An Artist’s Career Writ Large, With Spray Cans on Subway Trains

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

WHEELS Steven Ogburn whose graffiti identity was Blade, and his wife, Portia, in the ’72 Thunderbird bought new by his father; below, a New York subway car painted by Mr. Ogburn in 1980. More Photos »

Henry Chalfant

By RICHARD S. CHANG

Published: April 29, 2011FROM 1972 to 1984, Steven Ogburn was one of the most prolific graffiti writers in New York, though commuters of the era were more likely to know him by his nom de guerre: Blade. Mr. Ogburn says he spray-painted the name — in a huge variety of inventive lettering styles — on more than 5,000 subway trains.

The feat earned him a title: King of Trains.

Mr. Ogburn quit painting trains in 1984, however, shortly after returning from Amsterdam, where his work had been exhibited.

Graffiti had become trendy in the world of fine art, and a collector voiced concern after seeing a freshly painted Blade artwork on a subway train.

“He looks at me,” Mr. Ogburn, 54, recalled one recent afternoon. “He’s a very serious man. He said, ‘You cannot paint trains anymore. You are now a gallery artist, and you have to be respectful to your work and to the people who collect your work.’ ”

Mr. Ogburn continued: “That was his way of saying, ‘Grow up.’ ”

The developing artist did just that, focusing his creative energy on canvas. He has shown his art all over the world. His work is included in “Art in the Streets,” an exhibition that opened last month at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and will travel to the Brooklyn Museum next year.

Mr. Ogburn recounted the story on a tour of his old haunts, which included the Co-op City apartment complex in the Bronx. His big white coupe, a 1972 Ford Thunderbird, looked as if it had just fishtailed out of “The French Connection.” The car’s long hood and wide grille with four headlights are complemented by period details like whitewall tires and a partial vinyl roof with a landau bar on the rear roof pillars.

“If you get Martha Cooper’s ‘Hip Hop Files’ book,” he said, “you see me with a giant Afro, loading a roll of canvas into this car.”

Mr. Ogburn’s father bought the Thunderbird new in 1972, for $5,800, and passed it down to him a few years later. The car has been on the road since.

Minor upgrades can be seen here and there.

“I’ve put in the stereo systems that the young kids use where you can hear their car vibrating from across the intersection,” he said. “But I play Sly and the Family Stone. I play that on volume 25 and the whole car shakes.

“When I used to go paint trains, I listened to this music on my transistor radio,” he continued. “You would hear Nixon come over the radio at 2 or 3 in the morning and say we just invaded Saigon or something. And that was really frightening when you’re a teenager.”

His memories remain fresh. “Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Robert Kennedy, when all those people were murdered, I remember that,” he said.

With funk playing on the stereo and his wife, Portia, sitting next to him, Mr. Ogburn cruised from Co-op City to Orchard Beach and then through a more suburban surrounding, near Fordham Road. He was wearing a black jacket, black pants and black shoes. A black ball cap covered his head, which, on an unseasonably warm day in March, was lightly beaded with sweat.

Mr. Ogburn noted that the car had 238,000 miles on it; its 460-cubic-inch V-8 squealed quietly. “It has to be big to pull 5,000 pounds of metal,” he said. The mileage, he added, is 5 miles per gallon in the city and slightly higher on the highway.

Minutes later, he pulled up to the apartment he rented when he moved out on his own at 19 — when he married his first wife and moved to this area. He hadn’t been back in 30 years.

“I used to stand on the roof and watch the trains go by,” he said. The tracks are elevated in this part of the Bronx.

“When I would stand here, every train would have something on it,” he said.

“From ’70 to ’72, it was just scribble-scrabble stuff, but that was how it started,” he said. “When you got to 1975, you had tens of thousands of teenagers all running wild in the city.”

It was a different New York City when Mr. Ogburn was active as Blade. The city was not so vigilant about keeping trains clean, so many of the paintings remained intact for years, he said. “When you painted trains in the 1970s, not only did they circulate but nobody crossed your trains out,” he said.

A train clattered by in the distance. He got back in the car and drove down the street to the neighborhood where he and Portia were born.

“This is Parkside Playground,” he said as he got out of the car. A full-court basketball game was in progress. A bench alongside the court offered a clear view of tracks two blocks up the street.

“You could be in the middle of a full-court game, running up and down, but when you heard the train coming, everybody stopped to see what pieces go by,” he said, referring to the rolling artworks. “Then you go back to whatever you were doing. It was the best time.”

Graffiti writing happened where access was convenient — often on weekends, when trains were parked in the elevated neighborhood stations. When the police began guarding the stations, Mr. Ogburn and his cohorts, who called themselves the Crazy 5, climbed the beams that supported the elevated tracks with plastic bags of spray cans clenched in their teeth.

Mr. Ogburn said he was never caught, though there were close calls. “You’re running through train yards being chased by police all the time.”

Now it is art collectors who pursue Mr. Ogburn, especially Europeans.

“Paul McCartney bought from the Guernsey’s Auction in the Puck building,” he said, referring to a notable New York auction of graffiti art in 2000. That led to an embarrassing encounter once, when Mr. Ogburn had his British musicians confused.

“I actually met Eric Clapton, going to London about five years ago on a plane. I walked over humble as can be, saying, ‘Thank you, Mr. Clapton, for purchasing graffiti art.’ And he said, ‘I didn’t purchase your painting, mate. Paul did.’ “