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An accomplished graffiti writer and well-
known artist who’d collaborated with staple
Aussie brands such as Insight, Something,
and Tsubi, Dmote cut his artistic teeth in subway
stations and abandoned buildings, and such a
scene, no surprise, doesn’t exist in Orange
County. While graffiti was never his only
endeavor, it was, for years, his primary one, but
things as of late have changed. “If you ask other
artists if I still do graffiti, they’d probably tell you
I’m retired,” he says. “I just don’t have the time. I
tag when I travel, but I don’t have the time to do
a piece, because that takes like 10 hours, and I
could be painting or I could be doing my job.” His
job as an art director at RVCA is his greatest
current opportunity, and also what lured him to
the Northern hemisphere. It’s his first full-time
office job in years, but he’s loving it. “It’s such a
challenge that I’m kind of just living the job,”
Dmote says. “I don’t generally leave before nine
o’clock at night, and it’s not uncommon to find
me there at midnight.” And while these generally
aren’t words you look forward to hearing out of
an artist’s mouth, RVCA is far from an average
company, and Dmote sees it as a progression,
rather than abandonment, of the things—
painting, fashion, misconduct—that he loves. “I
was in New York on holiday and Pat [Rvca
founder Pat Tenore] said ‘Why don’t you fly out
here and talk about it?’” he recalls. “And I got
there, and the guy’s just crazy. I mean, not crazy,
but just super-generous, like a kid who collects
art who also runs this clothing company. So
there were no meetings, no talk about jobs or
work, we just hung out and went to dinner and
went to lunch, and I did some painting and then
I went home.” A couple of month’s later, RVCA
asked him to do some prints, and when Dmote
asked for instructions, they told him not to worry
about that, just do whatever he wanted.
Whatever he wanted turned out to be something
that they liked. “Pat was always jokingly like,
‘Why don’t you come and work for us?’ but at
the time, I wasn’t really in a position to leave
Australia,” he says. “But then at the beginning of
the year, that situation changed. So when I
called him up to ask if he was still serious about
that job, he said to come over and start working.
Then when I got there, they were just like, ‘Aw,
start working.’ And I was like, ‘Ok, on what?’ so I
just did some in store murals and installations
and slowly transitioned.” And as unusual a
formula as RVCA is, it’s also highly successful
and growing quickly. As an art director, it falls on
Dmote’s shoulders to keep RVCA’s artists, such
as Ed Templeton and Barry McGee, happy while
still making sure the company sells enough
T-shirts for them to all keep their jobs. He’s still
figuring things out as he goes along, but doing a
bang-up job of it. “Dmote and I had mutual
friends, and I always admired his work,” RVCA
founder Tenore explains. “He’s very talented and
can go from street art to fashion to fine art to
paper and ink to computer seamlessly and
without compromising design integrity. It sounds
easy, but it’s a rare trait amongst art directors,”
he continues. “He’s paid his dues on and off the
streets and it shows in his style and work ethic.”
Dmote paid his dues on the streets with spray
cans, not paste and paper, and though only 36,
his roots in graffiti trace back to the eighties and
a preference for cement over sand. “The first
thing I ever remember seeing about graffiti was
in a story on 60 Minutes about breaking,” he
recalls. “It was about this group called the Floor
Lords from the Lower East Side [in New York]
and there was graffiti in the background. After
that, the Rock Steady Crew came out with
“Uprock” and the whole album cover was graffiti
art. My whole interest in doing it started because
no one else around me really did it and I hadn’t
really seen it.” At 15, he moved from rural
Australia to Sydney and in an urban environment,
his interest flourished. “I guess I was a kind of a
bad kid to start with, and an artist,” he says, “so
illegal art was pretty exciting.” In the city, Dmote
lived with his dad, a single, 35-year-old guy who
disappeared most nights and left him to roam as
he wished through drains and train yards. “His
philosophy was that when you’re that age, you
could do what you wanted. Which is probably
not the best philosophy, but it made me who I
am today.” Sometimes people open up during
interviews: They’re busy or stressed, and haven’t
gotten a chance to just sit and talk in a long time.
eight months into his stint as a working man in the good ole U.s. of a, dmote has embraced some aspects of american cUltUre bUt finds himself thoroUghly flUmmoxed by others. in orange coUnty, home of disneyland, he drives a classic 1969 dodge dart to work, bUt is for the most part appalled with a cUltUre that spawned the o.c. “sixteen-year-old girls are getting breast implants for their birthdays!” he says, incredUloUsly. “and for christmas! it’s common and it’s totally accepted.” bUt aside from the prevalence of plastic sUrgery, he actUally has few complaints aboUt transitioning to the states from sydney. “i miss the beach, and rain woUld be nice every now and again,” he mUses, “bUt the opportUnities here far oUtweigh that.”
He says that Dictaphones make him nervous,
but refuses an offer to hide it under a napkin,
and when asked, halfway through, what his
real name his, he considers for a few moments
whether or not he wants it in the story, then
writes out Shannon Peel in block letters. He
tells me that he was chastised by his friends in
New York, the legendary graffiti writers The Tats
Cru, for always introducing himself as Shannon.
“They were like ‘Who’s Shannon? Introduce
yourself as Dmote. No one knows who Shannon
is.’” But quickly humble about being humble, he
adds “But I have an ego as well, don’t get me
wrong about that.” Shannon Peel began to really
build Dmote’s name shortly after he finished art
school, and out of frustration with working, left
Australia to spend a few months traveling.
