The media calls Iceberg Slick because, as a high-profile curator and artist in the Downtown scene, he's a natural source. The work he shows at his 5ive Finger Miscount studio and gallery, and in the common areas of the Arts Factory, has drawn a baggy-pantsed element to the Arts District, resulting in some resentments (those kids don't buy art) and a couple of skirmishes. You can tell Slick is frustrated because his eyes roll and he presses his lips together in a sort of smirk-frown. That voice, which sounds jazz-DJ cool over the phone, sounds world-weary. He presses his trigger and middle fingers together, thrusting them in the air. An occasional expletive slips out.
Slick, 32, is dressed in blue jeans, white sneakers and a green-and-blue patterned shirt, a casual look that says, I'm from the hip-hop generation, but doesn't advertise it the way baggy pants and bling do. The 5ive Finger Miscount studio, which he runs with 28-year-old partner Caesar Garcia, is swathed in blue paint, a giant mural dominating the back wall and the remaining surfaces posterized with murals of flirty girls, rock dudes and bohemian-looking fellows. Outside the gallery, Slick's imprint is more visible. To the uninitiated eye, the Arts Factory, which serves as the central nervous system of the burgeoning Downtown arts scene, is covered in, well, graffiti—works he commissioned from local artists. There's a Medusa head done by Ruckus One and a two-story mural of a floating man by MEAR One, a former LA graffiti artist who now owns a graphic design firm. Ground zero for the local arts scene looks a bit like a New York subway.
"There are people in the Arts District who don't want me here," says Slick, who finances the studio by doing magic and DJing at a strip club. "They don't like the murals on the outside of the building. Nobody's going to tell you that, but I hear the rumors and the backtalk. As far as I'm concerned, we're the only building in the Arts District that looks artistic."
On my second and third trips there, he brings up graffiti within minutes, overshadowing the fact that gallery owner Jerry Misko sought his help; that Arts Factory owner Wes Isbutt hired him to select the shows that exhibit monthly in the common area of the 20-gallery building; that more young people are coming to the monthly First Friday events. Slick is pissed off because he feels like he's getting pissed on. By whom? Well, he doesn't want specific names printed. Let's just call them the art-ocracy. He will say that municipal graffiti-abatement specialists still give him flack, four years after Miscount's first show and that, while no one has excluded Slick and Garcia from meetings about how to improve the Arts District, who else are they talking about when they derisively refer to the hip-hop crowd?
"We don't feel welcome at many of these art meetings," Slick says. "People have overlooked us because we don't dress like curators."
And if a fight happens, "it's our fault," Garcia adds. "If the kids aren't buying art, it's our fault. Because we are attracting that element—young people, a quote-unquote hip-hop crowd, who don't buy art. Everything is our fault. In arts districts in other cities, you know you're in an arts district because of the paintings and murals. We're in an industrial area that has never been safe. If you want to paint a mural on the wall, people get mad."
Welcome to the debate over the future of the arts district. To go highbrow or lowbrow? Embrace gentrification—and the higher rents it brings—or not? Cater to the moneyed elite or cultivate art appreciation among the young?
Jerry Misko, an artist and co-owner of Dust Gallery, is an unabashed fan: "Slick brings a stylistically urban and approachable perspective to making art. The argument over the validity of these things as tappable sources of fine art has been around since pop in the '60s and the Haring/Basquiat '80s. Not even much of an argument any more. Slick and the artists he brings in aren't always going to make everyone happy, but he strives to make his exhibitions quality endeavors with solid artists."
When the comments come about Slick ghettoizing—again, he only hears it third-hand—he gets defensive, then offensive, then, during this interview, repetitive, repeatedly circling back to the topic of graffiti, all told, a dozen times.
"Graffiti is art," he says. "Tagging is a crime."
His birth name is Emmett Gates Jr. His nickname, Slim, because of his pencil-thin frame, came from a crackhead in the violent Sierra Vista neighborhood near the Boulevard Mall, where he peddled drugs as a teen. When Gates heard about legendary pimp Iceberg Slim, he adapted that moniker into Iceberg Slick. And as Slick will tell you, he's an unlikely curator. Quite a transition from cocaine dealer to art curator. More so because he lacks a formal art education, an encyclopedic knowledge of art history and the ability to distinguish Renoirs from Matisses from Picassos. But those aren't the only things that make a curator. "There was a big learning curve," he admits.
