Al Diaz, Educated, 2019
I was like, 'Wow, look at those nice signs that end up in the garbage. I'm going to do something with these. Naturally the first thing I did was I started creating anagrams. You can't do much with one [sign], but you could do a lot with multiple ones.' - Al Diaz
Al Díaz is a first-generation New York City graffiti artist who continues to create, exhibit and share his experiences as a key figure in the counterculture art scene from the city's graffiti heyday. His Signage studio paintings are verbalisms of unadulterated poetry from a life of observance on the street; hand-crafted by way of utilizing posters and public announcement notices lifted from the city’s subways and station houses. The creation of which are dictated by availability in both the content of said posters/notices and the materiality of which they are made or designed.