It’s rare to see KAWS give an in-depth interview about his youth and background. So it is special to know that Interview Magazine along with actor, Tobey Macguire, have teamed up to do a session of interview with artist extraordinaire, KAWS. KAWS are no doubt a big inspiration to us in term of artistic mindset and hard-working ethics. So when I found this interview, I was ecstatic to see what made KAWS tick. It’s an amazing read so I urge y’all to check it out!
TOBEY MAGUIRE: I’m interested in your backstory—how KAWS came to be. So let’s start there.
KAWS: I was born in Jersey City, and I guess that’s probably where it started. When I was young, I tried sports but never really got into them. I played ice hockey because there was a rink up the street from me, but once I grew out of my equipment, my parents were like, “Are you serious about this?” and I said, “Not really.” I think I got into skating and graffiti mostly because they are both solo activities. You can take it where you want to without needing a team to play.
MAGUIRE: Did you have a drawing background? Did you take art classes as a kid?
KAWS: In elementary school I was a bad kid—not bad as in bad behavior but kind of illiterate bad. My fifth grade teacher told my mom, “Maybe he can pursue art?” But really, I had no background. Even in high school, art wasn’t something that occurred to me to pursue. It was just a hobby that I had a heavy leaning toward.
MAGUIRE: So it was more that you were just immersed as a teen in the culture of skating and that led you to art?
KAWS: Definitely. Jersey City is so close to Manhattan. You took the PATH train in for a dollar, so it would only cost $2 for a whole day of skating—from Brooklyn Banks to Tompkins Square Park. I would meet tons of kids from different boroughs, and that parlayed into graffiti. I got mixed into that.
MAGUIRE: What was your family like?
KAWS: My mom’s a housewife. My dad’s a stock-broker. He didn’t graduate from high school. He started by running coffee for the guys on Wall Street.
MAGUIRE: A hustler. A go-getter.
KAWS: Yeah. You learn to appreciate that as you get older. But when I first said that I wanted to go to art school, he was like, “What?” [both laugh] They sent me to look at [Borough of ] Manhattan Community College. I’m not dissing that school, but I went over to look around one day and was like, “Fuck outta here, I’m not going.” So when I got out of high school, I didn’t go right to college. At this time, I was doing graf six nights a week, just painting a lot.
MAGUIRE: Were you going out and hitting walls?
KAWS: Yeah, mostly painting walls at the time. I graduated from high school in ’92 and the first billboard I painted was in ’93. But I was doing regular graf long before I hit the advertising stuff.
Read the rest of the interview here @ Interview Magazine!
You must be logged in to post a comment.