And he's still learning. A few months ago, Arts Factory owner Wes Isbutt says Slick was crucified on an NPR interview about—guess what?—graffiti. "They set him up," says Isbutt, claiming that Slick didn't know they were going to bash graffiti. "I was so upset. Iceberg has a huge vision and dream. He helps kids and does a lot of good stuff. He and I understand there's been an art movement out of the graffiti world in New York. Folks in the press want to use the word graffiti because it connotes low-lifes. I told Iceberg not to let people put you in that position. You have to change the word. Call it urban art, if they're going to associate the word with something bad. As for how he's doing as a curator, Isbutt says Slick has been a quick study. He's learning how to collaborate with galleries in New York and Los Angeles. "All of the people who are considered the hip artists in Las Vegas, Iceberg has made it possible for them to show here. Amy Sol, who's on fire right now and wanted all over the country. Jerry Misko, Victor Whitmill, Scott Robinson. He's encouraged this. We're now doing projects with major, established galleries. With Caesar, we're now going to branch out more with artists and music events outside of First Fridays. Slick just has a natural ability to talk to artists. They trust him, and they sell art. At the end of the day, that's the bottom line."
Being a successful curator is one thing. Convincing the masses that urban art is, indeed, artistic—quite another. And who says there's a local market for art influenced by urban life, anyway? Or that taggers will actually starting putting their work on canvas and submitting it to galleries?
The county annually spends $2.5 million to combat graffiti, county spokeswoman Stacey Welling says. In March, the county, Metro and the district attorney's office teamed to beef up enforcement. Youth arrested for tagging were responsible for clean-up. Welling couldn't say whether graffiti shows in galleries had any impact on tagging.
Nor would City Neighborhood Services spokeswoman Mary Ann Price link graffiti exhibits with tagging—the city spent $100,000 on paint alone in 2005 to clean up marked walls.
"Graffiti in a gallery is very different from something tagging on private property without permission," she says, noting that newcomers and audacious gangs exacerbate the issue. "Tagging is a serious problem."
As for Slick's urban art, much of it reflects the people he's run across in the 'hood—girls with big butts, potty-mouth boys with nappy hair, loudmouth parents and gang members. His comic book Jack Move is about a nerd who owes a bully money and gets his teeth knocked out for not paying up. In his comic book Santa Claus is Coming to Die, two bad-ass kids plot St. Nick's murder because they got stiffed on Christmas presents.
If young people see art that reflects their lives, Slick says, maybe they'll get inspired and get involved. And he doesn't want the entire Arts District blanketed with urban art. On a quick drive down Main Street, south of Charleston, he looks at the furniture stores and sees galleries. Back near the Arts Factory, he looks at the light poles and envisions something designed into the poles. Everything would be art, he says. The buildings. The sidewalks. He says opposition to what he's doing in the Arts Factory and what he wants to do for the Arts District is probably due more to fear than racism.
"You have lots of kids committing crimes these days. And with everyone wearing a hip-hop style of clothing, it's hard to differentiate the gangsters from the normal kids. But we are evolving as people, and art is evolving. The younger generation is no longer excited to a see a landscape. Three hundred years ago, they might have been excited to see a portrait of the Alps. But now they can go to a book or the Internet, see a picture of the Alps and paint it. We're now in an era of subconscious release, which is what lowbrow or urban art is all about. It's peoples' dreams and imaginations put to canvas."
Hell if he doesn't sound like a curator.
"Let's take a ride to Dale's spot."
You're cool riding with Slick because you know he'll fill your notebook. Conversations become lengthy discussions, spliced with his dissertations—some logical, some esoteric, some meandering—on, well ... anything is fair game. He can talk on Tupac, or the lack of arts education in school, Spider-Man or the process of creating art. That comment about subconscious release? Dude talks like this a lot.
Sample: "Artists are better people. Writers, painters, poets, musicians, anyone who creates art is an artist and has the power to change the world. We forget this because of school, which focuses on left-brain activity. Art engages kids. You are an artist. As a reporter, you make words connect. That's creation and art. Artists make the world better. We are the correspondents of God."
