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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thanks for sharing part of your day with us. The story goes that in the early '80s, Angel Ortiz was a teen hanging out in Lower East Side and was deep into the graffiti scene, including with The Non-Stoppers crew using the tag name LA II. LA II caught the eye of a 20-year-old art student named Keith Haring, and one day Haring came looking for Angel, wanting to work with him.

This began a partnership between the two artists, and as a new exhibition in Soho shows, Ortiz was critical in the development of Haring's drawing style and his rise to fame. After Keith Haring died of AIDS-related complications in 1990, Ortiz's opportunities faded away, even though his talent did not. A new show at Chase Contemporary at 413 West Broadway makes up for so many years when Angel Ortiz was out of the spotlight.

Angel Ortiz LA II: ODE 2 NYC features more than 20 pieces created just in the past year. The show opens today and runs through June 18th, and with me now is the artist LA II, aka Angel Ortiz. Hi, Angel-

Angel Ortiz: Hi.

Alison Stewart: -and Curator Christopher Pusey. Christopher also co-owner of the gallery. Nice to see you.

Christopher Pusey: Good to say hello again.

Alison Stewart: Angel, the exhibition title is ODE 2 NYC. How is your work in ODE 2 NYC?

Angel Ortiz: That's a beautiful show tonight, a lot of beautiful artwork that I created and been doing, and I want everybody in New York City to come.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] Christopher, where do you see the energy of New York in Angel's work?

Christopher Pusey: New York is 24/7, and Angel brings that energy. When he's focused on his paintings, there's really nothing else that's creeping into the mindset of him. It's a focused individual that has created a style that is connected to the history of New York, and that's just non-stopping.

Alison Stewart: What was the Lower East Side like when you first started painting? Can you describe it to someone who, let's say, somebody 20 years old wants to know, "Hey, Angel, what was Lower East Side like at that time?"

Angel Ortiz: The Lower East Side was great. Us, we used to do graffiti, they're called graffiti, but to us it was art, and it was great. We would paint all day, and then we would dance all night.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] Where did you go dancing?

Angel Ortiz: Oh, we would go to Paradise Garage, you know, the areas.

Alison Stewart: When did you first realize you had some talent for art? When did you first start making art?

Angel Ortiz: I started at a very young age, started at school. Everybody has a gift and my gift was painting, and I follow it, and I still follow my gift.

Alison Stewart: Do you remember the person who encouraged you the most?

Angel Ortiz: The one who encouraged me the most was the school teacher, because the school teacher was the one that started everything. They would give us crayons, and they would say color it in. That's where I started to color it in and it just grew from there.

Alison Stewart: Christopher, if you can give us a little context for the work that Angel and Keith made together, and how it fits into the history of street art in New York in the late 20th century?

Christopher Pusey: If you look at street art, if you go back, and you can Google all this information, of course, but if you look at the genesis of it all for what we consider contemporary urban art, in the late '70s and '80s, it was very pivotal. There was a lot of work being done on walls, and trains, and very spontaneous, and most of it wasn't very organized. Around the late '70s and beginning '80s, a lot of galleries started to see that there was this language being developed on the streets, and that got more attention, it got more focus.

An artist like Angel, where he was doing work with his crews, like The Non-Stoppers, and they were going around and doing their things, they were doing more art than the scrawl or less organized work, and that has continued. His work now is a true evolution of those early moments from the '70s.

Alison Stewart: Angel, when things started to get wild, when things started to blow up, and Keith started to become famous, and people started to know about your work and his work, in the way back times, what do you remember about that time? What do you remember feeling at that time?

Angel Ortiz: I remember, Keith wasn't a graffiti artist. He was an artist, I was the graffiti artist. I was the one that painted on the trains and everything, and I basically was very young. Keith came looking for me, and we met, and I showed him how to refill the markers, how you spray paint. I introduced him to the Lower East Side crowd, the Latinos, and it was great. I dropped out of school just to do art. I regret it, but, I loved doing the art, and I was the man behind the curtain that showed Keith everything.

Alison Stewart: Angel, explain what you mean when you say refill the markers.

