Datta Pop chats with the man every DeviantART member should know- True Marmalade- about his work… Oh and about children with artillery.

DP: So Mr. Marmalade, who are you really? And where you at?
TM: Erik Binggeser, at your service- located in currently cold as Antarctica Lake Orion, MI
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DP: Okay, so just about everyone knows you're DeviantART's master of street art (for Christ's sake you've got a fan club) but what's the story behind your art?
TM: Hmm, I suppose everything got started when I lived with three graphic design students my sophomore year in college. They were always doing art projects and leaving their crap around the apartment so it was pretty much a given that I would pick something up and try my hand art being artistic. For one of their projects they had to make a stencil, something simple, one layer logo type deal. I think one roommate did a bug, another did a flower, and the last did their name or something. I thought this was a pretty slick little process of cutting paper and being able to mass produce an image, so I decided to give it a shot. [link] was my first stencil, inspired by a skateboard graphic I saw. After that I checked some stuff about stenciling online and realized that there was a whole ‘nother world to this paper cutting infatuation and I was instantly hooked. That was a year and a half ago and I haven't stopped since.
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DP: Good to know. So what's the deal behind this project you call Kids With Guns?
TM: Well, that's turned into something completely different from what I could ever had expected from the beginning. I'm going to copy paste the definition behind the name that I gave someone on dA a while ago when they asked about it's similarity to a Gorillaz song: It didn't start out as a Gorillaz tribute actually; it's a name for a semi-gang that he thought up. My brother and a friend of his both had red bandanas tied around their heads for some reason, and got in trouble because they were viewed as a 'gang symbol'. They thought this was ridiculous and unfair, so they instead tied them around their upper thighs and decided to make a gang out of it. For some strange coincidence, they both had t-shirts that had pictures of guns on them (my brothers was a Guns 'N Roses shirt with the two revolvers and roses) so they called themselves Kids With Guns. When he told me about it later that day, I thought of the Gorillaz song and mentioned it; but he didn't have that in mind when he picked the name.
That's the story behind the name, but the whole crew came together from me using that name for a chatroom about street art that I started on DeviantART.
People began to find it and hang out and bounce ideas off each other, and I've made a lot of friends through it. I think it's been about a year and a half since it was first made. We've got members all around the world, in every continent but Antarctica. It's kinda flattering, I suppose, when I stop and think about how people get a sense of belonging with this group of people that all began with a simple little chat room and now has grown to a full blown website that keeps growing everyday.
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DP: And where can Datta Pop readers find this group?
TM: the official website is [link]
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DP: And the chat?
TM: [link] but you need a DeviantART account to talk in it. Eventually we'll get an IRC chat setup, but it hasn't been needed yet
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DP: So, back to your art. Would you consider yourself a graffiti writer?
TM: I'm definitely not a graffiti writer and probably not a graffiti artist even. I rarely 'get up' on the streets with my stencils. 90% of my art is done in the safety of my garage on canvas. Some people would look down on this, but there's really no other way to put as much art into it as doing it at home. Can't really do all sorts of fancy paint drips and fades when you've got 5 minutes on a street corner before the next car drives by.
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DP: True that. What would you call your work? In other words, what genre is your art?
TM: 'Street artist' perhaps. It’s definitely street style inspired art, that goes without saying. But I'd have to say I'm a street artist, unless I can just call myself a Stenciler.
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DP: Either one works. Tell us, what on this stenciler's playlist?
TM: Umm, lately I've been listening to a lot of electronica, drum and bass kinda stuff. But really I listen to anything. 7000 songs on my iPod and I've got all genres from Kanye to Johnny Cash to MSI to The Beatles. I've even got Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue on there. [link] if anyone really wants to know absolutely everything I listen to.
________________________________________ DP: Well then, it's good to hear that Mr. Marmalade was able to do an interview with us. Thank you, Erik!
TM: I'm glad I was able to help out, and thanks to you too!
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Truemarmalade’s link information:
[link]
[link]

Originally on [link]