Street artists Skewville Twins dust off their DIY tricks for the Osheaga Block Party

Strolling through New York neighbourhoods in the late nineties, you might have been caught by surprise, glancing up at the odd pair of wooden sneakers tossed over power cables. The Skewville Twins, aka brothers Ad and Droo, have spent the last decade dividing their time between their street ‘sneaker mission’ and the gallery world, working on pieces tailor-made for the cityscape. These Queens natives, who recently celebrated their joint 80^th birthday with a gallery retrospective, have always relied on their childlike energy to build a bona fide playground of skewed sculptures, paintings, prints and installations, using a variety of discarded materials and vintage toys.

They’ve been taking the gallery world by storm of late with their cheeky, deviant creations, but this weekend, they’re in Montreal. The Osheaga Music and Arts Festival is throwing a block party in the hip industrial haven that is Griffintown, along the Lachine Canal, in a throwback to the mythical Brooklyn, Queens and Harlem gatherings of yore. While we doubt it will come close to anything out of a Spike Lee joint or a Dave Chappelle bash, it nevertheless promises to be quite the party. NIGHTLIFE.CA spoke with Skewville’s Adam about his signature sneakers, collecting too much junk and Shepard Fairey as the guy “who invented selling out.”

You’ve said that the ‘wooden sneaker mission’ was about reliving your New York childhood. How so?
When we were kids, we threw sneakers up the cables of our block; it was such a New York thing to do. Basically, you threw up your sneakers where you lived to kind of represent your block. With that idea, as we got older, we left the block and moved further away, but we kept throwing up our sneakers in different areas. Even though there were many urban legends about sneakers, that was kind of our thing, and a way of bringing back our childhood.

Your pieces make use of many recyclable and reusable materials. Are you guys the Captain Planets of street art, or do you just really dig vintage trinkets?
I don’t want to come off like we’re trying to save the planet. It’s mostly because when you’re broke, you look for stuff that’s free. And also the aesthetic of finding things. It’s about using these urban elements to recreate something. People love pop culture and things they can relate to, and while I would never use Mickey Mouse, if you use a tire in your artwork, everyone’s seen one before. So it’s about using everyday objects and mashing them up. It’s our pack rat or hoarder mentality, where we need to collect things.

You guys have claimed to be the biggest collectors of your own work. Would you consider yourselves serious hoarders?
We grew up in a big family, we had a lot of hand me down toys and clothes, and my mom would sell our childhood out at yard sales. When we were older, we would go to yard sales and see our old toys, so we’d collect them. My brother collected vintage ‘70s toys, and I would collect soda stuff. It’s mostly about that aesthetic and holding on to the past, for a future potential artwork that to us could be priceless, but to you could be just junk.

You’ve been able to follow the evolution of the street art movement from its NY origins and the graffiti heyday in the ‘80s to its more commercial offshoots in the ‘90s. What’s it like to look back on your involvement in the scene?
From where I’m sitting, it’s kind of weird. When we did this whole sneaker mission in 1999, we did art shows with that stuff in 2002, and nobody gave a shit. Then, we evolved to doing other forms of art, street art got really huge, and all of a sudden people wanted to buy our sneaker artwork. It’s given us a little confidence that whatever we do, people might eventually get it. I’m glad we didn’t get more famous back then, because we would probably be assholes who would have stuck to doing the same thing and sold out a long time ago.
 

Is that very idea of ‘selling out’ still even relevant when talking about street art in 2012? Doesn’t every artist do it, to varying degrees, to make ends meet?
To me, there’s still a definite definition to selling out. We got asked by Converse a long time ago to do stuff with them; they wanted to put their logo on our sneakers. That would have been the ultimate in doing something and then handing it over to a corporation. I realize that people have to make money, but if it feels like selling out, then it’s selling out.

The truth is… and I hate to bring Shepard Fairey into this, but he’s the perfect example. He invented selling out. His whole mission was to make products, do everything and be everywhere. I think that a lot of people now are trying to follow that formula, where it’s that easy to become famous if you do X, Y and Z.
 

And I guess art galleries don’t help the matter, as they play a pivotal role in quantifying the worth of an artist’s output in dollar figures…
Our biggest beef with street art is that most people would do artwork at home, put it on the street and then put that same exact artwork in an art show for sale. The whole point of street art was to counteract advertising – New York is cluttered with billboards, so back then it was about artists taking back the streets. Now, it’s just pretty much become what it was against: artists putting their stuff on the street and then selling that same exact art. To me, that’s selling out the movement.
 

What should we expect at the Osheaga block party – a swarm of sneakers, tire installations or anything similar to what we’ve seen of Skewville?
It’s kind of weird for me because I don’t think I’ve ever done live painting before – it’s kind of the opposite to doing something covertly. If you think of a block party, you just think of hanging out and getting drunk. I’ll probably do that also, but it’s a different experience for me because it’s a short amount of time for me to bang something out. But I always work best under pressure.

Osheaga Block Party
Saturday, June 9 at 1 p.m., on the north side of the Lachine Canal (close to Des Seigneurs Street)
With Skewville Twins, as well as local visual artists En Masse, Labrona & Cie, DHS, K6A and La Paria
osheaga.com