Posted today Vicious Penguin File #3. The Vicious Penguin Files are a series of interviews I did with Tracy168 the Artist on the life that informed his art. For an introduction to these interviews, click here.
Tracy168: Tracy Face, Thor, Race, Family.
Recorded February 13th 2021
Tracy and I recorded this on the eve of his birthday, Valentine’s Day, the origins of “LovesterOne”. Celebrating with a New York deli sandwich, Oreo Cookies and some ice-cream, this File has much banter coupled with some heavy content. It has a disgusting cookie story that follows from start to end. All City is what I’d rename this one, because this interview features stories of Tracy on the run either because he’s painting, or because he’s saving his life.
Banter: Most of it in the first five minutes. I leave our small talk in these files because it is in this kind of dialogue that you see the heart of Tracy, and also his genius. A seemingly silly play of his birthday candles reveals how his mind works in playing with numbers and letters as an artist. Our recording glitches become an artistic moment to transform into killjoy. On a personal note, this banter is what means most to me because it’s when we both smile and we both laugh. It’s also where, if you listen closely because sometimes it’s quick, he shares a hurt entwined with love.
On the legacy-side of things (starts around 4:50, this episode reveals the origin of the Tracy Face (see other files for some of the other contributions to this face, too). Why and how he was “all-city”, revealing the greatest layup that existed to him and where. How the subway yards were a coward move on safe gravel: the moving elevated trains was where it–and the adrenaline–was at. We are taken to Puerto Rico and the family that guided his profession in life. How making a decision on whether to spend a quarter on some soda and chips OR a drawing of the Mighty Thor by an artist trying to make a buck was the last choice Tracy said he’d make in deciding whether to eat or acquire art: he decided he’d make art himself, no decision needed. “I couldn’t carry a piano, but I could carry a pencil around…” is the gist of this origin story. He talks about getting into Art & Design School, expectations and his socioeconomic status and child mindset playing out in the admission process.
We also get into some heavy realities of life in New York City during those times (1970s) and race. Tracy talks about being a white writer. He also recalls a horrible attack by a white mob and a Black writer whom he was painting with that almost led to a lynching. I uncomfortably prod to find out what happened in the end. Tracy and I both use laughter to get through trauma, and I comb for what this story ultimately is: an escape story that is part of the graffiti life, or something far worse (also part of this life). The N word is dropped here as he recollects the calls of the mob, and how it all played out.
“Painting is what made us all get along,” Tracy recollects.
Maybe not always, but perhaps enough for it all not to have been an inferno.
We end with some more small talk, the cookie coming full circle. In viewing this interview again now, I realize that also full circle is having Tracy’s art up on our walls, while Tracy happily had my kids’ artwork up on his.
