Tag Team

Jesse Edwards is a well-known, controversial figure in Seattle’s art
community. His work has been shown at downtown gallery BLVD. Edwards’s
brusqueness and unusual artwork—oil paintings of skateparks,
Twinkie-and-bong still lifes, and vomiting cheerleaders—have
earned him profiles in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and
Seattle Magazine, highlighting Edwards’s irreverent aesthetic
and ruffled nature. In a 2006 article, P-I art critic Regina
Hackett portrays Edwards as a rebellious, lovable scamp; she seems both
entranced and repulsed by Edwards’s spartan lifestyle in his studio
littered with bongs and porn. Seattle Magazine also featured
Edwards in its 2007 issue, championing Edwards’s “big mouth and
unwillingness to put up with the politics of academic art.” While
Edwards’s abrasiveness was titillating enough to editors at the
P-I and Seattle Magazine, portraits of the young
artist left out the most important detail: It’s no wonder Edwards is
abrasive; he’s the cofounder of the infamous Seattle graffiti gang
3A.

Edwards—tall, wiry, tattooed, and eager to talk about his
art—just turned 30 in August. He works nights as a security guard
at a Sodo club so he can spend his days painting. On Saturday, August
25, Edwards is working the door at a black-metal show in South Seattle.
As the leather-clad lead singer screeched and the cloaked keyboardist
pounded away next to a billowing smoke machine, Edwards spoke about his
younger years of skating, tagging, and getting into fights at Westlake
Center. He says that when he was growing up and getting into graffiti,
older writers wouldn’t give him the time of day. So Edwards founded 3A
with his brother Travis and several other skaters as a support group of
sorts for young graffiti writers. Now, 3A has upward of 50 members. At
least those are the ones Edwards says he knows about. The loosely knit
group of graffiti artists, taggers, and skateboarders—whose ages
range from 18 to 35—is constantly growing, inducting new members,
and marking their territory all over the city. It’s hard to go more
than a few blocks in downtown or the Capitol Hill area without seeing a
3A tag—a simple 3 next to the letter A—splashed across a
bus stop, garbage can, wall, or window.

Other graffiti artists are very guarded when talking about 3A, and
no one wants to cross them. The group has developed a bizarre,
near-mythic violent reputation. The Stranger contacted several
3A members, most of whom readily admit to dealing drugs and assaulting
rival taggers. One member, according to court records, is in jail for
stabbing another man at a party. While no graffiti artists were willing
to go on record about 3A, local graffiti message boards are littered
with trash talk about the group.

“3A is a bunch of meth heads. They have SOME talent but other than
that they are just crazy motherfuckers who get fucked up on meth and go
kill shit,” says one post on the Pacific Northwest Graffiti site. 3A
stands for American Aerosol Artists or Against All Authority or 3
Assholes, depending on whom you ask. The latter a disparaging nickname
given by Seattle Public Utilities graffiti ranger Anthony Matlock
[“Lone Ranger,” Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, Aug 23]. 3A has its share of
detractors in the Seattle graffiti community, but members seem to feed
off of the group’s reputation. “I think people should be scared,” says
GORE, a 23-year-old 3A member. “It’s okay to feel that we’re a gang and
a bunch of thugs. We are.” Cofounder Travis sent me an e-mail touting
3A’s tough-guy reputation, claiming they even have a constitution
“lightly based on the Mexican mafia code of conduct.”

While Edwards doesn’t necessarily consider 3A to be a gang (Edwards’
criminal record consists of minor driving infractions and citations for
skateboarding at Westlake), he does require unwavering loyalty from
members of his crew. Back at the rock club in South Seattle, several
other 3A members have shown up to talk about the group. After talking
for a few minutes he clams up and tries to minimize his involvement
with 3A. Edwards—who refers to 3A as a “brotherhood” rather than
a gang—loses it. He abruptly tears into the man, chastising him
for never getting a 3A tattoo and for not “representing” 3A, and
immediately revokes his membership. “That’s what we do to weak-ass
motherfuckers,” Edwards says before turning his back on the man and
walking away. “We’re stronger now that we got rid of the weakest
link.”

After the show, Edwards heads up to a legal graffiti wall, just
across from the Seattle School District’s headquarters on Third Avenue
South and South Lander Street. Along the way, he points out numerous 3A
tags—and those of rival crews—on Dumpsters, walls, and
train cars.

Edwards says he has used the group to mentor its younger members. He
claims he’s gotten one member into art school, and tries to help kids
hone their spray-can craft whenever he can. All he asks for is a bit of
allegiance.

3A’s appeal seems to be the bond found in the piecemeal familial
network Edwards and the rest of 3A’s older generation have created.
Members waver back and forth between referring to each other as
soldiers or as family, but ultimately they all fall back on a shared
love of graffiti and skateboarding. That’s what Edwards tries to focus
on. He knows drugs and violence are part of the young 3A members’
lives, but he tries to intervene when he can.

While Edwards is trying to help the kids in 3A grow up, he’s not
quite there himself—and he doesn’t want to be. He’s seen the path
many other graffiti artists have taken. “They grow up, they get a job,
they get comfortable,” he says. “I’m too far gone. If I give up now,
then it’s all been for nothing.”

Edwards stands at the legal graffiti wall, holding a copy of Seattle
Exotic Underground in one hand and a spray can in the other. He shakes
a can of white America’s Best spray paint, turns and begins painting a
portrait of a woman from the magazine. It doesn’t look much like the
photo—the jaw is too strong and the eyes are cold and
lifeless—but Edwards doesn’t seem the type to care what other
people think.

jonah@thestranger.com