MONTANA-CANS LOOKBOOK 2020

MONTANA-CANS
Your backgrounds are of the most well rounded a graffiti
artist or fine artist could ask for. Your involvement
in graffiti alone has led you to tick just about every
box a writer(s) could want to tick. But how do you view
yourselves? Is there words or a preference of descriptive
words that you would use to describe yourselves
to those not in the know?
HOWNOSM
(Laugh), I don’t know, we don’t see ourselves better
than other graffiti artists or artists, we just have done
maybe a little bit more than others, and we have been
painting for almost thirty years now, so it speaks for
itself that we have a large body of work but, I mean,
that’s just what we do, that’s just one part of who we
are, it doesn’t make us just writers you know, I don’t
know it’s… I know what you are talking about, back in
the days we painted the trains and then we started to
do walls and legal walls and big productions and then
we started to do our art and the transition of what we
were doing from the streets into canvas so… But we’re
not the only ones, there is a lot of people who do that,
I don’t know. Maybe we stand out because our style
is very original and unique and, you know, and we are
twins. But I don’t know how I would to describe myself
(laugh) in that case, I never thought about it you know
what I mean? I like what I do, I’m glad that I can live of
what I’m doing and what I love and I never take it for
granted you know.
we don’t see ourselves
better than other graffiti
artists or artists, we just
have done maybe a little
bit more than others
MC
We as keen observers have followed the development
of your work for many years. Your achievements
aboveground and underground have been prolific and
inspiring. Do you still get to dabble in all disciplines of
your graffiti heritage? Or has your international exposure
meant your anonymity has become difficult? Do
you even still have the itch to do something under the
radar or is it »been there done that« for you?
HN
No, not really, I mean we’ve done our first year of illegal
graffiti all over the world and we’ve been in many
places like maybe like seventy countries, before many
other people we were doing graffiti there, before there
was Montana spray cans there so we got our itch out
of the system really. I mean yeah, it’s always nice when
we came over here, we were riding in the subway and
we see graffiti on the Paris subway, of course, we love
that and we look at it, we take some pictures of it but
we almost forty four years old now and have kids and
we’re focusing on our work.
↑ There is no scale
too big or small. It‘s
all just another day
out of the office for
HOW and NOSM.
MC
We understand the move to use only Black, White and
Red (and tones thereof), was born out of necessity
while travelling through South American countries. But
what was the catalyst to stay within this color spectrum
and was it a conscious decision? For example,
was there a day when you said »OK, let’s now only
use these three colors and any we create from mixing
them«? Or was it a gradual process?
HN
I guess we were doing it for so long in south America
and specially these three that at some point people
recognized so fast our style and the kind of palette
that we decided to stick with it so people can still keep
recognizing the work we paint, and after a while we
just added like different shades of paint and greys to it
and now a little bit more like purple ich into it. It’s still
36 Interview HowNOSM IN PARIS