Through loose connections in the graffiti world,
he and Kasino, another artist from Australia
found free places to stay and eventually also
found themselves in post-war Bosnia. “We met a
famous train writer from Dortmund named
Shark, and it was his idea to go to Munich and
catch an illegal workers bus to Croatia, and then
go down along the coast to Bosnia,” he recalls.
“I was like, ‘You must be out of your mind.’ Then
I got to think that if I don’t go I’m going to miss the
most amazing experience of my life, live or die.”
They hired a car to drive across the border, and
once in Sarajevo, slept on the street amidst the
land mines and peacekeeping troops, and in
their waking hours, painted. “We ended up
painting on Sniper Alley,” he says, referring to a
main boulevard that was notorious for being
lined with Serbian guns. “We painted trains on
the main central station in Sarajevo, and all of a
sudden, a dude comes along herding goats. It
was just the most bizarre experience.” And
while Dmote’s day to day involvement in graffiti
may be waning, his love for it, and respect for
the lifestyle that surrounds it, isn’t, and he seems
awed at the experiences it has offered him “You
go to places at night and you go to places where
tourists don’t usually go. You go to the bad areas
with the right people,” he says, “That’s the
benefit. When I go to New York, I stay with the
Tats Cru in the South Bronx, and it just blows my
mind. Bio [one of Tats Cru’s most prominent
members] is from the Bronx River Projects where
Afrika Bambaataa grew up, and he was at those
parties when he was 10 years old. And we’ve
just kind of become family, and everything I’ve
ever wanted to achieve in terms of graffiti,
meeting the people that I’ve met and painting
subways in New York, has been possible
because of them. Every time that I’ve painted a
subway in New York, just the adrenaline and the
smell of the subway system and just being in
there, it just completely takes over your body
and you’re totally consumed by it. To walk out of
a downtown underground subway station and
disappear into a sea of peak hour people after
painting trains is something I’ll never forget.” It’s
no accident that Dmote has aligned himself with
old school traditionalists such as the Tats Cru
over the current proliferation of street artists. “I
don’t think the person who does graffiti is the
same person who does street art, ie pasting up
a poster,” he says. “I see that as a real college art
thing, where a graffiti artist tends to be more of a
hardened character and more in touch with what
is actually going on in the streets. I’m not a huge
fan of street art anymore. I have done it, but that
was before it became the stencil revolution or
was coined street art. Then it just kind of
annoyed me.” The respect that he exhibits for a
rougher, more authentic expression isn’t one-
sided, and, when speaking of him, Tats Cru are
enthusiastic and prolific. “Being one of the
earliest writers from Sydney/Australia, Dmote
has left a great piece of Aussie history within the
mural scene, as well in the train scene,” How
from the Tats Cru says. “He’s one of the few
outstanding Aussie writers who also made it to
worldwide fame, and gained great respect, and he
still is active in that way, even though he went on to
take it to different levels as a designer and artist.”
“Graffiti is what connected us initially, but his
personality is what’s kept us in touch,” adds Tats
Cru’s Nosm. “He’s a very straight-forward and
honest person. He says what’s on his mind,
whether good or bad, and that’s why I respect him
and consider him one of my best friends.” “We are
not easy people, or surrounded by many friends,”
How explains. “But the ones we have around us,
we can rely on and trust. Dmote is one of those
who we appreciate as a friend. In New York,” How
finishes, “we call that being real.”
As of late, Dmote is navigating a transition into
fine art, and still working out where Shannon
Peel ends, Dmote begins, and vice-versa. It’s a
question that is likely to pop up more and more
as his career in the States progresses. He’s
taken to painting on antique book covers, a
project that evolved, he explains with an eye-roll,
out of never having a studio and having to paint
small. They’ve been well-received though, so
he’s going with it. “It just kind of came out of
people wanting to buy them, and I’d always
found it kind of hard to sell art before, especially
in Australia. And because I always change—
which is great in graphic design but doesn’t help
your art career—I wanted to keep something
consistent going so people can kind of recognize
that. “I’m kind of settling in to what I want to do
now, which is abstract and realistic painting, so
I’m just working it out,” he says. It’s clear that,
when he talks about his personal work, this is
still what excites him the most, even amidst the
challenges of his job. As he’s made a career out
of being a commercial artist, he seems justly
determined to now set aside bits of his work for
himself. “The other day, someone asked me
about my skull paintings on the book covers,
and said, ‘Oh, they’d make a great swingtag,’” he
recalls, “But that’s not really how I want to see
that stuff. We can work out another swingtag.”
When I ask Dmote if he thinks he’ll head back to
Australia once his gig with RVCA has run its
course, he says mysteriously “That’s what
immigration wants to think. I don’t know. I came
here to enhance my career, because I was kind
of running out of companies to work for in
Sydney. And there are so many amazing artists
here in California, that every day I’m like ‘wow, I
want to do better.’ But,” he continues, “in Sydney
it’s amazing how much people accept you once
you come here and then go back. I’m looking
forward to that day. And now that I’ve had one
full time job, I might be able to have another.”
in other interviews, people avoid the qUestions as if they were pee-tainted water balloons, and verbally scramble to get oUt of the way. dmote doesn’t dodge, bUt he’s not going to Use this as a therapy session either
www.Dmote.com
he’s a very straight-forward and honest person. he says what’s on his mind, whether good or bad. - nosm