The Smell of Spray Paint In The Morning

8:00am. December 14th, 2010. It was unbearably cold, but who knows when I’ll ever have the opportunity to wake up after an evening of snowfall. Make no doubt about it, I stick out walking around at a Californian pace against the rough Brooklyn landscape. Besides eating my fair share of New York cuisine, the only other thing that I took great pleasure in was simply walking around and looking at things. Turning the block, I see a group of guys clearly spray painting a wall. In the early morning, 8-9 of them lined up working on their own pieces against a dark wall. There was no audience, except for me and another man who was equipped with a few cameras to document their event.

I asked one of the artists what they were up to. It was simply a group of friends coordinating to meet-up in Brooklyn to paint. The end. “It’s summer in New Zealand,” one of the artist tells me as he tries to warm his hands in his pockets. Watching them paint and seeing the process unfold distracted me from how cold it was that morning, 25 degrees Fahrenheit. It didn’t stop them. New Zealand, Italy, Australia and Native New Yorkers just getting together to paint.

I quickly put together this brief clip of that morning. Enjoy.