In his 1999 book “The Art of Getting Over,” Stephen Powers (also known as Espo) profiled and catalogued the work of several dozen fellow graffiti artists. Among them was KR, known for drippy silver tags around San Francisco and also for the unusual material he made them with. “Krink,” Powers explained, “is a homemade silver ink” that was “developed in the KR kitchen.” Back then, KR, who says he stopped writing graffiti years ago and is thus more comfortable being known as Craig Costello, never figured his “Krink” would be known beyond that circle — let alone that it would become a brand name on his custom-designed ink and markers, sold in boutiques and specialty shops in the U.S., Europe and Japan.
“There was never, ever, ever the idea that I would make any money off it,” says Costello, who is 36 and lives in New York. “There wasn’t a brand, or a business plan, or a concept of anything like that.” Costello does a bit of freelance design work as well as various art projects. (The New York arts organization Eyebeam invited him last year to spruce up the facade of its Chelsea headquarters with copious amounts of Krink, as well as paint applied via fire extinguisher.) But today the Krink product line is his most steady source of income.
The evolution of KR’s ink from something a guy made to illegally tag city streets into a brand available in slick retail settings mirrors the way graffiti — or the graffiti aesthetic — has been absorbed into pop culture over a period of decades. Growing up in Queens in the 1980s, Costello was exposed to an earlier iteration of graffiti. This was back when a lot more people called it rank vandalism, and “street art” had yet to become a tactic used to market cars and electronics — or a look mimicked by tony fashion designers. Some at the time used home-brew ink markers; Costello recalls a recipe involving mimeograph paper soaked in alcohol overnight and mixed with a bit of nail-polish remover. A felt chalkboard eraser — stolen school supplies were a common base material — completed a tool for making a “mop tag” (the makeshift marker being the “mop”).
The formula he developed — he’s cagey about specifics — resulted in a metallic look and an expressionist drip effect. He sometimes scrawled the word “Krink” on the side of soda bottles that he filled with the stuff for friends, but that was more of a joke than a branding strategy. It wasn’t until around 2000, after he returned to New York, that the owners of Alife, a street-culture store on the Lower East Side, suggested it could sell. It did: 20 bottles, then 40, then 80. Over time, Costello started working with a manufacturer to make $10 “squeeze markers” (a bit like a shoe-polish bottle) and more penlike markers with wide tips ($8) that fill with ink through a pump-action mechanism. There are now nine Krink colors. There are also Krink T-shirts and sweatshirts made in collaboration with Alife and sold in various boutiques like the trendsetting shop Colette in Paris. (Colette’s Web site was recently decorated with a photo of Costello’s dripping Krink streaks.)
Krink’s packaging has a crisp, minimalist look that doesn’t scream graffiti, precisely to leave the door open to a wider audience than taggers. “This is an artists’ tool, a tool for creativity,” Costello maintains. His own gallery shows have included Krink on wood, on latex and on at least one trash can. Still, visit Krink
.com and you’ll see plenty of Krink on public walls and mailboxes. (Krink “changed the look of vandalism” in New York, an expert on such matters, known as Earsnot, told Juxtapoz magazine not long ago.) “O.K., it has a history,” Costello allows. “But our future is about broadening out the audience.”
In fact, the next Krink product is a fine-point marker. And the brand does present a different image than much of what is in online stores openly selling “graffiti supplies.” (On the Run markers, for example, feature a logo of a shadowy guy running with a spray-paint can.) Plenty of young artists have told Costello they love the Krink look — but they’re not graffiti writers and don’t intend to start. So when he talks about expanding into a product line that will make sense in a Pearl Paint store, or even a Michael’s, it’s a sentiment with more pragmatic origins than avoiding demonization as a vandal supplier: the market for the street-art aesthetic and influence is far bigger than the market of actual street artists.
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