Revs — The Legend Returns

Still anonymous after all these years, the iconic graffiti artist called Revs turned convention on its head in the early 1990s, upending traditional notions of graffiti and inspiring a new generation of street artists.

After lying low and fleeing Gotham for Alaska when his co-artist Cost was arrested for vandalism in 1994, Revs learned a trade and is now a union ironworker in New York, surrounded by co-workers who haven't a clue that a near–mythical deity of the graffiti world welds among them.

Revs gave a very rare interview recently to New York Times reporter Randy Kennedy, but only after taking elaborate precautions to make certain the meeting was not observed or recorded.

He said to Kennedy, regarding why he has never tried to commercialize his work, "To me, once money changes hands for art, it becomes a fraudulent activity."

That's the best argument I've ever heard for keeping bookofjoe uninterrupted, uncluttered and commercial-free.

I'm so down wit dat. But I digress.

Revs did mostly painting back in the day; now he's creating sculptures (above), with more than 100 of his pieces installed around New York, two-thirds of them with permission, a far cry from his outlaw days.