"72 Heading Down Clement" by Nate1

You can also see Nate1 at work by signing up for our Art of Graffiti class.  His artwork and spray can mastery will amaze you.

We couldn’t have asked for better weather while Nate1 and his students got their paint on!

Graff junkies getting funky fresh on 6th and Howard. Check out the video to get a feel of what 1AM’s Art of Graffti 2.0 class has to offer!

Interested? Intrigued? Tickled pink? Contact Gina at: classes@1amsf.com for more information, or CLICK HERE for online enrollment.

Yahoo! student stenciling a shirt

A few months ago, 1:AM was contacted by Tom Wailes, Senior Director of Product Design at Yahoo! Local. He wanted to have a fun corporate offsite for his team, and so he rounded up his gang of Yahoo-ligans(term of endearment!) and brought them to 1:AM to get down and dirty with graffiti.

Our resident graffiti teacher Nate1 took the Yahoo! team under his wing, giving them a brief history of the graff movement and a mural walk tour around SoMa.  After thoroughly getting their “learn on”, the Yahoo-ligans picked up their spray cans and practiced their spray technique on stenciled shirts and boards.   And if that wasn’t enough, the Yahoo! team unleashed a colorful and dynamic mural on 1:AM’s exterior wall, depicting a mummy and devil and donut? Oh my!

Check out what two lovely Yahoo-ligans had to say about her experience at 1:AM:

Yahoo! team Looking "Hardcore" in front of their mural

“[I] loved how easy-going, friendly and helpful everyone was.”-Sheba

“Everything was awesome!”-Maureen

To be honest through, we at 1:AM cant be the only ones credited for the success of this workshop.   This amazing workshop would not have been possible without the positive energy and creativity of the Yahoo! team. Thanks for being such a fantastic group Yahoo! Come back any time!

If you are interested in changing up your corporate workshops /  holiday parties, contact us at classes@1AMSF.com.

Student getting down in Nate1's 2.0 Class

Now if you haven’t heard (since you’ve been under a rock for the past 2 years), 1:AM offers art classes, and not just any classes.  We offer street art classes like history of graffiti and toy modification, all to satiate your craving for creativity and fun.  With that, all of these classes would not have been possible without the  hard work of our amazing teachers who have been with us since 1:AM’s conception.

We’ve had the honor of working with Nate1, founder of Newskool clothing,  and we’ve definitely flourished with his help.  Nate1 leads the “Sketching Letters” 1.0 class with much wisdom and style, leaving students wanting more!  How could we disappoint our beloved students?  TADDAAA! Introducing “Sketching Letters” 2.0 for next year! Not convinced yet of Nate1’s awesomeness? Read up on what one student had to say about Nate1’s class: “Taking Nate1’s “Sketching Letters” was a very inspirational experience for me on different levels.  It gets deep.”-former student Michele Lin.

Some of Lily Black's works

Nate1 isn’t the only teacher who deserves credit for making 1:AM’s classes a phenomenal success! The dynamic Lily Black leads the 1.0 Toy Mod class with flair and finesse.  Check out SF Weekly’s article on Black’s class.  And if you want some eye candy, check out Lily’s site featuring some of his past and present toy projects!

We’re so stoked about celebrating our two-year anniversary with these dope teachers on our team that we wanted to share our excitement with y’all.

Join our mailing list between now through November and you’ll automatically be entered in a chance to win a free class (Toy Mod, History of Graffiti 1.0) for 2011!  Or better yet sign up for one of our classes today!

Valerie Leavy: What is it about graffiti that lights yer fire?

Nathan Tan aka Nate1: It is an art form I started doing as a kid, and I still find it challenging now as an adult some 23 years later.

VL: How did you choose the artists in the show [The Classics]?

Nate1: Eeenie, meenie, miny, moe!  Hahaha.

I wrote a list of all the writers that made an impact on me and my crew and started contacting them first.  After that, I got alot of help tracking down other influential writers of that era from the artists themselves.  Soon, word got out about the show and a few major players contacted me themselves.  I feel very lucky to have been the one to facilitate this event.

VL: Have they all been active since the beginning?

Nate1: Some of  the artists have consistently been “getting up” in one form or another for 20+ years and some of them have not painted in 20+ years.

VL: How has their work evolved over the years?

Nate1: Here is the beauty in that question: on one hand, artists from the past have continued in their style and advanced it, or explored it more in depth.  On another hand, a writer like Zest KGB did his first piece in over 20 years on canvas and it looked like we time-traveled back to that era, stole a piece, and brought it back to the present.  And that to me is dope because it says that style can stand that test of time.  Now if Zest were to utilize the technology and paint we have today his pieces would further develop, and I would like to see that as well.

"Uno" by Zest KGB

VL: What makes Bay Area graffiti unique, or rather, what is Bay Area style?

Nate1: The early days of Bay Area graffiti lay somewhere between tradition and experimentation.  I say tradition, because a lot of us 80′s writers were trying to carry on the tradition of style and writing that Philly and NYC pioneered, yet we did not have a lot of information available to us, so alot of experimentation and situations influenced our scene.

To me, original Bay Area style can go in sections or generations. When I think old skool though, I think multi colored fills, big letters with little negative space, some computer-rock influence, double vision pieces and more.

VL: Explain how Bay graf has influenced design, etc.

Nate1: For years, Hip Hop and graffiti art have been an influence in the media and pop culture.  There are many designers that came from graffiti roots.

