Scribe
Street Artist, Illustrator, Cartoonist, Toy Maker, & Sculptor
For the last 28 years, Scribe has painted, and repainted, the town of Kansas City, whether his efforts were appreciated or not. These days, he is most definitely appreciated, with more that 45,000 followers on Instagram and a full docket of commissioned projects for the coming year—he is an artist in demand. But his road to success has been long and rife with obstacles, leading him down a non-traditional career path that tested his determination. Despite the challenges and road blocks, or maybe in spite of them, he has proven his talent and resilience, as he continues his journey onto new and meaningful realms.
As a minister’s son, Scribe and his family moved around often, depending on where his father was called, or needed. He spent his childhood moving between Denver, London, Israel, California, Oklahoma, and Boston prior to moving to the Midwest to study at the Kansas City Art Institute. As a youth, Scribe drew all of the time, loved cartoons, and had ambitions to be an animator. As a teenager, he fell in love with street art while living in Boston. “I liked the public gallery aspect of it. I found myself running around the city, jumping fences, taking photos, getting sucked into that culture,” riding the subway from one end of the line to the other, seeking it out. He had been practicing, and in a sense studying, street art in Boston for several years before moving to Kansas City in 1992.
Scribe in his Kansas City home, full of artwork, comfort, and love.
Once in Kansas City, he wanted to assess the local street art scene. Beckoned by the tall buildings downtown, he and a friend rode a bus to the last stop to see what they could find. They walked from the River Market to Crown Center and found the city’s core empty of people and void of art. “There was nothing down there but a few transients and the occasional business. There were entire high-rise buildings that were empty. It was weird, almost scary,” a culture shock from the bustling Boston streets and art scene that had been developing since the 1970s and 80s. Undeterred, Scribe set out to start the movement on his own. “Graffiti started popping up in KC because me and a few friends were sort of forcing that to happen, not because the city was supportive in any way. As a whole, a lot of people in the art community weren’t that interested in “low brow” art,” he recalls.
In fact, due to his extracurricular art making, Scribe was asked to leave KCAI after his first year. Police came to the school to investigate the creative graffiti they had been seeing around town, and a few teachers and students turned him in. At the time, street art wasn’t appreciated. Conversely, graffiti was viewed as criminal activity and anyone involved was considered likely to be connected to drug trafficking or gangs. “I was really disappointed in the art community for getting so involved in my personal life without really knowing me…they made a decision on what kind of person I was because they believed what the media had told them.”
Not only was he angry with the school, Scribe was upset with himself for altering what he thought to be his intended career path. “I always had this idea that I was going somewhere and that I was going to do something with my career. When the Art Institute asked me to leave, it messed up my idea of the traditional way of meeting my goals, and I didn’t know if there was another way.” He clarifies that his personal experience in the early 1990s in no way an indictment of KCAI now, nearly 30 years later, and points out that it was a specific person, or administration, at that particular time that resulted in his expulsion. But that acknowledgement doesn’t lessen the impact the rejection had on his life at that time.
Toys that Scribe has been commissioned to design over the years sell primarily to collectors in Hawaii and on the coasts, due to Japanese influence and the acceptance of anime as an artform.
In defiance, 20-year-old Scribe thought, “If they’re not going to be into it, we’re going to find as many public places to remind them that this is an accepted art form” and set out to find building owners who would pay them to paint, at least enough to cover the cost of their materials. In the 90s, Scribe, usually with fellow graffiti artist and friend, Gear, prolifically painted murals throughout Westport and the Crossroads, and “had walls around town that we’d change and rotate just because we loved to paint…there is an alleyway in Westport we must’ve repainted 100 times.” However, theirs was not a lucrative business as they were basically painting for free. To pay the bills Scribe worked as a shelf stocker at a grocery store for a time, and as he became known for his graffiti he was eventually led to a job in the signage industry, which he calls his “informal education” where he was trained on computers, software, and large format printing.
At the same time that he was learning technical skills at the signage shop, he was also developing his artistic style; his most beloved character, Rumpus the Rhino, originated as a result of his kerfuffle with KCAI. “Rumpus came about as an accidental form of art therapy after not being able to finish art school.” Scribe describes Rumpus as an animalistic self-portrait of sorts, “I was spending a lot of time alone and rhinos are solitary animals. They also can’t see very far and conceptually that made sense to me; I couldn’t see into the future anymore. So I started drawing this rhino running around the city and I would put my emotions into that character either on walls or canvases for gallery shows.” As Rumpus became a familiar figure around the city, Scribe’s reputation as a skilled painter and artist grew, and his additional technical skills led him to his career launching point, coming on-board at Children’s Mercy hospital to manage their extensive signage system.
