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

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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.

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JACE:
/>
“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