Limerick’s Gritty Shoote 061 13 April 2011

IrishStreetArt.com hooked up with Shoote 061, an artist who is really starting to make a mark on the Irish scene. The Limerick native told us the story of his journey to date.

‘I’ve always enjoyed art, reckon I came out of the womb holding a 6b pencil. Through out my younger years it was always a strong point. At about thirteen I started getting interested in street art, lured by the rattles and hiss of spray cans, I quickly got the bug and I’ve been infected ever since. When I first started painting there was no graff shop in Limerick, so acquiring paint meant ventures to the big smoke or make do with what I had. So household paints any kinda of paint really was used. Tagging was what I had a feel for at the beginning still today is what gets me buzzing the most. Eventually I had a l’il encounter with the ole 5-O l’il slap on the wrist really, they had my mother rang before I was even on the bus home. Thankfully this didn’t put too much of a stop to my plans thanks to fairly lenient parents who thought “Sure ya could have been doing a lot worse”. ‘

‘I was getting more serious about art around then and I decided to get a portfolio together and go for Art college. I was succesful, thankfully, and it has to be the best decision Ive made in my life. In college I started to run in to the people who got me interested in graff. Baqs and Gek” were the first tags I saw around Limerick. I’d never met them in person so when I did get the chance to meet them I was delighted!! Things really just unfolded from there… then ventures out at night, local jams, tagging like a mo fo, stickers, wheat paste and so on. The Limerick scene is going from strength to strength just after a great local jam on Paddy’s day organised by Cato and Mal went down really well.’

‘At the moment im focusing on how to bring my street art into my college work. I’m doing printmaking so really this discipline is fine tuned for street art really and there is endless possibilities with combining the two. Currently, me and two friends have started a collective producing work with the printing press, cans, markers, everything really and using the city as our gallery. There’s a visual infiltration occurring and hopefully we’ll get to show y’all some more work soon!!’

Shout out to everyone keeping the sráideanna alive!