The secrets of Sedgwick

Read part one of Tea’s adventures with Sedgwick here.

Sedgwick invites me to his house. We hang out in his dining room as he mixes up a goopy solution of wallpaper paste powder and water mixed in a blender to start. He then pours it into a yogurt container, adding more water until the consistency is right. On the table are a stack of hornheads; he drew the original with a thick marker and made 200 photocopies, which he tells me he scammed from Kinko’s.

While he works, Sedgwick tells me he grew up on the North side, and that his older brothers are the ones who introduced him to art. He later became inspired by street artists like the famous stencil master Banksy and the London Police, a group of three individuals who create large scale cartoonish murals.

Sedgwick flies solo these days  but it wasn’t always so. Until a few years ago, a mecca for graffiti artists was  UPROC, a Riverwest skateshop formerly located on Center and Bremen.“That was, like, a key place” he reflects. “That’s where I got my markers, spray paint, and basically all the writers in Milwaukee were there giving me advice.”

Although he started out doing tags and murals, he eventually got sick of taking such big risks involved for such short-lived creations.

“It’s not worth the risk doing graffiti and spray painting – and it doesn’t make sense because I’d put it up and two days later it would be gone. The fines are high as f**k, because they can bust you for every piece they see with your name on it, they can look at your (sketch) books. When I started doing street art I didn’t want to risk too much by carrying around cans of paint. It’s a lot easier to carry around paper and a paint brush, and a can of paste.”

A LITTLE ADVENTURE

“We’ll go out and have a little adventure.” Sedgwick says as the interview wraps up. He stands up from the table and starts loading his supplies in a backpack. He has these “little adventures” at least a couple nights a week, depending on when the mood strikes.

As we approach Humboldt Avenue, he affixes the first hornhead of the evening to an electrical box. He crouches down, quickly applying the paste, then smoothing on the sheet of paper with with one hand, swiping more adhesive with the other.  The entire process takes a few seconds. After Sedgwick hits a lamp post, he eyes an electrical box on North and Humboldt. We reach the corner at the same time as a young couple.

“Hey, can you tell me where Center Street is?” he asks, pretending to be lost. They gave him directions and carry on.  This is a “diversion technique,” which Sedgwick compares to a magician’s sleight of hand. He pastes up the hornhead, peeking at the intersection around the electrical box while brushing it into place.

Next we head up a stairway to a condo building. Sedgwick hangs over the railing with one arm, his feet positioned on the concrete like a rock climber. Seconds later, a hornhead peers down and across the intersection below.

Thirsty, we duck into the Red Room for a beer. Sedgwick often hides out in a bar for a drink in between locations. As we wrap up, he drops a lighter (on purpose) and leaves the Red Room with a “souvenir”- a hornhead pasted to the front of the bar. “Not having a plan is the best plan.” he says this as we walk (at a leisurely pace) away from the bar.

Winding around the back streets to the East side, Sedgwick stops to paste a hornhead on a concrete railing. We hear loud talk and merriment below, and leaning over the railing we see tables full of boisterous condo dwellers on the back patio of Brocach Irish Pub.

He lights a cigarette, puffs and studies the scene below, a look of disdain on his face.  The “yuppies” remind him of his Hollywood dream girl, Halle Berry.

The water tower is a mascot for the North End Condominiums and its existence has clearly angered Sedgwick. It used to be positioned on a nearby abandoned factory.

“That building used to be a hub for graffiti – everyone got up there, and there were a handful of writers that got up on the tower. Then they took the tower down, painted it up shiny, grey with orange and put lights on it. The North End: it is my dream to hit that f**king tower. What kind of advertisement is that? That just pisses me off. And I get shit for putting up something like this?” he says, snapping one of the hornheads. “It’s a piece of paper!”

But the North End tower will have to wait another day. We head instead to the marsupial bridge near Lakefront Brewery. I had seen a hornhead up on the bridge before and wondered out loud how he had gotten up there. Sedgwick says he’ll show me if I act as lookout. I pace back and forth, pretending to look at my cell phone, my eyes shifting around the periphery, keeping both eyes open for the long arm of the law.

Meanwhile, Sedgwick climbs up a girder like a stealth monkey, his paintbrush clenched in his teeth like a dog. He swings one leg over a support beam, balances on his butt and sets to work pasting up a quartet of hornheads. Cars zoom by on Commerce Drive below.

“No one ever looks up” he tells me later. “They have their eyes on the road, or they’re too busy doing this.” He pantomimes someone texting.  As he slips down the support beam and back to terra firma, the paste leaks out of the yogurt container down his leg, hardening on his leg hair.  He leaves it. We get in a couple more quick hits, then call it a night.

We walk to Riverwest to find another drink, an armada of hornheads staring shifty-eyed at the streets behind us.  Sedgwick shows me his hands. They are blackened with dirt, sweat, ink and paste.

“That’s the sign of a good night!” He says, laughing.