Andrew Poneros

So is that satisfying then?  Is that, you know, making the pig and then having the pig who devoured itself… If it’s a comment on insatiability…

You mean, am I satisfied? 

Sure… [Laughs]

I don't know.

I think it helps.  It just seems like all I see is sick capitalism everywhere.  So, that’s kinda what my work became about; all the money that governs decisions. You see all this real estate going up and you see beautiful buildings being torn down, and you see everyone screwing their neighbor over oil, and it’s crazy.  It’s wild.  So, kinda the only thing I can do about it is recognize it. 

Right.  Well, when did you move from that to the work you’re doing now?

What do you mean?

When did your work move from the work you were doing as a late teen?

You mean, when did it start to take on meaning?

Yeah.  Well, I mean, when did it start to taking on meaning?  I mean, you weren’t running around as a teenager, writing Pork on walls, thinking of yourself as an artist.

Hell no!  No, no, no…  I was just doing what any other graffiti writer does... Just trying to tell the world that I'm here.

Sure.  But was there a point when, like…

Um, there was a time when I was doing stencils and people were taking it as communist propaganda. I think that’s what people thought it was. 

Yeah?

I suppose because the "P" was backwards and there was a star in the "O" and it was before people where used to seeing stencils on the street, they assumed it was some "commie" shit.  But that was just part of the transitional period.  I think… it made me realize I could use the power of the street to make a social statement.  Sometimes you’re doing things, you don’t know why, and suddenly they just start to take on meaning.

Hmm… Ok, and you studied art in school?

Yes.  I studied design. That's why all my shit is pretty graphic.  And that’s why I decided on a logo for myself and that’s why branding is so immersed in my psyche. 

For sure.

Just years and years of breaking down meaning to a simple shape.

Well, that’s sort of like, in a lot of ways, ties into capitalism, you know?  The branding of something…

Absolutely. 100%.  Fighting evil with evil.

So, are you making money?

Slowly. [Laughs] Yeah, yeah, the momentum is gathering.  It’s starting to happen.

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Were you born in Greece?

Nah, I was born here; but my parents are very Greek.  They have hearty accents. 

Really?  What do they think about what you’re doing?

They don’t understand it at all.  They’re just like, "Why don’t you get a real job?"

I mean, are they happy that you can feed yourself? They’ve gotta be a little happy over that.

No, because I’d be making better money if I had a full-time job.  [To my parents] ‘Life is about hard work… and if you’re not working hard at a job you can barely tolerate, then you’re not properly living your life.’

Oh… gotcha.  That’s gotta be fun to go home for!  Alright.

Well, that’s how they grew up.  That’s their generation.  I’m sure that probably here, it’s a generation earlier for Americans. 

Yeah, it’s our grandparents. And since then everyone’s been fucking up.

Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely. [Laughs] That’s our grandparents. [Laughs] So you were raised up in Queens?

Yeah.

And you go back to Greece every year, you said.

Yeah.  My dad moved back and retired a couple years ago.

In Athens, right?

In Southside Athens.

Fuck it.  If you’ve been here like… I don’t mean to date you but you’re like what, 27? 28?

29.

29? Alright, well if you’ve been in fucking New York, going on, 30 years…

Why you gotta round up, man? [Laughs]

Because rounding down wouldn’t help my argument. [Laughs] I would say you’ve seen like… fucking eh, especially out in Queens, you’ve seen the city fucking change up over the last three decades.  How does that fuck you up?

Oh, it’s horrible. You can be from here and still not feel comfortable because it’s just constantly shifting. 

Yeah? Even on the outskirts, it’s still totally different?

Yeah. In Queens the same thing is happening but in a really different way.  It’s just overrun by Asians.  All that money from China… where do you think it’s going?

No shit? They’re buying up Queens?

They’re buying up Queens and just fucking developing the shit out of it.  Giant, cheap, ugly ass buildings… Pre-made air conditioner slots under every window… you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  They’re like the new projects. 

I’ve seen my neighborhood, where I grew up, just go from not an Asian in the hood, to every other store has Asian writing on it.

Wow. No shit? So where were you hanging out when you were coming up? At like 12, 13, 14, 15… when you’re starting to escape your family.  What was it like then for you?

Rolling joints by the railroad tracks.

Well, yeah, we were all there. [Laughs] Tracks are all across this country and everybody was rolling up joints at 12, 13, 14, 15… I mean, I’m just wondering, were you down on the Lower East Side? Were you in your neighborhood? When did you start coming over here?

No, I wasn’t coming to the city until 15…  We would cut school and take bi-weekly trips to Chinatown and go the graffiti store and get fat caps… and graf mags.  My boy would always buy like a t-shirt or a hat or sticker, or something.  It’s like "Psh, come on. You’re gonna rock someone else’s shit?" [Laughs]  He was like ,"Yo, it’s dope." But yeah, that was it. The 7 train to the city.  Didn’t know where the fuck we were going.  We just knew the 7 to the A, then get off by the graffiti store.

Right.  So was it like an alien landscape for you, like at that age?

Yeah, yeah.  That was like the only spot we knew then next to Washington Square Park.  Then, there was The Tunnel.

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You guys kept, like, jigsawing it… little piece by piece, you know of spots.