In the Bay there are alot of writers I know that have had careers in the fashion, advertising,
and art industries where they can show their personal graf style in their “day jobs.”

I went the fashion route and worked for a few local corporate clothing companies
and occasionally got to sneak some styles into my work, but until I started New Skool
that sort of thing was usually very infrequent.

On the internet tip, Crayone was one of the first to pioneer a fully dedicated Hip Hop site
with graffiti design. He still continues to do freelance work where he can utilize what he
does naturally, only this time on the computer.

VL: Where would you like to see the Bay graf scene go now?

Nate1: I would like to see the younger heads collaborating with the OG’s more often.  And I would like to see the older generation upping their game and becoming even more professional as we are looked upon in that light.  We pioneered this thing, we should be able to drive this thing
a little while and then pass the wheel off to the younger cats.

To answer your question more literally: when the hype is there, I want to see the Bay graf scene go to other countries where we can share our unique West Coast history and introduce them to some of our giants in the game. The hype is almost there and I think [the Classics] at 1:AM Gallery really helped.

Woooord up.

For our current exhibition “The Classics”, Nate, who is also the curator of the show, came out strong and did a supremely dope piece.  We had a chance to get in his head to understand what this piece meant to him.

"Master Piece Creators Yall!" by Nate1

Summer 1988.
Omen and me were 16/17 years old and ready to drop a Hip Hop bomb on Psycho City.

Psycho City, a parking lot on 12th and Market named after a historic graffiti piece Dug RW did in 1986, was a haven for writers to meet and paint. Like a revolving outdoor art gallery, Psycho City was for all intents and purposes a good thing for the young graffiti movement at the time. No real rules but street rules, burn or get burned, Psycho was a place that could make or break your rep.

It had become our tradition to do a big graffiti mural on the first day of summer to celebrate our freedom from high school life. Early afternoon we pulled into this parking lot, like we owned it, pulled out our detailed blue print for the wall and got busy.

The parking lot attendant on duty came and asked us what we were doing, looked at our sketches and said, “It will look good!” and let us keep painting amongst the parked cars!

When meeting Omen or me for the first time, people always seem to bring up these particular murals MPC did. That is why I chose to repaint this MPC classic for “The Classics” exhibition.

The “Master Piece Creators Yall!” wall is like a history lesson on the MPC Crew. Before MPC, Omen’s tag was Kaotik and his crew was WR. JREY, whose name is also on the wall, was in WR and MPC. Lil D was in WR and helped with important early MPC pieces. He was indeed “Lil” being 9 years old helping with some of the WR missions. The other pieces were painted by, SEN, whose name is on the right hand side above my Nate-88 piece (he was a classmate of mine) and Omen, who I remember as a cool yet nervous type of kid.

This wall was definitely not our first piece at Psycho City but it is one that many remember us by. Largely painted by Omen and me, we became known for doing large-scale murals with dope letters. “Master Piece Creators Yall!” was the title of this piece and it was the anthem or call that we had arrived.

View Nate1′s piece in person.  THE CLASSICS at 1:AM Gallery through October 16th!

The Legends from Bay Area's Golden Age of Graffiti.

Admiring Robz's artwork.

Nate1, curator of The Classics and artist, with friends.

Gettin' down.

Jim Prigoff, a legend and the man that pushed the envelope in Graffiti Art.

Thanks Ramon for the photos!  Check out his photography at www.rmillustrated.com or follow him on twitter @rmillustrated.  Check out more photos from the opening here.

Check out what legends are made of, THE CLASSICS at 1:AM gallery now through October 16th!

Golden age remix: Bay graff gets its props

Today’s generation takes in Nate1′s painted rendition of 1980s SF’s famous graff wall “Psycho City”

All photos by Caitlin Donohue

Nate1′s business card is totally dope. It’s front depicts a Kry-lon paint can, the brand most used  for graffiti in the days he was coming up as a street writer in 1980s San Francisco. “Back then we used to have to make art with automotive paint,” he tells me at 1AM gallery, where his new show on the golden age of Bay tagging, “The Classics” opens today (Fri/10). “We’re talking about paint to paint red wagons and doors,” he remembers, smiling like a man that didn’t mind too much.

The card is striking because it evokes the sentiment behind this artist and the show he’s thrown up. “The Classics” is about those icons of SF’s early days on the graffiti scene, back before anyone with a few bucks could buy specialized Mammoth paint from 1AM’s retail section, cans specially designed for low pressure artistic liberty – but it’s also about where that art form stands today.

1AM owner Anna says that before he came up with the inkling for this particular showing, Nate1 would bring around scrapbooks to street art openings, forcing heads to remember the days when. Finally, they hit upon the idea to base a show on these old masterpieces. On the gallery’s walls are seldom-seen photographs of the “Psycho City” wall in SoMa, the only place where young taggers could work on their art in public, in peace from police presence and neighborhood complaint. UB40′s ubiquitous-at-the-time scrawl is present, as is shots of trains painted by King 157, and Rigel’s game-changing robot piece.

Read the rest of the article here>

Word up, Caitlin!  Many thanks!

Crayone getting down (photo by Ramon Martinez)

Golden Age of Graffiti Explosion! (Photo by: Ramon Martinez)

Say what? Spie gettin down! (Photo by: Ramon Martinez)

Thanks Ramon for the photos!  Check out his photography at www.rmillustrated.com or follow him on twitter @rmillustrated.

THE CLASSICS opens tomorrow Friday, September 10th from 7 – 10pm!  Don’t sleep, be here.