Angel Ortiz: Oh, refill the markers, it's a marker that you just--

Alison Stewart: I think he's got one on him [laughs].

Angel Ortiz: I'm a graffiti writer. I always have one. This is the marker, you twist it off, and then there's the ink, and you refill the ink. When I met Keith, we had thousands of markers, and I told him, you don't need to be buying thousands of markers. They got the ink. Us graffiti writers, we refill the ink, and we will continue the process of painting.

Alison Stewart: I love that you have a marker on you.

Angel Ortiz: Oh, yes, I do. Never leave home without it.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: It's your new slogan.

Christopher Pusey: He was ready to have fun in the green room, just for the record. The pillows in there were prime targets.

Alison Stewart: I'm for it. Somebody just said no. I'm like, "Yes."

Christopher Pusey: The producer's like, "You want that pillow tagged up. Let me tell you something."

Alison Stewart: That's what I'm saying. My guest is Angel Ortiz and Christopher Pusey. The exhibition Angel Ortiz LA II: ODE 2 NYC opens today at the Chase Contemporary Gallery. All the pieces, Christopher, in the past year, is that right?

Christopher Pusey: Yes. He did a successful sold-out show in London. That was in the fall, and been speaking with his studio manager and Angel about a body of work that would be a tribute to what's going on in New York, which is what ODE 2 NYC is about. This is an artist that's still here. All the history, everything that brought him to this moment is important, but this is about the moment now where recognition for his contributions, for his influence, other artists that he's influenced, other artists that he's collaborated with, this is the moment to really take the time to focus on what he's contributed to that, and this show exemplifies that effort.

We have about 30 paintings, and in addition to that, we have a multimedia event where there's a film that's a documentarian that's been following Angel around for almost two years, filming things and putting it together. We have a loop, which hopefully you'll come by and take a look at later. It's fantastic.

Alison Stewart: Something I noticed that was really interesting, I went by yesterday for a little preview as the show was cutting put up. How inviting it is that you folks at Chase have decided to make it, that it's very much welcomes people in. The door is open. There's paintings on the window. What went into that idea of it does not feel precious or under glass, by any means?

Christopher Pusey: Angel is an accessible artist. The work is accessible. It's for everybody. There's something, whether you like the tight patternation work that we call high-end type, which is just like real, it's basically his initials, LA, Little Angel, which is his moniker, and the digit II, repeated in a very dense, overlapping pattern. Then there's other characters that he's developed over the years, like Shazbot which looks like a computer or a face, and cats, and hearts, and winged hearts.

He's got his own language that he's created as well. The work, it appeals to everybody, and it's infectious, and it's tough not to get caught up in the joy that he brings in his line work. It's magic. You need to see it to really be able to experience it.

Alison Stewart: Back in the day, what attracted you to using New York City trains as your canvas? Why did you want to paint on trains?

Angel Ortiz: The reason why we paint on trains is when we do our art, the trains, the R, the N, the J's and the M's, those trains, they go through all the boroughs, from the end of Brooklyn to the Bronx, so other artists in those neighborhoods would see that. I'm from the Lower East Side, so the J's and M's, so the J's go through the land city, the Lower East Side, and they'll go to Brooklyn to Marcy. The next stop would be Brooklyn.

Alison Stewart: It's a traveling gallery in a way. [laughs]

Christopher Pusey: If you look at some of the photographs, some of the documentarians, like Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant, really had the opportunity to photograph a lot of these early trains, and they are mobile murals. The trains now don't have the same ability, and the artwork really has evolved to a point where the trains aren't really the format, the canvas if you would, but in the '70s it definitely was. If you Google, 'Redbird subway cars', they are tagged from stem to stern.

Alison Stewart: Angel, how did you develop your style?

Angel Ortiz: The way I developed my style is like, it's just my style. Everybody has a style. Like, my letters, LA. Those letters, I created those letters. It's incredible. Everybody, they write their names and they write a number like 1, 2, 3 and I write LA II because LA I is California. I'm LA II and that's a style that I created and it's my style.

