STREET ART A hip-hop master shares his skills BY BEN YASTER

Just removed from Broad Street, the northwest corner of Gordon Avenue and Colfax Street in Providence is a calm line of splintering three-level houses facing the backside of a strip shopping center. Car traffic is slow and the corner is usually quiet except for the cackles of kids summering on their stoops. On a recent Thursday afternoon, however, a crew of 10 neighborhood teenagers descended upon the shopping center’s wall to temporarily interrupt the block’s August idle.

Working from the back of a battered, spray-painted van, the teenagers set up ladders and scaffolding, pry open buckets of paint, and set out palettes and rollers. On the wall are roughly penciled outlines of an elaborate 33-foot-wide mural addressing youth violence through a mix of graffiti-esque written type and illustrations of men warding off coffins, guns, and a striking caricature of a grinning demon. During their work and chatter, the teenagers pause to listen to the instructions of Angel Garcia, a stocky man in paint-splattered jeans they refer to as "Vase," his nickname and graffiti moniker. Garcia, a 37-year-old artist who lives in Providence’s West End, assigns each of the teenagers different portions of the wall to paint or draw, oftfering compliments for their work or rebukes because their "talking was interrupting the flow." By 10 p.m., after they finish painting the mural’s border and pencil more of its central images, the group packs up its supplies and Garcia drives some of the teenagers to their homes.

This mural painting is a product of Tru Skool, a series of free art classes that Garcia teaches at City Arts!, a nonprofit on Broad Street. According to Garcia, Tru Skool is a space where young people from the poorer South Side can learn to paint murals with a graffiti verve and develop what he calls "life skills." He encourages his students to develop a strong work ethic — sometimes chiding the teenagers for arriving late and missing classes — and use art to avoid the trappings of the street. "I try to incorporate them into my life and show them what it is to be a commercial artist, and show that art’s not always a playground," Garcia says.

Jon Mahone, a filmmaker and teacher who helps Garcia coordinate Tru Skool, says that young people from the South Side are attracted to the class in part because of Garcia’s background. Garcia, who grew up in the tumultuous South Bronx of the ’80s, does not have formal training, but gained his artistic bearing through years of painting graffiti and taking part in New York’s then-fledgling hip-hop movement. "[Garcia] is a role model, though maybe a bit unconventional," Mahone says. "He’s a role model for people involved with hip-hop . . . He writes graffiti, he break dances. He’s not a gimmick or a prop — he’s 100 percent hip-hop."

Mahone says Tru Skool attracts students — the class has about 15 regulars and a handful of casual attendees — because Garcia embraces hip-hop in his artwork. Though Garcia no longer paints illegal graffiti, his canvases on display in the City Arts! studio — bright spray-painted pieces full of sharp looping letters and cartoonish illustrations — suggest that graffiti still strongly influences his work. Garcia does not shy away from talking about graffiti with his students, but encourages them to use Tru Skool to do what he calls "positive graffiti."

While the notion of positive graffiti may seem oxymoronic given how graffiti is commonly associated with vandalism, Garcia and Mahone believe that graffiti-styled public art can powerfully convey an upbeat message to young people, because they are attracted by the style of graffiti and hip-hop in general. Mahone cites Tru Skool’s mural at Gordon and Colfax — painted with permission from the wall’s owner — about youth violence as an example. Says Mahone, "This is a message that young people can be positive, and are positive."