“Well the papercuts? I really only did for about a year and a half.
I was going to say that I’ve stopped doing them, but that’s
not true. It’s too much strain on my hand to continue to do those.
It’s too much cutting. I usually do it a few layers at a time. Making
a few of the same piece. And to cut all those patterns it’s too much.
Even just the cutting of one, I find that after spending all these years
linoleum carving, wood carving and paper carving my arm is just getting
really tired. I try to keep up with do yoga and stretching and massage
and stuff, but I don’t know I might need to go to a sports doctor.
It just hurts. I’m trying to vary up the stresses I have on my arm.
But all I really want to do right now is various forms of carving, between
linoleum and wood it all hurts.

Anyway, my new pieces are a combination of the paper cutting and the
carving technique.”

You produced a lot of stuff over this year-and-a-half.

“Yeah, I’m a fairly prolific person, I’m kind of and obsessive
worker, this is what I love to do. I’m sort of a workaholic. So I
make a lot of stuff. (laughs) Between this stuff and Toyshop it’s
been kind of a rough year.”

“We had more than 5 toyshop events. The first thing we did was a
fake tour of DUMBO. We realized that the DUMBO
Arts Festival didn’t have an official informational headquarters.
So we set up a little booth that said “Official DUMBO Art Tour”
And people would wander by and ask like “Hey, what’s cool in
the neighborhood?” And we would go like “We’ll show ya.”

The next thing you know we’d be leading these people down an alley
and showing them a REVS sculpture. And telling them that REVS
is an artist who has been doing graffiti in New York for twenty years.
And about how he told his life story in the subway tunnels. And at first
they are kind of looking at us like “What are you showing us!”
But then after a few minutes they start to get real interested, and them
we start showing them around all the different stuff that is just happening
outside. It was cool, one of the funnest things we did.

The next thing we did was we got a grant to go to Germany, and we made
an interactive map of the street art in Berlin. I mean there are ten or
fifteen of us, but I’m sort of taking a break. We came back from
Germany in the dead of winter. And then I was doing my own shows and my
own projects , and I was doing the Indivisible
Cities project, it was a kind of street art exchange. Plus the events
themselves, plus just trying to work, plus the Show at Jen
Bekman with the handmade books, this year has been totally nutty.
For the last month and a half I’ve gotten eight hours of sleep a
night, every night. It was like “I’m going to die if I don’t…””

Yeah, yeah (laughs) No disagreeing. Plus you have your day job as
a waitress. I don’t know how you do it all.

“I’m kinda chillin’ out a bit. For the past month I’ve
gotten a full eight hours of sleep a night. But stuff is starting to get
busy again, I’ve got some other projects lined up.”

“Usually I’m by myself or with one person. I can do them by
myself, but sometimes it helps to have someone to hold them because they
are so fragile.”

I ask her if she uses the common technique of using a shopping bag
to hold and disguise her paste and brush.

“I mean these things are so giant that they are sticking out of
my backpack three feet above my head. So there’s no way to be casual.
I used to use the shopping bag when I used to do these little guys, but
now I’ve almost ditched it. But at this stage there is no cover for
you. You just have to go out there and do it. I just walk around with
a bucket and brush with these things rolled up, and sticking out of the
back of a backpack.”

“Never hostile comments, actually yeah, yeah, yeah one time, in
Williamsburg there’s a piece. It says like “white art fags die.”
Actually of course, what am I telling you I haven’t gotten hostile
comments, there’s that one and there’s also… you see how this
one is going in on top of a lot of graffiti. So for me, I know the
paper is going to wear away really soon, and it’s got all these holes
in it and you can still see the tag behind it and you can even still read
it. So I kind of feel like it’s a collaboration, we’re using
the same walls.

But a lot of people who do graffiti are really territorial, and there
are all these ideas about what graffiti is. I’ve heard “Oh those
fucking art fucks, I hate them!” The first area of contention is
that you are using the same physical space. The second area of contention
is that you are doing something that isn’t four-letters and spray-paint.
There’s definitely a whole contingent of people that just fucking
hate my guts. (laughs)”

Third spaces?

“You have your public and private spaces. And you get this space,
it’s owned, because somebody owns that building, but the outer wall
of the building sort of creates the visual space. You get some fine lines
between the front of somebody’s house or their door or a front of
a business where they hang their sign. And then you get a wall that has
a billboard on it. And your like that’s a space being sold to a company
that wants to address me. So for me if this space is being sold to address
the public then the space becomes public space. It’s kind of a little
logic that I work with, I don’t know. (Laughs) That’s just the
way I look at it. That’s the way that it feels to me, my sense about
navigating my own city.”