Shrimp, the edible crustaceans commonly dipped in tart, tangy cocktail sauce, don’t usually carry overtly sexual connotations. That association is saved for more aphrodisiacal mollusks, such as oysters. But Shriiimp, the Allston and Montreal–based Web site and graffiti-artists’ collective, is superabundantly sexual. By painting graffiti on women’s bodies, Shriiimp (yes, with three i’s) conceptually entwines urban art and sexuality until the two are virtually indistinguishable.
Shriiimp artists are graffiti adventurers who occasionally trade cans of spray paint and city walls (their most common canvases) for non-toxic paint markers and the (preferably naked) female form. But their work doesn’t end there. In an important development for artists who continually battle ephemerality, they’ve taken to photographing semi-nude-ladies-cum-canvases and posting the images on the Web site shriiimp.com. A meeting ground and artistic outlet, it’s become a place to offer praise, criticism, and the occasionally troubling misogynistic comment. (While you’re there, you can also purchase paint markers and underwear from the online boutique.) But Shriiimp hasn’t forsaken the streets for cyber space; it hosts live-art shows — pastiches of gallery openings, performance art, and dance parties — where artists paint volunteer models before an audience. Their most recent local show was in July. Another is tentatively scheduled for early November.
Curtis McMillan, an Allstonian, part-time art teacher, and one of Shriiimp’s four masterminds, refers to the Web site as a gallery and views the posted photos as art — a characterization with which most graffiti enthusiasts would agree. Still, not everyone who stumbles across the site will see it that way. Shriiimp photos, after all, are always at least semi-nude, often explicit, and always of women. To some, it can seem like porn for graffiti fetishists.
But the Shriiimp creators swear that’s not what it’s about. “It’s more about the artwork than it is about the girl,” says McMillan. In fact, he claims, Shriiimp can make women feel more beautiful. “No matter how you feel about your body on an everyday basis, when you’re the canvas for a beautiful piece of work, that’s got to make you feel good.”
On a recent Saturday afternoon, a group of Shriiimp artists and models gather in the back of LAB, an urban-themed clothing store/art gallery near Allston Village, to demonstrate the process of “shriiimping” (Shriiimpers also use the word as a verb). As wandering shoppers thumb through racks of sale-price shorts and tank tops, and LAB co-owner Todd MacLeod blasts remixes of ’80s pop hits from his Mac at the front of the shop, the Shriiimp crew throws down a white sheet, plastic-covered crates, and several chairs in the back. McMillan, tall and tattooed with black glasses, alternates between calling late-to-the-party artists on his cell phone and rolling cigarettes, then heading outside to smoke them. Angel Buckley of Brockton, a go-go dancer with blonde and pink hair extensions, peruses LAB’s collection of electronic music on vinyl. Lyndsey Almon, 24, a tall interior designer from Cambridge, mills around in plaid shorts, a cropped hoodie, and blood-red heels, eagerly awaiting her turn to get shriiimped. Almon has been a model in two Shriiimp shows, one in Boston and one in Connecticut. “Graffiti is such an awesome art form,” she says. “But it’s illegal to tag anything in the city. So why not tag us?”
Nearby, Diane Levy — a Milton-based mash-up DJ, and Shriiimp’s model coordinator — sits on a chair with her black skirt hiked up high enough to expose a skin canvas for artists Kenji Nakayama and Mitchell Kehe, who are seated on either side of her. “Being model coordinator means I have to model sometimes,” she says with a smile, as Nakayama paints Warhol-esque bananas on one of her kneecaps and Kehe paints a head that resembles Boris Yeltsin on the opposite thigh. Levy calls models to prep them before shows. “If a female calls the models,” she says, “it doesn’t seem so shady.”
Within an hour, a group of graffiti artists have trooped in, each accompanied by an overflowing toolbox of paint markers and brightly colored canisters of acrylic paint. An artist in a black Iron Maiden T-shirt and a backwards Sox hat, whose nom de graffiti is Turn, works on Almon’s stomach, drawing a large green-haired head. The crazy-eyed character has an agape mouth and an extended tongue that just barely grazes the top of Almon’s shorts. Nearby, Buckley has stripped to a pink and black lingerie set, and Justin, an artist from New Bedford, paints a series of pink drips seemingly connected to her bra. With his girlfriend watching nearby, Justin adds a large, swirling block-letter tag that reads “Angel,” extending from Buckley’s stomach, down the side of her leg. The overlapping artwork on the model’s body suddenly looks remarkably similar to a city wall that’s been tagged and repainted innumerable times.
The sense of respect for the models in the room is palpable. Each of the graffiti artists works intently, lost in a world of artistic concentration and seemingly unaware that they are touching attractive, minimally clothed women. The models, oddly enough, also seem at ease. “There are always going to be haters and people that judge this the wrong way,” says Buckley. “It’s important that women are just comfortable in their skin.”