ADER: FOKUSED

Brooklyn's ADER has been peppering the city with his art for a solid decade and a half now. "I been around in this whole graffiti subculture since before I could read it," he said, "it started with seeing colors on trains, till looking at family doing blackbooks with designers and my first look at a homemade marker hands on. I've been ADER since 1991". It's always really illuminating to look at the way writers have adapted to changes in the game over that many years.

One of the major facets of graffiti and street art that's seen a lot of new attention over the last couple years is the character. "Characters are something I did since I was piecing in books. I just used to do the A alone then i was going through some blackbooks from like 93 and I saw one I did with a character . Then i just got back into it doing different expressions... Those are the A Men stay fokused on them!".

Characters or pieces, ADER's work is gritty. So it's fitting that he's been collaborating with Neck Face-- often hated, never too polished, but definitely on everybody's radar. The designs they came up with are getting printed on t-shirts from ADER's Fokused Empire line of clothes and bags.

"The Fokused Empire Merchandise is something I started in like 2002-2003, simply hand painting tote bags and it got serious when people would come into my restaurant and make offers to purchase them. I didn't know how to silkscreen so I would hand paint every bag, every detail. Then once I learned how to screen print, hand painting and killing lots of acrylics went out the window. I flipped and started doing t-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, etc all on my own. The plan is to put it out there on a full fledged level wiith an intent on keeping people FOKUSED"

Nowadays ADER is enlisted in the Marines as a translator but that doesn't stop him from keeping FOKUSED on the art. Check out his blog and flickr if you want to see what he's been up to.