INTERVIEW: 123 Klan

123 Klan interview

Probably all of you know 123klan and their work. With their significant letter and character style it`s easy to identify their pieces on the sites of the graff magazines. They never slow down and always keep themselves busy.
You can find them here http://www.123klan.com www.behance.net/123klanwww.flickr.com/photos/kingscien

What do you write and how did you start?
SCIEN & KLOR: Scien, i write since 1989 but i also like to change names to
practice other letters and styles,
like Rise or boom, Mrs Klor write since 1992. We both have started graffiti
end of eighties beginning of nineties, that time many places were blank,
especially in the north side of france (where we originally come from) of
course we had to paint illegal pieces and steal spraycans, it was too
expensive to buy paint and we didn’t get all those good sprays that
everybody use today, nor good caps as well. Time changed, thanks god for
Montana, alien, gold and molotow, it’s such a pleasure to paint with these
spraycans.

Where are you from/where do you currently live?
SCIEN & KLOR: We Originally both come from France Lille, we currently live
in Montréal.

Who were the first artists to inspire you the most? Do they still inspire
you?
SCIEN & KLOR: It was Skam, we discovered some B.BOys he did for a freind’s
fanzine back in 89, he was far away the best with Sanyo
that time. He became our friend quickly and he’s into 123klan as well. Today
he’s not painting that much, but he keeps it up and still create some
amazing artworks. Today with Internet it is very hard to tell you who
inspire us, there’s so much talented people… So we try to keep it up and
to do our own thing. If we have to name few people that we appreciate the
work, we would think of: Rime MSK, ROID, DEMS, Flying Fortress, Sune and
some classics, like Can2, Wane COD, Dondi.

What crews have you been part of?
SCIEN & KLOR: 3HC (3 HARD CORE) Paris, CNS (Checkin New Skillz) DDF Germany,
TAB (The Atomic Boys) and KD (KINGS DESTROY) NY

Up to this moment, what countries have you visited because of
graffiti/painting and which ones do you still want to visit?
SCIEN & KLOR: Well, we’ve been to Europe a lot, Mexico, U.S., Canada of course, Singapour,
Kuala Lampur, Australia. We never Been to Hong Kong and would love to go
there a day, to drop a piece of course but also for toys.

You’ve been painting for many years with Klor, how are you related to
her?
SCIEN & KLOR: We are married, for the best and the worst. That’s how it goes
right? We have 2 kids and we still rock some walls sometimes.

What is the feeling of having the opportunity to pay off the bills with
the things you actually love to do like graffiti and art?
Is it a sort of a dream job for you?
SCIEN & KLOR: Well we mostly make a living from Graphic design rather than
graffiti, but yeah we love our job, like graffiti it is very creative and
still interesting. So yeah it is a kind of “dream job” a certain way, even
if you have to work hard to keep it up.
Concerning Graffiti, it is where we learnt everything about “real” how to
get up with a name, how to front pb or beefs, but it also gave us the
opportunity to meet new people and to travel world wide, that’s the reason
why we want to keep graffiti as a hobbie and not a full time job. Graffiti
really balance our life, and we won’t let anybody to fuck this up.

What’s your opinion of street art?
SCIEN & KLOR: Do what you want to do, don’t mind about the rest.

Could you give any advices to the younger writers?
SCIEN & KLOR: Practice on paper first please, before to come over good
pieces on hall of fame…

At last, if you want to give some shout outs to somebody or simply say
something you can do it now.
SCIEN & KLOR: love is all! Style is the message!