THE GRAFFITI PROJECT

Several months ago, my good friend, Kevin Adamson, was asked to create a video for youth that would present the "good news" in a way that it had never been done before. Kevin being the creative genius that he is (recognizing it as a gift from God) decided he wanted to try storytelling through graffiti art. Amazing idea, I thought, but how can you use a canvas to hold the audience's attention for a 5 minute video. I helped him do some research on Christian graffiti artists... mainly through YouTube.com and we came across a group of guys known as the GG Crew (or Gospel Graffiti Crew). We then hit a couple of'em up on myspace, just to let'em know what we were thinking of doing. Fasm and Camer1 were both from the San Francisco area and seemed to be the guys we were looking for.

Kevin and I then had the crazy idea to add a DJ to the mix to drive the soundtrack of the piece. Fasm suggested DJ Promote (out of Texas) who spins for guys like Knowdaverbs. I checked out his myspace page, listened to a few of his tracks and was sold. Fasm also mentioned that he tags, too, (spray paints) so we would get a 2 for 1 deal with him.

Next we needed to find a storyteller. Again, Kevin suggested a great idea, "What about a spoken word artist?" [I could be wrong, maybe someone else at BGEA may have suggested that to him. I know that Larissa Miller, Tracy Eakes, Jeremy Hunt, Luke Mullen, Steve Van Dusen and others played a big role in the conception of this project, too.] I had seen spoken word artists around Charlotte on occasion, especially back when the TONIC club was still around, but I only had a couple of contacts that I knew would be good and who were believers, Lisa Koons and Matthew Thorne.

I really think that God intervened and layed Tavis Brunson out just for me. As I was processing the job ahead, I took a break one evening and decided to visit Charlotte ONE (a young adult & Christian singles group) that meets on Tuesday nights in uptown Charlotte. It just so happens that this guy, Tavis is up on the stage doing a great spoken word piece from the perspective of the Archangel, Michael. It was AMAZING! I knew he would be our man, even though Lisa and Matthew were both awesome. It took several weeks to get a hold of him though, his cell phone and email both weren't reaching him. I finally got through to him on myspace, the day I was going to give up on using him.

We were initially thinking of defiling an old rail car for the video, but when that idea started to fall through Jeremy Hunt suggested asking the SouthTown Riders skate park and skate team about using their facility and skateboarding skillz as a nice backdrop. Unfortunately, the skateboarding was a bit distracting to the piece and we had to edit most of it out, but we are so appreciative to the SouthTown Riders for being so open to us and such awesome folks!


Anyway... all this to say that God interwove all of these artists and creative types together to make something beautiful that will hopefully effect generations to come. Here's the video we put together on nearly no budget with a lot of love and volunteer hours. I hope it blesses you. If it does, please pass it on. It made it to the front page of Billy Graham's website. You can link to it here:
http://www.billygraham.org/News_Article.asp?ArticleID=256