Cancer Man III

I continued to evolve my artistic voice as the years rolled on. Lucky enough to finally get my parent's blessing, and their funding, to attending Graphic Design classes in Mexico. Painting on walls was not considered the fine art it is now thanks to the likes of Fairey, Basquiat and Banksy. Yet, I figured I would give my art spirit the voice it desired by enrolling in something where I can secure a professional degree, and in a sense, give a degree of comfort to my folks in that I could potentially make a living out of this.


I sucked at it. Graphic Design had its unique sense of discipline and it was not what I expected. There were a lot of rules that an artist needed to adhere too that made the craft sterile. I didn't get that overwhelming sense of God-like satisfaction when creating something as I did when tagging those walls. But I ventured on, ultimately becoming a mediocre designer that ended up creating advertisement layouts for newspapers at a boutique agency in TJ. My daily routine would begin with a cup of coffee and a Marlboro red at my desk where I would write copy, print it, cut it down to size with an x-acto and paste it on an art board. Advertising is a fast paced environment where we were always under the gun to get the layouts approved by the client, then hand delivered to the newspapers that would run them. Deadlines always loomed over us and we looked for ways of cutting corners to increase our production. One of these was to use 3M spray adhesive (instead of rubber cement) on a make-shift cardboard backing where we would place the images that would eventually be pasted on the layout, never really thinking about wearing protective gear like a mask, glasses or gloves.



Every designer in the studio used this method, freely spraying a shit load of glue chemicals throughout the office without consideration. Breathing it all in without thinking of the consequences...



Oh Fuck.






tbc