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Andy Howell - The
A’s To Our Q’s:

Wooster: How did you get started in creating
art for the street?

Andy: I was around it in Atlanta all the
time, skateboarding in the city with "http://www.skateboarding.com/skate/magazine/article/0,12768,200709,00.html">Joh
nny Schillereff, Dave Kinsey,
Jose Gomez, Scott Herskovitz, all these
guys were around. There were two guys who basically held down the fort in ATL at
the time, Kenny Dread and Jaz, who went by SenOne and JazOne. Jaz was an amazing
illustrator, and I think he inspired Dave and I to start painting. The first
photos I have (if I could ever find them) were of me, Dave and Jose in a place
called the Civic Yard, crazy big faces and scripty letters around this little
building. It was a rush definitely. From there we started the CAP Crew, City
Aerosol Posse, with me, Kinz, Jose, Gary (BaseOneRock), Scott King (Verse). We
had a blast and eventually became good friends with Kenny and Jaz, who still
continued to rock pieces for a long time after that.

Wooster:
How did you come up with the characters that you use in your art?

/>Andy:I was raised on cartoons like all the kids in the US, and as a
punk rocker when I was like 12 or 13 I started to draw a lot of skulls and
skeletons skating in pools. Pushead was probably the first influence for that
stuff, and the logo for Corrosion of Conformity I rememeber thinking that was so
cool too. I made a jump to characters and graff based pieces when I started
reading "http://www.geocities.com/mbrown123/greatest_comics/heavymetal1.html">Heavy
Metal magazine in high school. I was so perved out on the characters from
Moebius and Liberatore, I started to draw a lot of girls and characters. I went
to art school in Atlanta, and that’s when I started developing the types of
characters that would later be New Deal and Element graphics, people I saw on
the street, bums and bag ladies, cops, (in)security guards, girls I wished I
would meet. I got really into "http://www.pha.jhu.edu/~jdavies/bode/">Vaughn Bode, all his Cheech Wizard
books, his short comic strips too. I still love all that stuff, Watchmen, Frank
Miller books. And at the same time I was getting schooled in my histroy classes
on people like Goya, who were
considered “real” artists. I never bought into the difference, it was all art to
me, and I can see the genius in Liberatore’s "http://www.valdisangro.it/arte/liberatoregaetano/primapagina.htm">“Ranxerox”

>

just like I can see it Goya’s "http://persweb.wabash.edu/facstaff/royaltyr/AncientCities/web/bradleyj/Project%
201/Pictures/saturn.jpg">“Saturn Eating His Son”. Liberatore was much more
relevant to me, with Lubna being an 11 year old neo-heroin addict, her robotic
lover, kids in 5 year old ganags, it was like Goerge Orwell’s 1984 on steroids,
and I loved it. That kind of thing influences what I do now, I see the world
that way totally.

Wooster: What other street artists do you
most admire and why?

Andy: Besides the ones mentioned above,
I like so many that to list them would be stupid. "http://www.tomsachs.org/">Tom Sachs blows my mind, I love his work, fucking
Prada
toilets and shit. Phil
Frost has broken the character barrier so many of us “street” inspired
artists are into. His progression is inspiring to me. I like "http://www.epitonic.com/artists/tommyguerrero.html">Tommy Guerrero’s
albums, his Another Late Night had a rad Muddy Waters remix in it. I think
this Neo-Pop movement right now is so relevant and serious and fun at the same
time, I am flying all over the world for shows, meeting so many people, being
inspired daily, enjoying myself. That there are so many people in the world who
know Shep and Kinsey and Twisty and Kent Parker and Ryan McGuiness and the whole
crew is amazing to me, and simultaneously makes sense, because we have been
making waves and I guess finally they have radiataed out so far that these
artists have become icons of a new art movement. And there are hundreds of
people coming up, I am so stoked that someday when I have kids they will get to
grow up with all this amazing artwork that is actually relevant to them. I mean,
many of us look back at Warhol and Scharff and Basquiat and Keith Haring and say
“Yeah, I get it” but I look at Margaret Kilgallen and
Barry mcGee and Ryan McGuiness and Futura and "http://www.obeygiant.com">Shepard’s work, and that is about how we are
living today, so I can feel it, not just empathize with what those other artists
might have felt.

Wooster: What’s your favorite city,
neighborhood, or block, to post and/or to see street art?

/>Andy: I don’t really put up much street art anymore really, but I have
done some beautification projects around Atlanta and San Diego over the years.
On 5th avenue in hillcrest I did 3 boxes which are a comic story of a girl named
Sally Smaddletree writing a book about how to catch Turtlburds down in
Turtleburd Holla. Lara helped me with it, it has been up for almost 2 years and
I have not seen one person tag it or bust on it. Actually somebody put a sticker
on Sally’s shirt that said “Sister” which actually made it look better, so that
was really cool. Then like a week later someone else ripped the sticker off.
That was even more dope I thought.

Wooster: What inspires you
now?

Andy: See above, add in a mix of Jaz, Cody Chesnutt, The
Streets, Mos Def, Lightning Hopkins, Shelby Lynn, Van Morrison, Gil Scoot Heron,
Muddy Waters, StereoLab, whatever music is juicing me at the time. Right now the
biggest influence is the relationships with my friends and with Lara, There is
absolutely nothing like haging out with my friends and having a great time.
Kinz, Mauricio Courterier, Josh Hassin, Jeremy Farson, Peter Halasz, Kent and
Travis Parker, Brennand Schoeffel, Steve Saiz, Gregg DiLeo, Anthony Yamamoto, 
Damon Way, Amahlia and Rafael, Shepard and manda, Florencio Zavala, Justin
Kreitemeyer, Mando Marron, Roberto DeBiase, Randy Janson, Tiffany Bozic, Sam
Flores, Tommy Guerrero, et al…I can’t even name them all right now,  I am
definitely lucky to have had so many amazing people in my life. that’s the
biggest influence and inspiration, because they all amaze me and inspire me in
their own way.