A family portrait hanging in their home, depicts Scribe as Rumpus the Rhino with alter-ego Knit-a-neve Pachyderm in his backpack, his wife, Alisa, as the otter, and their two sons as the lion and giraffe.
During the 18-years Scribe devoted to Children’s Mercy, his career blossomed from maintenance technician to art director. Due to his technical skills, he had the ability to keep work in-house, like large-format printing and printer maintenance, that they had been outsourcing, and was able to save the hospital tens of thousands of dollars. “By the time I got to the hospital I was able to manage their sign systems and streamline their process…and I was doing murals behind the scenes. Over time, I was doing more murals than managing signs,” he recalls. The less time he needed to spend on maintenance, the more time he had for artistic work, like painting murals around campus and organizing art activities for the children. He quickly observed that the hand-painted murals were a maintenance nightmare so he started digitally creating the images on the computer, printing them on vinyl or specialty, chemically resistant laminates, and installing them as wallcovering that are more resilient in a hospital environment and which can be easily reprinted and replaced as needed.
As his role had naturally evolved at Children’s Mercy, the hospital recognized that Scribe was much more than a maintenance man, and they wanted to change his job title. But there was no precedent for what he was contributing to the hospital culture; no hospital in the country had a full-time artist on staff for comparison. So Scribe recommended that they walk across the street to their friends at Hallmark for help determining his title and pay. “They had been paying me as a maintenance guy in facilities” when the hospital decided to change his title to Art Director, at the recommendation of a Hallmark executive. The new position “came with a whole lot of responsibility, but I had the skillset that was needed,” and happily, a much higher salary as well. His role had changed because of his abilities, his prowess, and the value he added to the hospital.
An example of Scribe’s illustrations at Children’s Mercy where he has added imagery to walls, floor, and table tops to create an imaginative environment for the patients, families, and staff at the hospital.
However rewarding his work was in many regards, it also required long hours and inherently carried a mentally and emotionally heavy load. After 18 years, he was worn out. So in March, with commissioned work lined up for the next few months, he decided it was time to move on, and resigned from his position at the hospital.
Unbeknownst to him, his resignation came a mere two weeks before COVID began to slowly shut down the country. At the time, “I just thought it would take care of itself before it reaches my doorstep. It wasn’t a factor when I left my job,” he admits. However, he soon realized that wasn’t the case. All of the summer work he had lined up was related to live, public events all of which “were cancelled, because the summer was cancelled. Within two weeks. I didn’t know what I was going to do.” Luckily, with his large social media following, when he posted that he was available for small commissions, an east coast collector quickly requested “four really large, big expensive paintings,” which covered his first three months of expenses. Around the time of finishing this commission, he connected with Rabbit Hole founders Deb Pettid and Pete Cowdin through the friendship of their teenage sons, which led to his next career move as an on staff artist and sculptor at the new children’s literature museum, Rabbit hOle, slated to open next year.
At the Rabbit Hole, Scribe will examine the illustrations from a children’s book that they have decided to make into an immersive exhibit, and is able to mentally spin the images by flipping through the book and seeing how the illustrator has depicted a character from different angles. He then transforms the characters and their environment from 2D to 3D, carving them out of large-scale foam blocks, which another team member then coats in plastic before he paints and finishes. Scribe views his position at the Rabbit hOle as an optimal time to learn and once again focus on the technical aspects of artwork fabrication. Because he is not just stylistically making his own artwork, he sees this as a “chance to study famous illustrators and decode how they did it. We’re not trying to make these perfectly smooth, Disneyfied characters that are finished with car paint and look all shiny…we are trying to make it look like the way the artist made it….we make the 3D style match the illustrator.” Deb and Pete questioned whether Scribe would be fulfilled making other artists’ characters in a style different from his own, but at the end of the day, he is inspired by his work and co-workers at the Rabbit hOle, energized to come home and work on his own projects.
Scribe has translated the classic character Katy No-Pocket from 2D to 3D for the Rabbit hOle—the future children’s literature museum in KCMO slated to open in 2021—featuring immersive storytelling exhibits.
