WOW here is our 45th artist interview and we are happy to present you Nether Bmore from the US!
StreetLove the ARTIST
His artist name is NETHER, from Baltimore in the US.
He has been involved in street art for his whole life but the last 3 years have been his most focused and creative.
He began making street art with making a bunch of shitty tags and stencils. He is not proud about it but it was a start… and he was very young.
When I first realized everything was shit it pushed me to get better
Street art for him is a combination of doing work alone and with various good friends. So he’s not really in an organized crew with specific members or anything.
Mainly just different homies who help each other out and watch each other’s backs
Have you have already exhibited in a gallery?
Not too psyched about the whole gallery scene. Well I’m not saying I don’t like having a few beers while looking and talking about art but a lot of the reason I do what I do is because of the gallery scene. Sick of white walls for white faces from white places. Never felt comfortable at galleries. Museums have always bored me. Although it might be necessary for a financial reason from time to time I plan to avoid the gallery route. Grants are nice though.
To promote his artwork, he uses his website: http://www.nether410.com and he uses Flickr and Instagram too.
StreetLove the ART
He works mainly on wood and paper.
His inspiration comes from TEFCON and GAIA. His favorite artist is Swoon.
He can’t remember specifically his first street art piece but he was probably scared about doing it and it probably looked like shit.
Now he is better than when he started, he tries to go big. Pasting is a quicker method of street art and Baltimore is a pretty chill place to install.
How many pieces of art have you created?
Everything included 1000’s but this year I probably hit about 250 spots
You can see his artwork in Berlin, London, Paris, New York, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and Baltimore. Plus, he is about to start doing a bunch of work with Street Art Without Borders so that list is about to expand to new places such as China for example.
Do you have any ideas for your next street art?
A lot is about to change. Having returned from Europe I am going to take a page out of the book of mosaic street artists in Paris by using ladders to keep my work out of the easy buff range. I am going to start putting a bunch of my works higher while also doubling and tripling the size of my ground level pieces. The closer my illegal work is able to be mural sized the harder and less likely it is going to be buffed. I have hit hundreds and hundreds of spots and never been arrested pasting in Baltimore so I think im going to start taking more risks
He likes using a combination of paint markers and wall paint to make his originals and then blowing them up and pasting them on walls. He prefers working on people along with places and architecture.
StreetLove the TECHNIQUE
His favorite support for street art is glass as it is always the quickest and hardest to buff. He also likes vacant doors a lot.
To work, he uses pole with brush head and bucket of wheatpaste. About to add a portable 15’ telescopic ladder that slides into a portfolio bag to the practice.
Any artistic (or streetart) tips you can tell us?
Learn how to talk to cops and try not to act shook to anybody witnessing you do what you do.
StreetLove the FUN
His favorite color is sienna maybe.
Nether tries to take photos in memory of the pieces he creates and he maps every piece he does on his Flickr.
I guess he loves pretty much everything but 3 things he hates are: Slumlords, ad-poster pasters, and cops.
StreetLove WHAT’s NEXT?
No event coming up but he is working on this really awesome project with this local organization called Baltimore Slumlord Watch.
Slumlord Watch is and organization that researches and posts pictures of illegally and discrasfully undermaintained vacant properties with the intention of scaring absentee slumlords into fulfilling their responsibilities in order to avoid getting a bad reputation.
The project that we are currently planning is going to be a way for Slumlord Watch to have a more visible and radical approach to dealing with the landowners who they try to keep in check. For this project we are going to be putting wheatpasted artwork onto all the vacants which are going to be featured on Slumlord Watch before the pictures of the properties are taken for the website. Next to the artwork is going to be large blown-up QR codes which once scanned by a phone, will direct the passing viewer to the posts about the slumlord and the specific property violations on Slumlord Watch’s website.
To follow!
Photos © Meredith Brown from Nether FlickR
