GRAFFITI'S LIFE AFTER DEATH

It is hard to complain about losing money when you make your money painting
death. A decade ago, when crack cocaine and drive-by shootings scarred the
Bronx, a small band of graffiti muralists perfected the craft of painting
colorful memorial walls that honored the borough's dead. It was a violent
time back then, and the violence kept them busy. The Tats Cru, as they were
known, sprayed dozens of aerosol mementos in schoolyards and handball
courts, on storefront grates and apartment building walls.

These days, however, the telephone inside their Hunts Point studio rings
with far less depressing commissions. As the crack wars and the wholesale
violence of the 1990's slowly but surely slipped into the past, their
departure claimed its own casualty - a vivid form of urban art.

Ten years ago, the Tats Cru might have painted two or three memorials a
month. These days, they do no more than six a year. "It was too much death
back then," said Sotero Ortiz, a 39-year-old member of the crew who goes by
the graffiti handle BG 183. "People were dropping everywhere, like flies.
It isn't like that now, thank God. I couldn't take it anymore."

There have been 116 homicide victims in the Bronx this year, according to
the most recent police statistics, down 19 percent from the same period
last year and 68 percent from 1991. At the height of the bloodshed, the
Tats Cru worked around the clock and had a reputation for being the Bronx's
own grim reapers. When they went to funerals, mourners would accuse them of
showing up to hand out business cards. If they happened to wander down an
unfamiliar block, the people on the street would ask, nervously, "Who died?"

Now, instead of hustling for commercial work to offset their business in
memorial walls, the crew sees their walls as a sideline to their many
commercial jobs. They paint minivans for health care companies, bathrooms
for Manhattan nightclubs and college dormitory walls. There are
longstanding contracts with MTV and Coca-Cola. There is even an offer to
paint a portable toilet for an upcoming public art show.

What started out as a guerrilla operation armed with a single milk crate
full of spray-paint cans, a rickety wooden ladder and an old Ford Bronco is
now a successful corporation that members say brings in from $250,000 to
$400,000 a year. The crew has six full-time employees, a half-dozen
freelance artists and representatives in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago and
Boston.

"The business has changed, the whole city has changed," said Wilfredo
Feliciano, whose nom de paint is Bio. "You can feel it on the streets."

The crew's founding members - Bio, BG 183 and Nicer (his real name is
Hector Nazario) - met nearly 20 years ago in an art class at James Monroe
High School in the South Bronx. As teenagers, they took to the streets and
the subway tunnels, calling themselves the Tats Cru and earning fame in the
neighborhood and notoriety among the police. (Tats, they said, stands for
Top Artist Talents, as well as tough teenagers.)

In 1984, they were approached by the survivors of a man named M.C. Cowboy,
who performed with the hip-hop artist Grand Master Flash. M.C. Cowboy had
been shot to death, and his relatives asked the crew to paint a mural in
his honor. They designed a simple rendering of the dead man's name and
dates and painted it on a wall of the Bronx River Houses in Morris Park. It
was a small thing - or as Bio put it, "We didn't think too much about it at
the time."

Soon enough, though, word of the mural spread through the streets and the
orders started coming in. Grieving family members sought out the crew,
tracked them down. It got to the point where they had to design a standard
format for their walls: the name and dates of the deceased, a portrait, a
symbol or two to represent the person's life and, perhaps, a few short
words from those who were left behind: "Always missed but never forgotten"
or "Till we meet again."

Often, a grieving relative would stand off to the side as the work was
being done. When they started, the artists would not know a thing about
their subject. Eight hours later, when the paint had finally dried, they
would know all there was to know. The mourners' stories had been told.

"For the community, these walls became like wailing walls or walls of
cleansing," Nicer said. "It was different from our other work; it was more
emotional. You would stand there with the families. Mothers would break down."

Over the years, the crew painted dozens of memorial walls in Manhattan,
Brooklyn and Queens, though mostly in the Bronx. They painted in
remembrance of drug dealers, innocent passers-by, victims of heart attacks
and car accidents, even two beloved pets. They painted a wall for the
rapper Big Pun, and every year they paint it anew as legions of the dead
man's fans stand by on the street and watch. They have painted a wall for
Tito Puente, the salsa music star, which was driven to Florida on the back
of a flatbed truck.

Recently, the crew started working on memorial walls for three Bronx
firefighters who died in last year's terrorist attacks. Two of the men are
the first nonblack or non-Hispanic people the crew has memorialized.

But no matter the subject, they said, the goal is always the same.

"In essence," Bio said, "you want to bring them back to life."

Recreating the dead requires skill and patience and an aptitude for working
on the street. The crew members spend 90 percent of every workday outdoors
in the neighborhoods they serve. They mix with the locals, and they have
seen plenty - from shootouts and car accidents to a chicken crossing the road.

"It was walking right across East Tremont Avenue," Nicer recalled. "I
turned to Bio and said, `Hey, man, you ever wonder why the chicken crossed
the road? Well, now you've got the chance to ask. There he goes, right
there.' "

It seems that no matter where they worked the same stock characters appeared.

There was the Local Drunk who always muttered with beer on his breath,
"What are you punks doing here?" There was the Nosy Old Lady who always
inquired, "Do you have a license to be painting that?" (Most of their work
was on public property, sometimes without permission from the city.) There
was the Critic, who always said, with a shake of his head, "No, that
doesn't look like him."

Eight years ago, the crew was berated by a Bronx community board for
painting a wall in honor of a man called White Boy John. White Boy John was
a Cuban gangster, and his wall portrayed him with a Lexus and a shotgun,
wearing an American flag. The board members argued that it was
irresponsible to glorify the drug trade. The Tats Cru said they had been
asked to paint the wall by the dead man's mother, guns and all. Death by
violence in the Bronx was just real life.

"When we started out, our high school art teacher said: `Don't do it.
There'll be negative publicity,' " Bio said. "But we lived in the
neighborhood and people would approach us. We didn't have a choice."

These days, what they don't have is the order flow. "I don't mind that it's
slowed down," Bio went on. "I'd rather not do them, if we don't have to.
Trust me, we have plenty of other ways of making money."