Portrait of the artist
A Kent State student shares his story of life as a graffiti artist

Story by Tim Bugansky
Photos by Greg Ruffing

The only thing left of Rob’s life as a graffiti artist is the album of photos he lovingly produces for friends. And the looping arcs and drastic lines he scrawls on his college notebooks “when I’m just sitting there bored and the teacher’s babbling about something I don’t care about.”

For three years after graduating from his northeast Ohio Catholic high school, the 23-year-old Kent State visual communications design major lived in eastern Virginia, near Virginia Beach — and lived graffiti.

By his own account, Rob, who wants his real name concealed to keep his past in the past, went out and “wrote” with members of his “crew” on hundreds of nights over that three-year period. He figures he painted his work on 200 to 250 freight cars and “God knows how many” walls, rooftops and highway overpasses.

He looks back on that period with mixed emotions. Until Virginia, Rob had never done graffiti. He’d never been arrested, either. Eventually, Rob decided to leave graffiti behind, came back to Ohio and started all over — again.

But in the meantime, he lived the 24-7 existence of a graffiti artist. He lived graffiti’s constant pursuit of anonymous fame, the quest to get up his “tag,” or graffiti pen name, as much as possible. He threw quick tags up on walls. By night, he and his crew ventured into the world, stoned, with plans for pieces already drawn up. They sought a balance of representing themselves in their area and painting on trains to send their work to the rest of the country.