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Spray cans and imagination are tools to build 'a way of life' Mail Tribune photos / Jim Craven Richard Hawkins, left, works on a preliminary drawing of what he will paint on a mural behind Musichead in Medford Friday. Ricardo Herrera, right, works on a likeness of Carlos Santana. Also pictured on the wall are Jimi Hendrix and Muddy Waters. By BILL VARBLE A car brakes in the alley behind Musichead, skateboard stickers on the bumper. "Are you painting that just out of your head?" Three graffiti artists, skinny dudes in droopy pants, work at the black wall with cans of spray paint to the beat of Wu-Tang Clan. Toby Linwood nods, smiles. "Damn, that's good." Linwood, 19, strokes an Olympian Jimi Hendrix, the can going over Jimi's eye again and again, the eye closed and intense like when he was deep into a solo. "We don't have an outline," Ricardo Herrera says. "We just put 'em up with spray cans." "We don't use no pencils, airbrush, tape," Linwood says, "none of that." The men are getting paid to cover the wall in the Medford alley with the faces of music greats. But at this point, they say, it's not about money. It's about art. They do murals, custom design, clothing, all free-lance. "We're trying to build a resume," Richard Hawkins says. Hawkins, 18, is in the early stages of a big Muddy Waters. On Muddy's other flank, Herrera, 19, tackles Carlos Santana. "It's not every day you can do what you'd be doing anyway for fun," Hawkins says. "It's either this or I'd be skateboarding." Linwood grew up poor, became a teen father, tried mill work. He's painted buildings, walls, underneath bridges. His thing is graffiti art, not gang graffiti. He talks about going to art school in San Francisco. "Just a ghetto child," he says, working at Jimi's eye, bopping to the rap. "Toby's the wild kid," Hawkins says. "Wild style, maybe," Linwood says. The mural started an hour or two ago when Linwood struck a hissing white line on all that black, then another and another, a pattern that didn't look like much of anything. "It always scares people at first," he said. "They go, 'Wait a minute'." They use those cheap spray cans you can buy anywhere, different nozzles to make tight lines or fill in wide spaces. The graffiti art thing got going when Herrera did his senior year high school project at VIBES Main 1, the Medford teen nightclub. "He planted the bug for us to explore giving kids opportunities with art," VIBES' Tom Cole says. "They'd be here until midnight doing murals." They even taught an art class for younger kids. The idea was to get kids to clean up some of the street tagging around town, maybe get them interested in creating art. "I'm into helping anybody I can," Linwood says. "When I was a little kid, I was into whatever I could do." Their stuff can be seen at VIBES, Be-One Enterprises in Phoenix, Mark Graham's bike shop near Bear Creek Park. "They're good guys," Graham says. "They just need an opportunity." They're planning a big mural at Howard Elementary in Medford. "I think they're pretty good," Musichead's Tom Woodard says. "What's neat is it's a truly original street art." They have a list of greats for the wall: Stevie Wonder, Selena, Louis Armstrong, Bob Marley, Johann Sebastian Bach, John Lennon. Very different from the Wu-Tang Clan with their street-wise, Staten Island, Muslim/Kung Fu/bone-crushing beat. Some of these guys they're not that clear on. "I didn't know Muddy Waters was a guy." "I thought it was a group." "You know who shoulda been on the list?" "Jimmy Page." "Eric Clapton." "I'm doin' Joey Ramone." They have pictures from magazines, CD covers, Satchmo with the bell of his trumpet out of the frame, the four shaggy haired, proto-punk Ramones. "Which one's Joey?" Maybe they'll go with Gene Simmons instead of Joey. "Who's that?" "You know, Kiss, the tongue man." "That's true hip-hop," Linwood says of the Clan. "Not all rap is hip-hop. Hip-hop is art, it's life." Passersby stop to watch, families in cars, tattooed board punks, real estate salesmen from the office next door. "This is awesome," says Shimina Steinbach, 15, of Central Point. "Would you paint my bedroom?" Phone numbers go out. "Nice, guys," says a passing guy in a Zero T-shirt. A guy in a Roberts Motors truck asks, "What company are you guys?" They give him a business card. Progress on the mural is fast, but not that fast. People come by and hang out. The cell phone rings. There's talk, cigarettes, more talk. Linwood and Hawkins step back to take in Muddy, something about the eyes. It's gotta be right. "Graffiti is not just art," Linwood says, "it's a way of life." Linwood and Herrera can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] Reach reporter Bill Varble at 776-4478 or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.