Click on a press item below to read WikiPages Grand Society Antiques & Gallery - 'Marking it Up' Berliner Literaturkritik Heimat ist da, wo man weg will Daily News Hunts Point's Tats Cru graffiti crew to take city to court for covering 'art' Gothamist Sharpton Urges Harlem to End "Stop Snitching" Trend Daily News Hunts Point-based graffiti arts TATS CRU lend urban cred to Lord & Taylor SEAK: Graffiti and Street Art Diary Künstler Kollegen aus New York zu Besuch The New York Times Walls of Art for Everyone, but Made by Not Just Anyone Gothamist Graffiti Irony MIT Graffiti artists TATS CRU visit MIT Scion Installation Scion Art Tour BNET 2004 Ad e-flux International Artexpo Shows That Art Is Everywhere The New York Times Graffiti with a German (and Bronx) Accent Daily News Fans Show Much Love for Big Pun MTV New Big Pun Mural To Mark Anniversary Of Rapper's Death The New York Times Extending the Life And Lore of Graffiti The New York Times Mural Painters Arrested but Then Released Daily News Taggers Freed After Tribute to Rapper OKd Daily News Memorial for Rapper New York Magazine Guten Tag NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: HUNTS POINT; GRAFFITI WITH A GERMAN (AND BRONX) ACCENT Publisher: The New York Times By: Christopher John Farah Published: July 6, 2003 In 1997, three days after Raoul and Davide Perre 21-year-old twins from D?sseldorf, Germany, arrived in New York, they met for the first time the man they had traveled thousands of miles to see. Wilfredo Feliciano, whose graffiti tag name is Bio, was spray-painting a mural on a wall in Harlem with other members of TATS Cru, the organization he helped found. Mr. Feliciano, 31, wasn't much older than the twins, but to them he was a graffiti god, a creator of the art form that they had been practicing back home since 1988. The Perre brothers had always known that graffiti got its start in the Bronx, so they had saved their money to finance a trip to the source. They presented Mr. Feliciano with a portfolio of their work, pages and pages showing the walls and trains they had covered with swirls of red, blue and orange. Mr. Feliciano flipped through the book and looked at the two lean, pale, blue-eyed men standing in front of him. "Nah," he said. "You didn't do that." Two days later the brothers painted a wall at the TATS Cru headquarters in the Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx. Mr. Feliciano was stunned. "You're from Dussel-where?" he demanded. Now, six years later, the twins are regular fixtures in the Bronx, and unofficial partners in TATS Cru, living signs of what an international phenomenon graffiti art has become. Companies ranging from major corporations to local businesses pay TATS Cru to paint pieces, yet a significant portion of the work is done by two natives of a country better known for lederhosen than gangster culture. After their first trip to New York, the twins returned home, but they kept returning to New York and staying for months at a time. They now pepper their speech with inner-city slang, and are also known by the tags they brought with them from D?sseldorf. Raoul is How, and Davide is Nosm. The brothers were actually born in San Sebastian, Spain, to German parents who didn't stay married long. When they were 6, their mother took them back to Germany, where she worked as a hair stylist and raised them and their older sister alone. The twins grew up in the projects, where they ran with a skateboarding gang until they discovered graffiti at the age of 13. According to Raoul Perre, graffiti began developing as an art form in Germany about 1988 in response to a documentary film on graffiti in the Bronx. As in America, what was once illegal is now often purchased by private German collectors and businesses. And because TATS Cru stands at the epicenter of the expanding graffiti universe, Hunts Point receives a steady flow of graffiti faithful who come to pay homage. "We have guys that knock on this door, and I can barely understand what they're saying," said Hector Nazario (Nicer), a member of TATS Cru. "What little I could make out sounds like, 'I want to make graffiti with you.' Our office has turned into the U.N. of graffiti." bit from there - like the Brooklyn Bridge arches shaped like spray cans." All Images and Articles are Copyright of the Publisher View Publisher's Link