Yeah, but The Tunnel was cool.  That was a huge club.  Now, it’s a big art mall called The Terminal.  It’s huge.  It used to be a train tunnel… gorgeous building.

The only way I know The Tunnel is from the American Psycho movie.

Oh, was it in it?

Yeah, that was the only way I fucking knew it.  Because I came up in ’98, ’99 and by then… I don’t know. Fuck it.  If it was there, I wasn’t going to it.  I just saw it in American Psycho.  It’s where he picked up some blonde girl and murdered the fuck out of her.

See, you’ve been there mentally. [Laughs]

So emotionally and mentally, we’ve shared something… [Laughs] I didn’t grow up in the city.  I moved here when I was 18 to go to school, like a lot of people I know. But like, how would you explain the difference to somebody who hadn’t grown up in the city?  Like you were saying, though, you started going to Manhattan when you were 16 and maybe it’s still a foreign place or whatnot but I gotta think that there’s a residual energy or something that, I don’t know, maybe changes people if they live too close to the big power lines.

Absolutely.  Well, there’s a difference between growing up in the city and growing up right outside the city.  Growing up in Brooklyn, or growing up in Queens, is kinda totally different than growing up in Manhattan because you’re so close to everything and so close to so many huge things happening and the opportunities that you’re not around them enough for them to start happening to you, and you’re too close to start chasing them.  If you’re from somewhere else and you come here, you’re just totally wide-eyed. You’re like, "Fuck it. I want to get in this."  You’re motivated; you’re inspired.  You want to start making things fall into place.  You’re like, "Wow, this is it. This is my chance." All my boys from high school are at home, living with their parents, in Queens.  They come to the city like once every six months.  So, it’s weird.

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That is a little interesting… the motivation part of it.  I guess just that if it’s so close, forever…

Yeah, you know you have to seize it.  You know that this is your chance and this is your moment and this is the place.  You just feel like it’s always gonna be there when you’re that close.

It’s weird to always keep it on the horizon.  I guess you could just live with it on the horizon. 

It’s actually a terrible thing.

I know.  It sounds horrible.  It sounds like a fucking oasis that doesn’t exist, which is really scary and depressing… son of a bitch.  [Laughs]

Let’s fill our beers with tears. [Laughs]

You sentimental fuck. [Laughs] Did you ever head out to Brooklyn when you were younger?  Before the college age? 

Fuck Brooklyn! [Laughs]

[Laughs] And where do you live? You live in Queens?

Queens, born and raised!

He’s got a toxic river to protect his ass. [Laughs]

That’s right.  It’s like a moat around the kingdom.  [Laughs] We’ve got three-headed crocodiles and they wear tons of hair spray.

Your art has a lot of sea monsters… for lack of a better term, creatures. Was there a long progression from that sort of branding that you were talking about, with the double-headed pig, to these creatures now?

Yeah, I got sort of stuck behind the brand, the logo, for years.  So, the only thing I was doing was pigs. It was to the point where it got stifling, and that was it.  Then, I just started fucking around with other animals, and exploring mythological creatures and folklore and what symbolism was ages and ages ago.  Heraldic symbolism, Greek mythology, Egyptian iconography… just kinda how symbolism came up in the first place, which was the cross, basically the first fucking symbol. It all was basically religion oriented in some way, so I just started moving in that direction and recreating my own folklore, my own weird non-religious religion. [Laughs]

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But yeah, I think being Greek has a lot to do with it because little religious icons were all over my house when I was growing up, and at my grandparents house. Every saint was known for something and there was always an animal that he was related to.  There was this one icon of St. Nicholas spearing the two-headed serpent.  I would look at it all my childhood and was drawn to it, now knowing why.  That’s why I made the serpent piece, which isn’t here anymore because I sold it.

You’ve got some serpents here.

Yeah, there are some more right there.  But that is how that was influenced.  So, it’s probably based on upbringing. 

And all that stuff, too, like hieroglyphics and shit, are very graphic, as well.  Do you feel like your childhood and upbringing, seeing all that imagery, led you towards that path of graphic and design, and now maybe you’re bringing it back?

Yeah, I’m bringing it back. [Laughs] But, it takes a lifetime to realize that.  You don’t know it while it’s happening.

Well, what are you working on now?

Now, I’m just working on… genius ideas. [Laughs] No, just shit I’ve been thinking about since I was away; like a weird swan-neck, vulture-neck tree.

What about these street signs?

Those are from the past show.  I was gonna put them up but… I might still.  Things are different now.  Shit just disappears.

Those are so fucking good-looking. They’d be gone in a day.

Not that people would steal them, but the city just takes shit down. Since anything out of the ordinary is considered a terrorist threat.

Any other projects on the horizon?

I'm painting a mural with some inner-city youth in New Haven.  Which, if you've ever been there is a wild city. Probably one of the most socially and economically divided cities in the US. It's pretty much just the Yale campus and ghettos. I'm going to be working with kids that would be selling drugs, stealing, etc, if wasn't for this program. Which is basically about showing them there's other options.  So I'm pretty excited about that. Maybe do a little good in this big bad world.

Website
www.porkfolio.com

Interview: A.P. Smith, Ed Zipco
Photos: Ed Zipco, courtesy of the artist