An Interview with Graffiti Artist “Soup”

AUFF: How long you been coming to Clogged Caps?

Soup: All 5 years.

AUFF: What’s different this year?

Soup: We’re more organized. You keep on learning your mistakes as you mess up, you know, so this time we got a lot more organized. We got the city behind us, which really helped out a lot.

AUFF: Any new rising stars?

Soup: That’s a hard one to say because I know all these guys, a lot of ‘em for years, but it’s really good to see so many friends from out of state come into town. I’m from South Padre, but I’ve been in San Antonio for about 13 years.

AUFF: I know this is invite-only, so how do they select artists like you to attend? You just get a letter in the mail?

Soup: Naw, basically it’s just talking with our different friends, and, I mean, you know what people could work on, like, these 2 cats up over here are from San Francisco, we’ve known ‘em for years, he’s my paint distributor from Montana Paint from Spain, so basically its like, ‘Who would really work?’ and ‘Who’s willing to travel?’ and ‘Who can we get up over here?’ But it took a little while to figure out who was gonna be invited and who wasn’t gonna be invited and it was kinda tough because we’ve got a limited space and its like, well, if we get 75 people can we fit 75 people up over here? That’s pretty much the only way it went I guess. That and like discussion, like, hey, who gets along and who doesn’t get along, because there are some people that do not get along with each other, they don’t wanna paint, its like ‘ah, I’m not gonna paint over there, he’s painting up over there.” The politics. There’s always politics in something, for some sick reason.

AUFF: Are there many other graffiti festivals nation-wide?

Soup: Well, around the country there’s lots of ‘em, like, more than I could even think of, but in San Antonio so far we just have Clogged Caps and the GrafCore show, which they haven’t decided a date on, and the hard part for that is finding a location where we can have a bunch of people who could come and paint. As you can see, sometimes there is a mess, and everyone’s like ‘are they gonna pick up after themselves?’ And then there’s the taggers, who come and want to get seen. I mean, you’ve got Neon painting over here, and people are like “oh, yeah, I tagged next to Neon,” or something, you know what I mean? Everyone wants to be seen. It’s like jumping in front of some famous photo.

AUFF: I understand a lot of local writers just showed up with paint and wanted to participate. Did you have to turn them away, or were you able to accommodate some of them?

Soup: We turned away a lot of writers. There was, I mean that was hard, because some of them were our friends, you know? And there were 15 people that were invited that weren’t able to make it, just, like, plane tickets, what have you, and like shipping paint, like, ‘are we gonna have paint once we get up over there?’ I mean, financially, it’s kind of tough for a lot of people to travel, but there was a good turn out. The bad part was towards the end, I don’t know if you noticed, but a lot of people tagged, but we’re gonna be buffing down the ends and actually putting up the logos of the people who did sponsor us. I really like the way graffiti’s going right now. I mean, I hate using the word ‘graffiti’ because I’m not a graffiti writer, I do images. I’ve never done illegals, I don’t tag. The tough part is that a lot of people “What do you write, what do you write?” But I mean, even my name, it was something that was given to me, I had a studio, something that was named Art Soup, it was a collaboration between a bunch of people, then it turned mainly into me and my girlfriend, Genevieve, at the time, it was making Genevieve’s art soup, but after awhile everyone was like, ‘Hey, you’re that Soup guy, right?” So I stuck with Soup. I wanted something tough, like, “Tiger,” or “Ace,” or something, but, it gets across.

AUFF: It’s memorable.

Soup: Yeah, well that and, I can do anything from photorealism to like just something cartoony, everyone’s always like, “Man, you can do anything!” And I’m like, “Yeah, I’m like soup, a little of this, a little of that.” That one over there’s mine, its not close to being finished at all.

AUFF: You gonna try and finish today?

Soup: Aw, no, but we’re gonna be coming back this week. That’s the thing, I’m part of like, the floater crew, so we have to clean up, and put up the scaffolding and stuff like that, so instead of me having to, I live in this town, so I can come back and do it, whereas a lot of these other guys have plane tickets.

AUFF: Are they leaving the murals up all year?

Soup: I’m really not sure how long they leave it up, but I hope they leave it up for a while.

AUFF: It certainly improved the area.

Soup: Well, that’s the whole thing we’re trying to work on, tryin’ to move more towards the east side. I’m sure you’re familiar with the mural project on the west side?

AUFF: Yeah.

Soup: That’s what we’re trying to do, because there’s some places that just get tagged with all these, like, ugly scribbles. I mean, I like coming to town because I recognize the scribbles, but in time it’s, I mean, it’s an eyesore. I’m not much into the tagging thing. But, I like paint. And with spray paint, man, its instant gratification, you can do something really big, it’s just like using an airbrush, the effects you can get, and it’s dry in 15 minutes.

AUFF: Yeah, I was amazed at the level of detail some of these pieces have.

Soup: Yeah, there’s some really amazing people, some really talented people, and everyone tries to lump it into hip hop. Its not just hip hop, there’s a kindergarten teacher that’s a graffiti artist, I know a lawyer that’s a graffiti artist, it comes to all sorts of people. Thankfully, it comes from all sorts of people, ’cause there’s some really talented people out there. Like this guy, man, did you see his sketch, how he started yesterday? I wasn’t expecting him to throw those kind of colors in there, its amazing, [Cloyd, another painter, cuts in: "I didn't know what it was gonna look like."] At all!

AUFF: Is he from out of town?

Soup: San Francisco. [Cloyd: "The old school of the old school.] Yeah, those two- living legends.

-conducted by Andy Gately, 2006