Chris "Daze" Ellis and other 'Urban Art Legends' speak at the Museum of the City of New York

You won’t see much graffiti on subway cars or building walls any more, but the art form that dominated the urban landscape in the 1970s and ‘80s is still around.

         “Since the 1980s, graffiti has slowly moved from the streets and the trains into the galleries and now museums, which is a fairly new development,” said graffiti artist Alan KET at a recent panel discussion at the Museum of the City of New York.

         He joined fellow graffiti artists Chris “DAZE” Ellis and Nick Walker at the East Harlem museum Feb. 9 to discuss the evolution of graffiti from an illegal form of vandalism to a respected form of artistic expression that galleries, museums and institutions around the world have come to accept.

         Fran Rosenfeld, the museum’s curator for public programs, introduced KET, who’s been creating art on the streets and on trains around the world for the last 25 years as well as documenting it from an early age in photographs. In his most recent book, Urban Art Legends, KET featured bios and commentary about 37 of the most influential street artists along with images of their work.

          Chris Ellis, known as “DAZE,” is a native New Yorker and former student at the High School of Art and Design who has done work in studios and in the streets. His works are part of collections in museums and institutions around the world including the Museum of the City of New York, which is currently presenting several of his paintings depicting New York City life for the exhibition The City is my Muse. He didn’t start out with the goal of exhibiting in galleries or museums. “I thought that was kind of an unattainable thing,” he said. But once he tried out a studio setting it “really kind of sparked my interest in making more paintings and possibly exhibiting and eventually the media kind of caught on.”

The Odyssey by Chris "Daze" Ellis

         Nick Walker emerged from England’s Bristol graffiti art scene in the early 1980s and has found fame both in streets around the world as well as in galleries. His subjects poke fun at the status quo and he has created several characters including the dapper gentleman that he calls the vandal, which was featured in a video by The Black Eyed Peas.

         The artists also described their passion for New York City and why it’s a common subject in their work. For Walker, it’s the architecture and the skyline. “The city’s like a playground, the bigger the city, the taller the buildings and I’ve always been into big skyscrapers,” he said.

         For DAZE, it’s about his personal experiences growing up in an interesting city. “I remember reading about different artists and what they tackled as subject matter and reading that you should paint about what you know best so I started thinking about the city and my experiences growing up in New York and I thought, ‘Well that’s a canvas of inspiration right there.’ It was the streets that I knew, characters I’ve seen, like a direct connection so I wanted to make things like that where people could have a direct connection.”

         Both artists agreed that graffiti as an art form has come a very long way since its beginnings on subway cars in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Said DAZE, “I think [galleries and museums] are becoming more open to [graffiti art] because they realize that people are interested in it and there’s still an audience for it…institutions are starting to take notice.”

 Walker added that street artists “are more approachable these days. That wasn’t the case in the beginning.”

A reception followed, where the artists signed copies of Urban Art Legends for eager fans who also took a look at the works in The City is my Muse, which will be on view at the Museum of the City of New York until May 1. Copies of Urban Art Legends can be purchased at the museum’s gift shop.