Jilly Ballistic and I had the short lived pleasure of meeting in person during the Trusto Corp. opening held at New York’s Opera Gallery back in October. The two of us arrived with our partners in crime and lost track of each other to grab a drink. Soon after the event, left unsatisfied with our lack of goodbyes; drinks were suggested. Quel Beast’s Dia De Los Muertos show was opening at the King’s County Bar and we’d decided what better way to catch up then with more art and booze? We’re women who appreciate our dark liquors it seems, so we scheduled a grand entrance.
Our evening, quickly turned into a violent one. One where glasses were shattered against the other’s skull, and someone stomped the other’s chest in while busily kicking and screaming– or maybe it didn’t. We did talk about it though. We figured an empty alleyway attached to the bar was the perfect location for a physically aggressive fight; I’ve never had one in my grown up life, she offered to check it off my bucket list. The violent talks were short lived and soon we turned into mushy people who talked about their dogs, but I’ll leave that for another post.
As the night progressed, we got into the street art talk. If you haven’t heard of JillyB, then you’re really not paying attention to your surroundings. The reason she appealed so much in the first place was because she was hitting up the New York City subways– something that’s pretty much nonexistent these days. The second reason she caught my attention was due to the jarring relationship between her WWII imagery of women handling machine guns, kids in gas masks and other similarly disturbing vintage images; against modern advertising. The only question I really had in mind was; how do you do it? For a while, I remember seeing videos of Jilly getting her pieces up on the sides of trains and in the company of subway passengers. I’m accustomed to artists who lurk in the night and have people keep a lookout so they don’t get caught. Jilly on the other hand, has major cojones (balls for the spanish challenged). The woman hits up the subway system at various hours of the day and most of the time it’s all on her own without an extra set of eyes.
As part of our “evening,” we went out to put stuff up and I was in a state of panic for her, as evening was actually early afternoon. She hopped on the train, took a seat and leisurely prepped one of her stickers. These aren’t tiny stickers either by the way– and the lady only talks about going bigger, not smaller. I sat across from her and tried to get a handle on my racing heart, while also catching the reactions of our surrounding audience. She looked around the train in search of the perfect spot and then, she removed the backing of the contact paper and started to slowly apply a crashing 1920′s airplane to a seat. As I looked around, one man’s face turned into a hiss. A woman several seats down and across let her monotone face crack into a slight smile and others pretended to not see what she was doing. I proceeded to take a photo, she followed suit. When I’d asked her how she handles getting removed almost immediately– she simply replied with: “you can’t get worked up. That’s the nature of this game. That’s why you go out, put stuff up, snap a pic and move on.”
Move on is exactly what we did too; onto a new platform, a new train, a new location and fresh eyes to witness the law breaking. I picked up a few pointers from her too, but I won’t be sharing her secrets. Let’s just say, if I ever decided to hit up trains, she definitely made me feel more prepared for the challenges. If you haven’t experienced the delight of Jilly’s imagery; feel free to tune into her Flickr feed for almost daily updates.
(**feature image grabbed from Jilly’s stream, edited by me)
