Graffiti’s first lady, Sandra Fabara a.k.a ‘Lady Pink’ has come a long way since her teenage years as a novelty artist on the streets of Queens, New York. At the young age of 16, while Fabara still attended the High School of Art and Design, she exhibited in the Whitney Museum of American Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum and Groninger Museum, manifesting great things were to be expected from her in coming years. With paintings for gallery shows and museums as her top priority and the small mural company co-owned by her hubby, graffiti artist ‘Smith,’ falling second, Fabara pulls away from the high demand of her artistic abilities to share how it all started.
Reviewfix: How did you initially get involved with the graffiti scene?
Sandra Fabara: It was my first boyfriend’s idea to write graffiti. He was arrested for writing graffiti and then went to go live in Puerto Rico. So I started writing his graffiti name for him around the school. I fell in love with the adventure and thrill.
RF: Why did you choose ‘Lady Pink’ as your tag?
Fabara: At first I was writing my boyfriend’s name, which was a boy’s name. My friends from high school suggested I should have a female name. My friend chose the word pink, that’s a very feminine name; guys would not write that. I titled myself lady for my love of historical romances. Emulating the European lability, the aristocracy with Dukes and Ladies.
RF:Being a woman, how much harder was it for you to get respect or to throw up tags?
Fabara: It was absolutely impossible. The woman’s movement was just starting to pick up steam. There was a lot of male chauvinism, that was just the time. No women had much success breaking into the boys’ club. That’s just the nature of what the boys’ club are. Women are excluded, we couldn’t get into sports, positions of power, we were still struggling with all of that. It was a sign of the times that it was impossible. Women were not taken seriously at all.
RF: Could you describe your writing style?
Fabara: I was taught by a variety of different people, we teach master to apprentice. My styles of lettering were basically similar to whatever teacher I had at the time. New Yorkers are very rigid in this type of style of lettering that is done here. It has to have a New York flavor. I did throw in a little bit of a feminine flair to my letters, but not that much.
RF: When did you really start to get noticed for your graffiti?
Fabara: As soon as I started. I hadn’t even hit a train yet and I was already famous all over the city, because of lack of females. I was the only girl doing it. There’s been a lot of women through the 1970s, but the shelf life of a graffiti writer is only about two to five years. After a couple of years people move on to do something else. Ladies that had been writing throughout the 1970s, Barbara, Eva, 62, they had all quit. They had all moved on to do grown up things and they quit their teenage, childish ways. There weren’t any by the time I rolled around in 1979. Out of approximately 10, 000 guys I was the only female. I was pretty much noticed as a novelty back then.
RF: What does graffiti mean to you?
Fabara: I am an artist through and through. My friends are graffiti writers. I’m married to a graffiti writer. We are a particular breed of people, personalities and such that we are sort of attracted to each other in that way. It’s our culture, perhaps it’s our way of work, our way of thinking, but we also meld very well with other sorts of misfits from society like skateboarders and punk rockers and break dancers. It’s just out there. Sometimes it’s annoying, sometimes it’s helpful. I think the people who do graffiti are not exactly the folks I particularly like or want as friends, but like family you’re kind of thrown together and you don’t exactly like each other, but you have to deal with it.
RF: How has graffiti changed since when you were a kid?
Fabara: It’s like how has rock ‘n roll changed from the 1950s. Where do you begin? It has grown it has morphed as expected, but as long as people are still vandalizing then it’s a crime. Then it’s graffiti.
RF: What was it like to have your work featured in museums and galleries?
Fabara: I’ve been exhibiting for about 30-years and the novelty has worn off. Since the age of 16 I was exhibiting, the same time I started writing on the subways. It wasn’t a big transition from underground to above ground. I wasn’t like a ghetto urchin suddenly exposed to light. I didn’t come from the ghetto. It wasn’t a culture shock. It was a natural transition painting the same thing underground and painting it above ground, because folks were willing to give me money for it, which was amusing. I decided to hang on to that as long as the ride would go. I wasn’t exactly choosing art as a career, but it just sort of happened that way.
RF: Who are some graffiti artists you look up to?
Fabara: always admired and been a big fan of Georgia O’Keefe, since they told me my work looked liked hers at the age of 16. I made it my point to get familiar with Georgia O’Keefe and I exhibited with her too. Jenny Holzer is one of my biggest heroes. I also have collaborative paintings with Jenny Holzer.
RF: Out of the many pieces you’ve done, what’s your favorite?
Fabara: recently sold my favorite, it was a painting titled, ‘Queen Matilda.’ It’s a very detailed brick women with a city at her feet. Basically a graffiti mecca at her feet; a little subway train running by. The city is based on the free community in Copenhagen called, Christiania. It’s a community that is police free and run by anarchist. It’s such a peaceful, beautiful little closed in community.
RF: What would you say to people who associate graffiti with a negative connotation?
Fabara: It is a crime, its vandalism according to the authorities so I can’t argue that point. Of course, it’s a crime; it’s vandalism. The authorities say so. In this country, in this age its illegal. In other countries, in other times it has not been. It’s a perfectly accepted piece of art form. It is just in this country at this time that they call graffiti illegal.
It’s necessary we shake things up. The freedom of expression, the fact that art has been so removed from the common people and it is now full of its own intellectual superiority that is just for the wealthy, the cultured. You have to be very schooled in order to do it. That’s just bullshit. It has to be indoors, inside a gallery with four clean white doors. Why can’t it be everywhere, done by anyone? You don’t have to go to school for a billion years and know that knowledge of art and know how to do it. It comes way out of the reach of ordinary folk and that is why we are bombarded by advertising, because we don’t know any better. Lets say the outer boroughs of New York or just the common working people we don’t get a chance to go see. I know my neighbors my family just work all the time, they don’t get a chance to go to galleries or museums or get to see any actual real life artwork. Art has just gone too far. It is abstract, obscure, it is not reaching young people whatsoever, it is excluding anyone that isn’t intellectual. The museums and those institutions have snapped the fun out of it. They have made it incredibly boring and folks are not interested. They are living in their own little world there.
RF: You own a mural company with your husband, graffiti artist ‘Smith’, how is that going?
Fabara: It’s going well. We don’t do anything special, just stupid boring shit. Interiors, standard, traditional artwork. Nothing fancy, but it’s pretty expensive.
RF: What are some of your current projects?
Fabara: I’m working on paintings for gallery shows and museums. I am making some paintings for Atlantis Diner, deep in Long Island and a mural project in my neighborhood that has a patriotic flavor to it. I get more of a demand for my work then I’d like. I get way too many charities and people begging for free stuff with some bleeding heart story for this disease or that dying person. How do you say no to that without feeling like an ass. I don’t have much time. I spend about 80 percent of my time working for charities, benefits; for free stuff and it’s really hard to say no. So I just ignore my emails instead of sending rejection letters. It breaks my heart.
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