’re
trying to charge these dudes for painting, and the bail amounts are more than murder,” or whatever. Some of the judges at least have a clear mind when the shit lands on their desk, but there are some people going away for a long time. It’s a full-on, find-out-who-you-are-and-take-you-down sort of thing. They’re going after anybody they can. Painting in the city right now is a pretty dangerous sport, and there’s too much other shit to be done. I want to be safe and I wanna do other shit in other places. There’s some trains in Europe [laughs]!

F151: How do you feel about the way new media is affecting art in general, and more specifically, what you do?
S: It’s a valuable tool. I’m almost waiting for them to say, “Alright, we’re gonna start charging everybody for Internet use.” But I’ve been lucky enough to get my foot in the door as far as having a website early on and making sure that there’s some sort of presence. It’s definitely an unbelievable tool. But it also has its downside, so I try to keep clean, keep tight, and don’t send any funny text messages to any silly people. You never know. Everything you put out there, you don’t know who’s gonna see it.
F151: It’s the new Wild West.
S: It is the new Wild West! We have to be very careful about what we do and what we represent. My goal is to represent strong art and a network of strong people who believe the same shit. It’s nothing about extremism, it’s nothing about anti-this or anti-that. It’s about pushing ourselves hard to make good fuckin’ art. It gets misconstrued sometimes, but really we wanna paint and we wanna do a good job when we do it. Who knows what’s next, man? You know, 2012...uh-oh! Maybe all the Evangelicals will go crazy and start blowing themselves up [laughs]!
F151: Do you believe any of those 2012 theories?
S: No. I don’t know what the fuck I believe in, but I don’t believe in that. I believe in…fuckin’…bubble hash!
F151: There you go! What else, have we missed anything?
S: If some people look at what we do and if we come across a certain way, I just want people to know that our efforts are from our hearts. It’s about making work and putting your heart into it. I just don’t wanna come across as some total asshole. Sometimes people think that graffiti artists are these ultra alpha-male assholes running around. Yeah, that’s true sometimes [laughs]! On a good night! But when it comes to what we’re doing now, we respect the art community and we want to participate in a way that makes sense, where our ideas are looked at and considered valid. I don’t have the capacity to not have genuine feelings about that. I don’t. I’m too emotionally attached to this to allow it to go in some weird way.

Just keep fucking putting in work, all of you! Everybody! Keep fuckin’ painting, everybody. Put up your bills, do your stencils, do your fuckin’ posters, do your graphic design, do your oil paintings. The more the better! Let’s keep rubbin’ it in their fuckin’ face. The more we do it, the better it is. Especially the big cities, we have to keep pushing. Fuck it, if they don’t want us to paint with spraypaint at night, I’ll paint a hand-brushed mural and they can tell me how great it looks. I don’t give a fuck. Either way, I’m still here. We’re still doing something. We’re not done. It’s never done. It’s an endless process.

www.saberone.com