Mark at Recoleta Cemetery
January 2011
Same crypt four years later
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ARE SECOND TIMES BETTER THAN FIRST TIMES OR JUST DIFFERENT?
So after the experience in Barcelona, Mark and his partner, Michael, returned to Seattle and purchased an apartment and moved on with their lives. After Mark´s first visit to Buenos Aires, he kept corresponding via email with friend Maria and they managed to establish a close bond that turned out to be very positive for both of them as they inspired each other to pursue new interests. Mark started taking new directions in his art while she resumed a career in writing.
In her emails she communicated to him her interest to promote his art career in order to make him known in other places other than Seattle. She kept telling him that he should return to Buenos Aires. And he finally did, in late December 2010. He got a chance to go sightseeing on vacation, meet Maria´s friends, eat the juicy Argentine beefsteak, and have lots of icecream and beer.
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Mark & Maria with friends
Merval pub in downtown Buenos Aires
January 2011
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By this time, Mark had become interested in using the graffiti technique as a new form of expression and before travelling, he expressed his interest in doing some graffiti in Buenos Aires. He resolved to do some research as to the legalities of working on blank walls in the city and decided to prepare six panels of paper with a 16th-century pattern design taken from a book of textile designs from different parts of Europe. He had the pattern reproduced on a large scale and was quite satisfied with the result. The pannels were intended to be used together with a can of Rust-Oleum Metallic copper aerosol to create a different style of graffiti.
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Mr Fu, Mark´s name as a graffiti artist
Documented work
January 2011
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Photographer: Salvador Batalla
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"I thought that on a large scale this could look really striking. The other goal was that I wanted to have bold letters deliver a message that literally said "Make dreams come true" and that in Spanish was " Hacer sueños realidad" . I felt it was simplistic but very graphic and those letters were done in a bright green colour at first and then, laid over that pattern, was this Italian design in purple. I was very happy with the way it looked. It didn´t have to be perfect because, after all, it was graffiti."
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Ready to do some graffiti
January 9, 2011
Mr Fu by Salvador Batalla
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After spending New Year in the seaside resort of Mar del Plata and then a few more days in the country town of San Antonio de Areco, Mark and Maria came back to Buenos Aires to get ready for the graffiti event that took place on a Sunday (February 9) in the Constitucion neighbourhood.
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Finished graffiti with customized Italian panels
Worldwide Graffiti Project
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Constitucion neighbourhood
January 9, 2011
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Hacer Sueños Realidad by Mr Fu
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Worldwide Graffiti Project
January 9, 2011
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Although there was a second project of a more customized graffiti in a restaurant that never got to see the light, Mark felt a surge of confidence and enthusiasm to continue pursuing this new art form in the future.
"The fact that the second project never got to be completed almost becomes irrevelant because the most important aspect of this experience is that I know now that I need to do graffiti more than ever and perhaps not in the traditional form of graffiti, call it a mural, or a large scale project, or a graffiti/mural or a large painting, it doesn´t matter. Though I want to continue with the concept of my paintings that I started before I left Seattle, the experiences that I had with pursuing graffiti in Buenos Aires have inspired me and even changed how I want to approach my art."
Mark will then pursue graffiti in the US, wherever that is possible and in different parts of the world. He will be doing some of these projects with corporate backing and others simply by approaching those private customers or stores that might be interested in a more customized form of graffiti. He also wants to undertake those graffiti projects with a message that he started in Buenos Aires.
" I am having support of a corporate backing but I may also approach some restaurants and some blank walls that I feel could benefit with the use of graffiti. I am also going to use my sales experience and customer service experience to get the interest and the confidence of people, both of companies to back me but also to have galleries. I also want the events to be documented, to be perhaps produced in smaller versions as art pieces ... the possibilities are endless."
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