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September 20, 2005
Moniker Stories: Part I
What's in a name? We've been asking ourselves this question a lot lately. After following the street art scene for so many years, and meeting so many different artists from around the world, we've become fascinated by the stories of how different artists originally chose their monikers. Over the next couple of weeks we'll be posting some of these stories from artists that you often see on the Wooster site. Here's the first batch of stories from buz blurr, Jace, The Killer Gerbil, and Buddy Lembeck
BUZ BLURR
My chosen appellation of buZ blurr has a number of signifying factors.
First as an alias
Describing my use of the continental railroad network, with the buZ
referring to the use of language
As differential captions to a mostly redundant icon, and a "buzz word"
is a word or phrase in current vogue.
Of course most of my work is viewable on passing trains, and frequently
unreadable acount the speed causes the image to blur. I used the double
R on blurr as an olden day recognizable abbreviation of railroad. The
capital Z in buZ was to
Denote its singularity, although this is usually ignored and a double z
is used, particularly in mail art catalogues,
And graffiti zines.
Secondly buZ blurr sounds like my real last name of Butler.
Thirdly, in March 1977 when I first started using this psuedonym, I
was taking lots of SX-70 Polaroids, and the
Sound of the shutter release followed by the ejection of the print
sounded like buZ blurr.
"OK to make it short...It was back in 1988 and i was already tried to sketch some name on paper, in fact it wrote my first name. But the next year when i decided to make some damage in my ... village (!) i got to change my name to be more discreet so i began to think about it. It had to be short (5 letters maxi) and ... it must sound american :-)), then i took the first letter of my first name, surname, second and third name, i made a mix with it and JACE was born... that's all."
THE KILLER GERBIL:
"Half of my life evolves around breeding and caring for gerbils as pets and drawing them during my free time. Unfortunately where I came from, these cuddly and inqusitive critters dont get much love since most see them as fierce nippers or their tails just scare them away.
It then struck to me that the best way to promote gerbils as a street character through street art, which is the best way to connect and share with the masses anywhere, anytime. Shortly after, The Killer Gerbil made its way to the streets, killing empty spaces (thus the name) with means of beautifying through art of all forms so the young can enjoy and the old can appreciate."
BUDDY LEMBECK:
"Buddy Lembek is the name...... When I first got into graffiti and street art in 1998 I pretty much took what I had been drawing in my sketch books and started putting it on the streets instead of coming up with a tag name to write. I was making allot of signs and weate pasting while only painting and tagging characters I made up instead of writing a word. So for several months I didn't even have a name, and I didn't think I needed one since I was trying to build a visual icon with the characters I was doing, that in a sense would act as the name.
But after a while I got sick of always having to describe what I did, instead of just being able to say my name when I talked the other writers and what not. So I started signing my work with the moniker "1984" which I thought was cool because of all the connections you can make between surveillance, existing where your not supposed to be, getting over on big brother Etc...But I dropped that name after only a few months because I felt it pigeon holed my work way too much with the obvious references to the book and so on.
Since I wasn't really piecing and tagging in the traditional sense at the time, and I had an art show coming up, I needed a name. I wanted one that wasn't cool and that sounded funny like a real persons name instead of a graffiti writer. I thought about using the name "Herb Tarlick" , which was the name of a sleazy character on the TV show "WKRP In Cincinnati". But I thought if I used the first name "Herb" everyone would think I was a stoner or something....so I went with the name I thought would look really long, ugly, awkward and dumb when painted or tagged on walls....BUDDY LEMBECK.
The name is originally from the sitcom "Charles in Charge". Buddy Lembeck was Scott Baio's idiot sidekick on the show. The guy who played Buddy Lembeck (Willie Aimes) later went on to play Bible Man, which is pretty funny. I've been curious If Bible Man knows that his old Charles in Charge character name has been used for graffiti purposes for the past several years.
So now you know the story behind the name. But if you want to learn more about it along with others such as Darius Jones, and Merz check out the video on this link
That's my story, and I'm sticking to it...
Sincerely
-Mr. Buddy Lembek
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