My name is Chips, a Sardinian graffiti artist based in London.
I first started graffiti across 94,95 in a really small village near Cagliari, I was super young at the time, and one of our older friends was following the graffiti scene in Milan, which was at the top in Italy. He was getting us pictures and sketches, and there, we straight get super excited about it.
After I discovered the Hip Hop world, everything started to take a different shape, a reason to be, and from the first impact with it, I straight knew that one was my world., compared to the other underground subcultures at the time. Painting at that age, wasn’t simple, especially on an island, and no money for it. We knew nothing about nothing, so we discovered and invented in a kind of way, sometimes, everything by ourselves learning from mistakes, through caps, paint techniques, and we painted with lak-car and shit acrylic paint for years and years, before to get the first duplicolor, or a super Montana paint.
Kind of our best time thinking of it nowadays, because everything before was genuine and a surprise and a the same time. Stay and live on an island is sometimes difficult, we were struggling to get news, photos, magazines, tools, and materials, so I left to go and study overseas, where I studied and worked hard, and same time I was more closely and in contact with the real scene hip hop, graffiti scene, I finally had no more barriers.
My job helps me to travel all around Europe, visiting the major cities, dirty corners, graffiti shops, and hidden hall of fame, in constant research for graffiti, or something interesting.
Since day one I have always been attracted by the top number one wildstyle in the world, I had a massive crash for Phase 2, Futura2000, new york, the Germans big wildstyle, all the graff in general, but wildstyle stands in my eyes more than everything else, I loved unreadable letters with bars, overlapping and underlapping each other, its been like a Wow. I thought that one was my direction.
From those times till now my style has changed a lot, I have tried to build something unique, that could stand at the eyes and be recognizable from far. All my pieces are just pure freestyle, I adapt myself to the environment and the people around me, and basically, my letters are a combination of layers that autonomously build the structure of a single letter. I think the style evolution is a personal journey, for me, painting is the most important thing in life, graffiti saved and changed completely my life, my habits, my view of seeing things.
Now days painting for me is like meditation, it’s the time that I talk to myself, it’s a very intimate thing, my mind goes far from the daily routines, and it regenerates me. Also, I sketch and draw completely different styles, during the years my focus was mostly on style and lettering, now I’m looking for more complete stuff, so let’s see what the future says, definitely more and more paint and want just experiment more and more. Which is the beauty of graff, I still remember that one of your questions from your last interview was How you can see yourself in 10 years’ time? and at the time my answer was that I was trying to change something and make the right decisions for myself, and finally that change happened.
I always wanted to live from graffiti, and after a long process and a lot of sacrifices, I managed to open a Graff-cafe in south London called Wildstyelgrafcafe WS.GC.
Run a graffiti shop is not an easy thing, maybe few of you knows about it, and but I can finally smell graffiti from when I wake up till when I got to sleep at night, and that its all that I want, I’m kind of surfing a small dream, and Im happy with it, especially because I got so much love from the London graffiti scene underground and not.
I want to say thanks to Bombingscience for your patience with me and for giving me another opportunity to share my life.
To all the graff heads out there -guys dont waste your time, life is one, follow your dreams and fight hard to make them come true
Chips SMO-HAM-DCN-DVK-CDSK-HHF-A51
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