1996-2006, NyseOne. One Supplier in a decade of street art in San Diego.

1996-2006, NyseOne. A decade of street art in San Diego.

First, some background.

In the mid to late 1990's, I was a very busy guy. I owned C.R.E.A.M., Cafe in University Heights, Neighbourhood Boutique in the same building, and ran a web development and design shop called Coggan Creative. I was also in graduate school at UCSD working towards a Masters in Fine Art as a maker of things. Nobody can do it all, but a pretty heavy addiction to Cocaine made it all doable, at least for a quick minute. That however, is another story; we can revisit that one later.

During this same time, I  was heavily involved with early days of street art in Southern California - stickers and wheat pasting. To be clear, this type of guerilla art has a very long history going back centuries. I speak of the early days of it's more recent resurgence, the resurgence that finally brought it to a tipping point when it moved from fringe to mainstream culture.

In the Mid-1990's, Shepard Fairey and David Kinsey were running their design shop, BLK MRKT, out of San Diego, so there was no more appropriate place for art in the streets to explode. As the first Obey Giant posters appeared overnight on the power boxes at major intersections, the city's lowbrow art scene and the graffiti artists took note. From here, the streets became charged with a new energy and creative vigor.

Guys like Havok (TVC), WorkHorse, Do The Math, Agent Orange, were all getting up with pasted posters in the streets at that time, during San Diego's creative hayday. Darth Vatoe, Ape Clan, and Acamonchi were also active during those years and a number of others as well, my memory is quite limited here.

As for my projects, the guys from Snipe Marketing put in a lot of work on the ground getting my "Galt?" campaign up and running. In 2001 the "Justice" Campaign was launched and in 2005 the 'Coalescent Messaging" campaign followed.

The were also one-offs here and there - just cool art like this piece, which I pasted in a number of places. I printed 20 posters of this one, including a paneled installation at Voice1156 Gallery in San Diego. That gallery hosted the first art show to feature several original members of "The Chosen Few" a West Valley borne Graffiti Crew. Just recently, a roll call of its members was forever enshrined in the Getty Research Institute Publication of L.A. Graffiti Black Book.

But I digress. My point here is that many of these early, heroic efforts in San Diego's street art scene had a few things in common. One of those things was who made everyone's stickers. Of course, much like today, there were plenty of Postal and FedEx stickers, but there were only a select few that could be trusted with screening that vinyl perfectly - only a few who were excited to work with us, street hoodlums. One of those guys was Denis, over at CaliSilkscreening in Costa Mesa.

About These Stickers

One group that printed my stickers and posters in San Diego (other then some feeble attempts I made myself) was a two-man shop in El Cajon. A few of the original Justice stickers were printed at Ground Zero Graphics in El Cajon. Those guys became like the national supplier of American Flags because of their name. They were kinda metal heads from what I remember, and their "Ground Zero" name might have also been their band name. Following the tragedy on 9/11, those two words became the most searched in the google ecosystem for a long minute.

It was a moment of opportunity and they took it. One of those Forrest Gump moments.

Dennis, on the other hand, printed stickers for many big skate, surf, and snow companies, in addition to Hollywood studios and companies like Disney. This is the guy that use to print stickers for @stickerobot before they went in-house. Zoltron and crew probably learned a lot from his Denis and his decades of experience.

Now I have to say, they look as good today as the day they were printed. Many of them had matching wheat paste posters and all were bits and pieces of larger campaigns. In the mid to late 1990s those campaigns were centered around some of my favorite books and the visuals or philosophies found within.

Starting with the “JUSTICE” campaign, which hit the streets only four days after 9/11, my art shifted away from those idealistic fictions. The motivations behind my work now take on a much more political and conceptual underpinning, but for now, I'll leave those motivations to debate and conjecture.

I will say that those street campaigns would have been nothing if it were not for the support and dedication of a number of people, most notably my friends at Snipe Marketing, - @djdemonsjustdopeshop and Anthony C. - and my old business partner and good friend @shootzhawaiiphotography .