We caught up with one of our favorite graffiti artists, the Art of Chase, on the Venice Boardwalk, as he was in the process of spray painting his new piece. He is setting the record for painting the largest pizza slice in the world. I admire his work because it is colorful and radiates a positive message. He also clearly has his own aesthetic, in a world where everything is duplicated. To find out more about his piece, we asked him a few questions. Here are a few words that he had to say:

What are your favorite pizza toppings?
cheese, ham and pineapple when it’s on the go and pesto when it’s sit-down

What gave you the idea to pain the largest pizza slice?
Usually, the walls I paint dictate what they want painted on them somehow. In this case the wall was a very difficult one since it has lots of windows and pipes and all kinds of things on it that make painting something on it super hard. I figured that going big was the way to go and since it’s the side of a pizza joint on the boardwalk a massive slice of pepperoni was the ticket.

I feel like Venice Beach is close to your heart, what kind of connection do you have with Venice Beach?
A massive connection. I’m from Belgium and when I was 10 years old my parents and I moved to LA for almost 2 years. My folks are big Ibiza people so they would always take me to Venice. My pops’ business didn’t work out so we had to move back to Belgium, but right before we left I practically begged my dad to buy me a skateboard from some store on the boardwalk, which he did with his last little bit of cash. That changed my life forever ’cause I started skating everyday since that day. Skateboarding changed everything in my life. The vibes on the street, the graphics, the D.I.Y ethos, the clothes, the videos and the music. All of that truly shaped me. And Venice was where I first fell in love with skating. Cut to: I’m 17 and I move to LA by myself to come and skate. Boom! Skating in Venice every day, always at the graffiti pits. This is before the skatepark was there. Then hitting other spots after. I was a tagger back home and painted a few things here and there but I really developed as an artist on the walls in Venice. People found out I painted and kept offering me their walls. 15 years later and so many walls later, I feel so blessed because Venice really took me in.

What is an artist that you look up to and why?
Magritte really blows my mind. He lived quite a boring life but his work ethic and mind were incredible. His use of symbolism and style to create feeling is really inspiring to me.

What is the craziest place that we can find your art?
I travelled to the tsunami devastated region of Japan (Tohoku) a few years back to help raise funds with a charity called Ribbon For Japan. I’ve never seen so much devastation in my life. It was truly post-apocalyptic. I ended up painting on a huge tipped-over water tower there. I didn’t really know what to paint at first ’cause I didn’t want to be insensitive to what had happened there, and I also wanted to leave something behind that would connect right away. In the end I decided to paint a huge bottle with a message in it reading “We Are All One”, as a way to say “Hey, we care”. The translator that was with us said to write in English as opposed to Japanese because that would be more meaningful to the local people who were there to rebuild. Turns out that inspired those same people to start painting artwork on whatever was left of some of the houses in order to make things look kind of nice again. It was really touching when I found that out.

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