Christopher Pusey: Just I want to add to that also is that his style is those letters were part of an evolution. The letters, the formats, the shape of them. It's not just two alphabet letters. There is initials, of course. You'll come and see it at the gallery. Have part of that featured where you can see the evolution of the tag, of the brand if you would. Then, all the pieces include that brand in it in some format. Some of them are really hidden. You have to spend some time looking for them but they're there. Every piece has it.

Alison Stewart: Angel probably won't say this, so I'm going to ask you, Christopher. Would you share with our audience the way that Angel directly influenced Keith Haring? There's a couple of instances in the show when you really can see it.

Christopher Pusey: Well, again, for us, the focus is on what's going on now. The contributions that Keith was doing these very quick figurative works and he was working with chalk. I wasn't there in the schoolyard when they met, but what I saw was the magic that occurred between them after, where Angel brought this patternation work to Keith. There was a real symbiotic relationship between what Keith was doing and what Angel brought to the equation.

Angel really gave the street credibility to Keith Haring. This guy is from the streets and Keith was from Pennsylvania. Although, Keith very quickly became immersed in the environment that was going on in the '70s and the early '80s in New York. Angel definitely helped elevate his art form. Part of the exhibition, too, is we have a piece of a mural that was done in Milan, Italy with Angel and Keith. The documentarian was able to remove Keith's drawings from the mural and you see it looks like 90% of the mural is Angel Ortiz.

Alison Stewart: Angel, what is something that you would like people to understand about you and Keith at that time?

Angel Ortiz: Well, people should understand about me and Keith. Keith came from Pennsylvania and when he came to New York, he was like a sponge. He observed everything. Out of all the graffiti writers, he came looking for me. He was hanging out with other graffiti writers. When I met him, I said, "Why are you looking for LA?" He said, "No, because I see his signatures everywhere, and I loved the way he writes his signature." That's how he was doing the schoolyard, doing the murals. He invited me to his house and he said, "LA, why don't you tag up on this yellow taxi hood?" I tagged my name on the yellow taxi hood.

We changed numbers. Two weeks later, he called me, he said, "I want you to see what I did to the yellow taxi hood." He did little characters. His little babies and his little dogs. I said, "Why don't you just fill it in with details, with lines and stuff like that?" Then he just filled it in and it looked much better. When people see my artwork, they think it's Keith Haring, but they don't know it wasn't Keith Haring. It was me that taught him, not taught him, gave him an idea how to make his stuff look better, because his stuff was just plain. As you could see when he was in the schoolyard, he just did his little characters and stuff like that. When he added the lines to it, like arrows and stuff like that, it made it much better.

Alison Stewart: Fuller.

Angel Ortiz: It filled in the blank.

Christopher Pusey: It completed them. It's really the way it looked like. It really gave them more substance and definitely more energy and vibrancy because of all the line work and the energy that Angel Ortiz's calligraphy-inspired work does bring to it.

Alison Stewart: Christopher, how do you hope someone who comes to see this show, what do you hope they think about after they leave?

Christopher Pusey: Life is good. There's an optimism in his work. Angel, and as I'm sitting here looking at him and we're smiling, this is an artist that lives in the present, in the moment. The works are optimistic. They're easy to live with. You don't walk away from having an experience with one of his compositions and feel anything short of a little bit of sunshine, a little bit of joy.

Alison Stewart: Angel, what is it like to be getting all this attention?

Angel Ortiz: Well, the attention is-- I was in London in September and [unintelligible 00:15:24] my friend, he's documenting my artwork. He said, "What do you want the people in London to know about you?" I just said, "I just want to bring my art out there for the kids and everybody to enjoy the art," and it was beautiful. They got it. They did enjoy the art.

Alison Stewart: You can go see Angel Ortiz LA II: ODE 2 to NYC on view at Chase Contemporary Gallery at 413 West Broadway. Opens tonight, runs through June 18th. My guests have been the gallery's co-owner and one of the curators, Christopher Pusey, and artist Angel Ortiz. Thank you so much for coming to the studio today.

Christopher Pusey: Thanks for having us.

Angel Ortiz: Thanks for having us.

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