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| Photos by Jim Schutze |
Ben Eine, the international street-art star and former graffiti fugitive, was out on Fort Worth Avenue this afternoon painting a mammoth graffiti-style mural based on his tag -- EYN -- on the side of a building. Listen: This is huge.
Earlier this year Eine was given a big wall to paint in central London, where he lives. Last year British Prime Minister David Cameron gave one of his works to Barack Obama. He's huge. Not as a person. He's a normal-sized person, but you know what I mean. He's headed to San Francisco tomorrow. He was just in Osaka. This guy was talkin' to ME! Jim Schutze.
There was a reporter there from some other paper too, but really you could tell Eine wanted to talk to me mostly. He told me, well, us, that he was jailed 14 times as a kid for tagging. Now he's gone semi-straight as a legal street artist who actually gets permission from property owners before putting up his work.
When I found him he was just wrapping up a huge tag/mural at the top of the hill above the Belmont with a lovely view of downtown in the distance.
I wanted to be the one who asked him the piercing questions, so I asked him if he was at all concerned that here in Dallas, a fairly conservative city, if people started driving by and seeing his art like this, they might all turn into crackheads. I was quite taken aback by his answer.
"I don't know," he said. "There's some truth in it. If I can run down your street and tag my name on every other brick wall and not get pulled in by the cops, then what else is somebody going to do?"
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