As we celebrate our 10th Anniversary of the Wooster Collective website, we asked a group of artists who we showcased in the beginnings of the website the following question:

What's the one thing that you learned in the last decade that you had wished someone had told you 10 years ago?

The following response comes from TVBOY:

To live and let live, to not criticize what the others do,
and spend your time doing your own work and what you believe in.

When I first started painting graffiti in the streets of Milan in1996, I was 16 and had no idea of what I was doing--it was just for fun and imitating my favourite graffiti artists in Milan.  In 2003, I switched from letters to the TVBOY character and got in touch with the first street artists in Milan and discovered your website Wooster Collective. At that time I was 23 and I was obsessed with painting and pasting things in the street, I tried to develop a quick style to leave a mark and then run away.  It was love at first sight with the so called "Street Art Movement".  There was less attention from the media and also from the police and painting outside was very easy and fun. Also we felt part of a true movement and we helped each other.  In a few years I met a lot of great artists such as Nano, Pez, Bo and Microbo, DFace, Pao, Ivan, Mysterious Al, Pmh, Flying Fortress and a lot of others who become very famous due to talent (such as Blu).

A lot of things have changed since 2003.  We moved from a a very underground and united movement to a very hyped business and some of us began to think it was a competition to get famous. The meaning of putting your work up in the street was to dwell in the pleasure of doing it, and in the message you leave to the passers by.  If you became famous or not depended on a lot of factors and not only on the medium, so you can not control that.

For this fact after working for various studios, I decided to move to Barcelona and open my own graphic design studio there where I  was sure to have time enough to create my own personal projects too. Since then I had the possibility to travel a lot and meet a lot of people in Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, lebanon, Cuba, and USA.  And I still think I'm just lucky for this possibility which is a dream for a lot of people.