D.J. Junk's Graffiti profile

I started doing graffiti in 1984.I'd been into popping and breaking a few months and had seen Breakdance The Movie, in it there was a lot of graffiti and a lot of the clothes worn in the film had graffiti on them. Being an impressionable 14 year old I thought this was the coolest thing there was so me and a friend got some white t-shirts and some fabric paints and done some t-shirts with bubble letter writing saying things like 'Hip Hop Don't Stop', 'Breaking' & 'Scratch'.

I was always naturally good at art at school so I had a flare for doing the t-shirts and started to do more elaborate designs ,I progressed from the bubble letter style to the 'Rock Steady' style as seen on the cover of 'Uprock' by The Rock Steady Crew. I practised designs on paper and I found that I could easily pick up a lettering style when I'd seen it in a picture of New York subway graffiti . We'd all seen 'Beat Street' and the bit where they were painting trains and walls, the idea of painting trains was just to naughty to contemplate doing at that time but some friends had daringly sprayed up a subway, I went and looked at the crude, drippy bubble letter mural and although I was well impressed that they had done it, at the same time I thought to myself 'I could do better' and went and got some car spay paint from B+Q ,you know the type of cellose based thin paint that only comes in car colours ,makes your piece look rubbish and gets you high as a kite in the process .I actually payed for the paint, the idea of stealing the cans at that time was out of the question ,but it did'nt cost much, I think I only got 3 or 4 colours. We went down to Bournemouth Gardens one night, it must have been around December 1984 and there was graffiti on those high white walls that are at the back of the gardens on the opposite side to the bandstand, it had all the usual bubble letter stuff saying 'Uprock' , 'Beat Street' etc and it was quite dark and easy to get away with out being caught (no cameras then) so me and my friends started to spray our pieces ,I found a nice clean space on the wall so I did a small piece with about 2 or 3 colours and a black outline saying 'Dance' and ‘Diz’ ,that was my tag back then. When I finished ,my friends who were with me came to inspect my work and were well impressed with the standard of my first piece, which was better than all the other stuff on the wall, they hailed me as the new king of graffiti in Bournemouth, toppling the previous king -Frazer Moor (by the way who thought of the name 'Second To None').

In early '85 the book 'Subway Art' came out and totally blew our minds, we never imagined that graffiti could be as good as this, so I went and bought a copy and a nice A4 art pad with felt tips ,went home and fanatically drew outlines ,looking at the way they did them in the book and I improved my design standard by miles. I ran off a load of full A4 colour designs complete with characters , but the real deal was getting them onto some walls. It was early summer of '85 and we planned to piece up the bridge in Horseshoe Common, I went and got a lot more paint than before, this piece was a lot more ambitious .We went down there one warm evening, my friend kept lookout and I did the piece in near darkness ( I did'nt bring a torch) and straight onto bare concrete (I did'nt realise it would be better to white wash it first),it took ages because the paint soaked straight into the concrete and it took loads of spraying to build up the colour, we also did'nt know about fat caps then. After 2-3 hours I'd finished but we could'nt really see it in the darkness, next thing as my friend had broke from lookout duty to inspect the piece a policeman stepped round the corner and arrested us. After a few hours in the cells we were let out on bail due to appear in the juvenile court a few weeks later, my dad came down to act as my defence. Although we were only 15 and there was already graffiti on those walls before, not the artistic type, they made an example of us and fined us the cost of cleaning it off. My parents were quite outraged at the court. They had to shot blast the piece off ,it must have taken some getting off because of how much the paint had soaked in, we'd taken photos of it before, even my Mum and Dad took photos of it. I never got caught doing graffiti again.

At the end of '85 the documentary 'Style Wars' came out, this was wicked and told us all we needed to know about graffiti culture ,it told about 'raking up' -stealing paint ,it said graffiti artists in New York consider it un-sporting to buy cans, that was it ,I never bought a can after that, except the odd Buntlak can which you could'nt nick. I went through a phase of doing graffiti with a spray gun that ran of a compressor all through '86,the pieces used to come out wicked but would take ages and you still had to do illegal stuff with cans, I got fed up with the spray gun after a while and went totally back to cans. In late '86 I started to acquire better cans -Hammerite, Buntlak etc ,this made it easier to paint with and the pieces came out better, I was going up to London a lot and looking at stuff by The Chrome Angelz, these were my heros. I was influenced by their style a lot. By about '88 my pieces were getting a lot better and I invented the technique of mixing my own colours by freezing one can, heating the other and connecting them together with a custom made joiner nib to make colours that you could'nt get like pink. I was also using fat and thin caps, I used to go into B+Q and take all the caps of all the different aerosols ,the staff must have been baffled as to where all the caps were going ,car under shield caps made wicked fat caps that would fill in large areas in no time, you needed this when doing illegal pieces ,WD40 style caps were good for thin lines. I was heavy into raking cans at this time, I used to go into stores and get up to 20 cans in one go and walk past the till with them all rattling in a huge sports bag, I needed loads of cans because my pieces were getting bigger and more frequent .I got caught stealing cans in '89,I was stupid and careless, I saw the store detective watching me, I should have got the cans out of my bag before I left the shop and they would'nt have been able to do anything but instead I left the shop with the cans in my bag thinking I'd be able to get on my bike out side and get away but they had about 4 staff outside who apprehended me, not without a struggle though .I never got caught stealing paint again after that.

I was heavy into graf up until about '91 ,mainly walls around Bournemouth.I did a couple of trains but was'nt into them like some other graffiti artists,I did'nt like trains because they would get buffed very quickly,I wanted my pieces to stay around for people to see.Around '88-'89 I had stuff all over the place, I did 2 daring pieces in Bournemouth Station on Christmas Day ,one in '88 and the other in '91.I did a few clubs as well and got paid,one was Whiskey's and I did some other places too. By 1991 he paint fumes were making me ill and I was getting into the D.J. ing and rave mix tape business heavily at this time so I stopped doing walls, I still do designs for my record covers now and I have improved as well but have no urge to piece walls.