Tagging a Train Yard with Barry McGee & Margaret Kilgallen | Art21

KILGALLEN: I like things that are handmade, 
and I like to see people's hand in the world.

Any day in the mission in San Francisco,

you can see a hand-painted 
sign that is kind of funky.

And maybe that person, if they had money, 
they would prefer to have a neon sign.

But I don't prefer that.

I think it's beautiful what they 
did, in that they did it themselves.

That's what I find beautiful.

–Um, I'm an artist and I just 
like those figures a lot.

–Do you know who painted them?

–No, no.
–They're pretty awesome.

Often in the city, when there's 
so many things to look at,

and so many things going on, 
you don't see those things,

but I see those things.

MCGEE: There's a lot of talk of how damaging graffiti is,

and this destruction that happens with graffiti,

but there's actually no damage at all,

it can be like painted over with a roller.

They're just like commercial jingles, like,

that are stuck in my head, and to me,

that's like, that's damage to me.

KILGALLEN: The public looks at graffiti 
and sees garbage, and sees ugliness.

And I always wonder why they 
don't look at the billboards,

especially around San Francisco, 
there's millions, everywhere,

isn't that garbage?

That's like mind garbage.

MCGEE: The billboards are very subversive, 
and advertising is very subversive,

whereas, like most of the stuff that's done 
on the street is very close to the truth.

It's like the highest art there is.

I've done graffiti for a hell of a long time.

There's never been like a time when I was like,

oh, I'm like 25 now, I'm 
going to stop doing graffiti.

You know, it wasn't like a planned thing, like,

oh, I do art, now I'm gonna surf 
and now I'm gonna do graffiti.

It's just everything, I've always done it.

KILGALLEN: And most of the things that inspire my artwork are

folk art of some kind, American folk art.

I'm also very interested in Indian folk art.

When I first started painting seriously, 
I used to look at a lot of typography

from, like, the 16th century,

and the color of the inks that they used,

which were normally black 
and red, and sometimes blue.

Having a background in doing 
printmaking and doing letterpress,

I became very interested in 
images that were flat and graphic.

And my painting still today is very flat.

In my own work, I do everything 
by hand, I don't project.

I do spend a lot of time 
trying to perfect my line work

and my hand, but my hand will always 
be imperfect because it's human.

If I'm doing really big letters and I 
spend a lot of time going over the line

and over the line trying to make it straight,

I'll never be able to make it straight.

From a distance, it might look 
straight, but when you get close up,

you can always see the line waver.

And I think that's, that's where the beauty is.

MCGEE: I bring in every little damn thing on the street.

Some stuff makes it, some doesn't.

Some things just get walked 
on for years and years,

and then magically, it works in a frame.

I like that process of a thing discarded

then picked up and then intercepted,

and then I do something on 
it and then it goes into

a fine collector's home, probably.

And, once again, it's cherished.

The frame clusters of drawings are usually 
little scenarios that have developed

and that I have seen on the street, and 
then go home and just draw it, or whatnot,

and then put it into a frame,

And then I've always just thought of them as like

similar to like how a community 
of some sort might work.

In some areas, people are getting 
along great, having a good time.

Then some have tension, so it's 
like, loosely like a community.

But when I went into art school, 
I wanted to know everything.

I took installation classes, 
I took performance classes,

I was like, I wanted to know 
this thing art like so badly,

I wanted to know what the hell it was.

I could never knock art school.

I learned so much about the process of making

and documentating, and voila, 
here's art, we have art, yay!

Everyone applaud, we have art.

I felt like I was an art school jock of some sort.

If it was art that I was going to 
do, I was going to be good at it.

There was no way that I was 
going to be lousy at it.

[ train whistle ]

–Oh, my god, we gotta go, because there's 
a guy back there and I don't know him.

–All right, we should probably go.

The thing that really 
fascinated me about the trains

is that it's very much about folklore.

You see a huge variety of markings.

Just really, really old ones,

and there's so much history there.

It is something that's been happening

ever since trains were around.

And it is still happening today, 
it's happening in the present,

and yet when you look at 
it, it looks like folklore.

He originally wrote it in '85,

then he came past it again in '91,

and then he came past it again in '92.

So every time he goes past 
it, you update your signature.

You're learning about someone 
without ever even knowing the person.

There's legalities about writing on someone 
else's property, too, which I always enjoy.

But there's a lot of people that are just like
working-class people that write on trains, and...

KILGALLEN: and they don't know why they do it.

I don't know why we do it, 
it's like you just do it.

–We haven't got kicked out or anything, 
I was expecting to get kicked out.

–I know.

–That's a good one.

–Barry –

–What, I almost hit it.

–Barry, don't --

–Look, I have one on there.

Whenever I do stuff indoors, I always feel like

I have to do 110% more stuff 
outdoors to keep, like,

my street credibility.

It's probably the audience I'm most worried about,

like graffiti kids that are 
really doing stuff are like...

and I'm always wary of how I sit in the eye

of like a 12- or 13-year-old kid, like,

what do they think of what I've done,

how I fit in their scheme of things,

or, "Oh, that guy sold out."

KILGALLEN: The more and more work I do in a gallery,

then it's really easy to 
get separated from people.

You want to be able to sell your work,

and you want to be able to live off your work.

And that world that involves the art 
buying and selling is a very closed world,

and sometimes you forget about 
the other world around you.

MCGEE: It has to do with money, you know?

Who has access to space.

And when I feel like the access to space is 
like cut off for like the general public,

that makes me want to do stuff on 
the street even that much more.

The stuff in the galleries is just, it's 
already, the art crowd, it's the same people.

Sometimes I feel like if I do something indoors,

the circle of people that see things 
is getting smaller and smaller,

whereas if I'm outdoors, it's 
open to anyone to look at.

But doing stuff indoors is 
definitely, it's fun to do.

I like going to sites and just,

they pretty much let me run around wild and free

for like a month, and then I stop and that's it.

You know, without supervision, so...

there's a sense of freedom involved, too.

Up to about, like, '98, I always 
painted directly on the walls,

then people would come, see the piece,

and the only thing that would be kind of left

is the idea of the piece, but I did something 
at the Walker, they skinned the walls.

And it was part my idea, my decision, 
too, so I could have something to keep.

It's a contradiction, too, for me.

I definitely sell stuff to make a living.

I'm a working artist now, I mean, I always 
like to think that I'm trying to keep it

as pure as possible,

But what I do is definitely tainted, too.