The imaginative escape that the Rabbit Hole is creating for families and children by bringing children’s books to life is not dissimilar from Scribe’s own mission when he was at Children’s Mercy. Integrating artwork and murals throughout the hospital spaces, and organizing events for the youth, such as having break dancers and rappers come and have direct interaction with kids, was all part of an effort to improve the quality of life for the patients, their families, and the hospital staff, and to provide an escape from their sometimes devastating circumstances.
Another similarity Scribe shares with the Rabbit Hole is an affinity for storytelling. “I really like the idea of children’s books, longer stories, and building worlds. When I go out and paint on a wall, it is really just about doing a single illustration from a bigger story. For years I’ve been working on the world called Resound Fields. The majority of the walls around the city are actually connected to it but nobody knows that. There is a thread that ties the majority of illustrations and paintings that you see through Instagram or Facebook, connecting them in ways that people haven’t seen yet, and that’s the story that I’m writing.” In 2007 Scribe published his first children’s book, There is an Octopus Under My Bed, which is a picture book geared towards younger children, and remains true to his graphic style: high contrast, animalistic, silly, and street art inspired. His second book, Scribble Squad, is a chapter book which released in 2016. His intention for Resound Fields is to create a mash-up of genres and mediums, displaying all of the types of artwork he does: a chapter book including pictures, comic strips, photos of 3-dimensionally sculpted characters, images of his murals…all rolled into one story and publication.
A character from the Resound Fields project was brought to life in collaboration with his wife, fiber artist Alisa Ross. Scribe conceived the character in a sketch and built the wood frame before Alisa’s padding and upholstery brought to life in 3D. In this case, Alisa changed the color and elongated the legs, a deviation from the original concept, which Scribe is open to on minor characters. No one can mess with Rumpus the Rhino, though. “That’s my Mickey Mouse",” he declares.
In addition to Resound Fields, Scribe has a slew of other exciting projects in the works as well. The first is a collaboration with the Museum at Prairiefire (MAP) in Overland Park. Scribe is teaming up with his wife—fiber/plush artist Alisa Ross—to create characters for a STEAM educational program being developed by MAP staff. Scribe and Ross are making puppets and animations which will be used for filming short videos, cartoons, skits, workbooks, and in classes or workshops. Another significant project Scribe is working on is a three block long mural that will be printed on an outdoor fabric to screen the construction fence for Greenwood Rising, a state-of-the-art history center underway in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The museum is a tribute to the Greenwood neighborhood, before and after the historical 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Scribe emotionally describes the race riot that his work memorializes. The riot was started over accusations that a black boy touched a white woman and enraged whites who wanted to circumvent the legal system. A disagreement ensued and quickly escalated to what is now called the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. White citizens chartered private planes to drop kerosene bombs on the Greenwood neighborhood, while blacks dug trenches in the streets, both sides armed with guns for battle. Prior to this civil war, Greenwood had been known as Black Wall Street—one of the wealthiest, segregated, black communities in America at that time. After the massacre, the neighborhood was devastated and never regained the status it held in the early 1900s. Citizens today want to teach their history to youth so that it will not be forgotten. Given the current state of the world today—with George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, a President that refuses to denounce white supremacists, and weekly reported protests, police brutality, and hate crimes throughout the country—it seems more prevalent than ever.
Scribe painted the Black Wall Street mural in Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood in 2018 under an overpass that cuts through the notoriously prosperous, historically black neighborhood. He has been commissioned to create a digital mural for a 3-block long construction fence at the site of the future Greenwood Rising museum.
Scribe is honored to do this commemorative mural and is “glad to be someone who is not African American but gets to participate in the healing process.” 2021 marks 100 years since this catastrophic event, and there are big plans for Juneteenth, including attendance by Obama and Oprah, making for national news coverage which would help broaden the audience and teach this important lesson in history to those of us who have been sheltered from its historical truth. As a person who has lived all over the country, as well as overseas, Scribe has seen racism and intolerance of all types and notes, “We are definitely more alike than we want to admit.” Perhaps the prejudice he has witnessed, and the judgment that resulted in his extradition from school, is the foundation behind the universal themes seen in his artwork and his use of animals for his characters, which makes it relatable to all and exclusive to none. Above all, Scribe has chosen to use his artistic abilities to help in the healing of himself and others by bringing imaginative worlds to life for joy and fun, rather than as a tool of self-promotion. That is his gift to the world.
Scribe’s home is filled with art and entomology, their relationship overlapping in their front room where pinned insects, both domestic and exotic, are displayed.