You're cool with hearing this stuff while riding with Slick until you realize that the air conditioner in his car has asthma. Puffs of air only slightly cooler than the weather outside smack you in the face. Thankfully, the drive is short—out onto Charleston, south on Main Street, right turn into a commercial center that appears more comical than commercial, with signs that look like they are written in Sharpie. There's a Fred Sanford quality to the furniture stores, antique outlets and other businesses in this part of Downtown. Everything's junky and clunky. Commerce may take place here, but there's not much going on this afternoon. And guess, just guess, what's the first thing you see pulling into Dale Mathis' under-construction gallery?
"Fuckin' taggers," Slick says.
And what's the first thing you think when you see Mathis, with his bandanna and paint-stained shirt? That this is a big-ass man, a six-foot-something, 300-something-pound colossus of a tagger. But in fact he is an artist about to open a gallery.
The guy makes clocks. Not just any clocks. Clocks with human-looking eyes and bullet holes, pear-shaped clocks and clocks that are eight feet tall. He calls it "machine art." He worked construction before meeting Slick in 2002 at a café.
"He was the angriest black man in America," Slick jokes.
"He changed my life," Mathis says. "He taught me how to adapt."
Adapt, not assimilate. Mathis distinguishs between the two—you lose part of yourself when you assimilate. "With Slick, I learned how to improvise. A lot of brothers don't know how to do this. There aren't a lot of blacks in the art world. We have to adapt to the art world. I made a clock called ‘Crucifixion of a Legacy' [in 2002] that had the names of famous black artists on it. I went to a store, and the guy told me that if I changed it, he could sell it. I thought he was being racist. I changed the piece, renamed it ‘Killing Time.' I took out the names and put bullet holes in the frame and a blue eye in the clock. People loved it. I sold eight of them for $10,000 apiece."
Slick taught Mathis how to network. When Mathis got fired from a bouncing gig, Slick hooked up at Club Paradise, he remained friends with the higher-ups. He knew they had moneyed friends. One thing led to another and, bam, his 1,500-square-foot gallery is set to early next year. None of this would be possible without Slick.
"Slick doing what he's doing is a wonderful thing."
The story of legendary pimp Iceberg Slim (aka Robert Beck) in a small way mirrors Iceberg Slick's. Both had decent childhoods, were troubled young adults, briefly attended college (Beck at Tuskegee in Alabama, Slick at CCSN), then changed for the good as they matured.
"I did some things I'm not proud of," says Slick, who was born in Pasadena.
Living like he did as a young adult—gambling, dealing and using cocaine—he should either be dead, in prison or unemployed. The youngest of nine children (seven brothers, one sister; only he and his sister had the same mom) and a sci-fi fan and comic book nerd, he struggled to fit in. Friends were hard to come by since he hop-scotched through nearly a dozen schools. So he became a class clown, "crumbing," or making fun of people, to deflect attention. Got good at it, too, so good no one wanted to challenge him. Even if they discovered he was weird—"kids in the 'hood weren't into drawing and comic books"—he'd feed them off with a well-placed insult. His older brother, Wesley, inspired him to let the world in on his passions.
"Me and my brother would get together and draw," he says. "We would take a character and make him our own creation. He'd turn Snoopy and Mickey Mouse into gangbangers. I thought it was neat."
At age eight, he found a hidden Richard Pryor tape lying around the house—laughing at the curse words—then discovered noted cartoonist Ralph Bakshi and stumbled upon the Freak Brothers' adult-oriented comic books. Slick stapled sheets together to create his first comic, about a mischievous boy named Bobby. In the 12th grade, while living in Naked City, a rough neighborhood behind the Stratosphere, he put together Colored Vengeance, a comic about the war between Bloods and Crips. Someone told the principal and he almost got expelled from Vegas High School. "They said it glorified gangs," he says.
Out of high school and with no real plans, he created another gang-oriented comic, The Young and the Ruthless, whose central character was Thugs Bunny. He paid $500 to get it professionally printed and hoped for the best. He didn't get it. "Nobody was paying attention to it," he says. "I was trying to make social commentary about making positive choices."
But he wasn't even listening to the message in his own comic book. At 19, he was a crack addict and a gambleholic. When money got low, he financed both addictions with credit cards.
He got clean in the mid-'90s, but having a child in 1996 made him get focused. He began to learn the craft of making comics. He revisited a character, Jamurai, he'd created in his druggie days. Inspired by martial-arts films and the samurai-loving Wu Tang Clan, he fashioned a comic-book storyline around a dreadlocked black vigilante samurai. Through guerilla marketing, the comic sold well. From 2000 to now, he's put out posters, short stories and six editions of Jamurai comics.
Another turning point came in 2002. With two daughters and a son on the way, he needed to make more money. After attending an art show in Santa Monica, California, he came up with the idea for 5ive Finger Miscount, an arts collective. (He and K.D. Matheson are the only two remaining original Miscount members, which included VEZUN, Dray and Professor 8000 Percent. The group has since grown to more than a dozen.) The Miscount show, a graffiti exhibition in August 2002, featured work from legendary LA artist MEAR One, rap acts and no problems. "CityLife and the Review-Journal dissed us," he says, but the crowd loved it. They were on to something. But no one in the Arts Factory wanted to touch graffiti. When fellow Miscounter K.D. Matheson let the group show in his gallery at the Arts Factory—a small room on the first floor—Slick says things picked up and Isbutt hired him. With curator behind his name, it was natural for Slick to take on a larger role in the Downtown arts scene.
How much of Slick's paranoia is the typical mumbo-jumbo of anti-establishment types and how much is true? Hard to say. But there are signs of discontent from some folks in the Arts Factory. In her eighth year as the Arts Factory's property manager, Evette Jensen has had a front-row seat for the evolution of the Arts District and the Arts Factory, the battle between highbrow and lowbrow, over what the Arts District should be and is becoming.
"Slick has really good intentions and lots of great ideas," she says. "We are working together to try and make a difference and the obvious way to do this is to target the kids. We're kind of feeling this out and we know that not everyone embraces this. Some things have gone down because of the hip-hop angle, so people are worried. But I think he's on to something good. When there's a great month, everything is great. When someone has a bad month, they say you suck because you are bringing an element that's not buying art. As the property manager, I'm in the middle. But the diversity is what makes it cool."
Andre "Dray" Wilmore met Slick shortly after Dray's show at the Clark County Library in the middle of 2002. One of their first collaborations was a graffiti show months later at the now-closed Gallery Au Go-Go in which 5ive Finger crew members painted murals. Municipal graffiti-abatement forces bitched, but there were no problems. In 2003, Dray caught loads of flack from county officials for "Wet Paint," a graffiti-inspired exhibition at the Winchester Cultural Center. Dray says everyone was thrown off by the word graffiti. It scares people, he says, because they're not educated about it. "What Slick is doing and what we've done collectively is bring awareness to what graffiti is," Dray says.
The future of the Arts District has a pencil in his hand and is doing a fair job of drawing a face, even if the ears are slightly askew, the nose a tad bulbous and the eyes slit-like. Angel is 7 going on 21, it seems. Normally quiet, he gets expressive when it comes to art.
Angel answers questions about shapes and profiles without pausing from his sketch. He draws an oval for the face, then bisects the face with a horizontal and vertical line—to make everything even. Slick reminds him to sketch the ears, nose and mouth along those lines. Every now and then, he chats with Angel's mother, Leyla.
Caesar and Dale quietly listen. Slick surveys Angel's work. He's proud, but quiet. When there's silence, you can be sure that a tangent's coming on. "Many of us don't use our imaginations. We did a lot as kids. We'd look at a cloud and see a dog. I want to teach him that it's okay to look at the world and see shapes, it's okay to use your imagination."
Leyla says Angel has been drawing since he could talk. In him, Slick sees the future of art, possibly of the Arts District and Vegas' art scene. Slick is trying to work on Angel's temper. He's a perfectionist. If something isn't just right, he throws a fit. You can see it the face he's drawn—the nose has been erased three times. Everyone in the room is impressed with Angel's talent. Of all the hopes for him, he himself might have the highest.
"I want to sell my stuff on eBay," he says.