This is Evol
A Pictou County graffiti artist shares his story
A Pictou County youth shares why he got into graffiti.
He’s an artist with a record. Criminal.
He dresses like a teen but talks like a man who’s lived a lot.
His hand has self-applied tattoos. Maybe just ink.
He looks you in the eye when he talks; his handshake is firm.
And he holds his girlfriend’s fingers tightly – as if afraid, that if one lets go, the other might disappear. This is Evol.
•••
In April 2019, when he was 16, police showed up at his Trenton home and arrested him. His crime was graffiti, sprayed throughout Pictou County over a four-month period. He eventually faced more than 30 charges of vandalism. He spent a day in jail, went through the court process and was eventually sentenced to 200 hours of community service, 15 months probation and was given a restitution order of more than $13,000.
He now wants people to know he’s sorry for what he did and the damage he caused. He hadn’t realized the far-reaching cost of what he was doing at the time, he said.
“I really want to apologize to anybody that I did affect and let them know it wasn’t a personal vendetta against them or anything.”
But he also wants people to know the story behind the graffiti. He wants people to know him.
BECOMING EVOL
Evol’s name can’t be used because he was a minor when he committed his crimes. The News has agreed to use his graffiti identity instead.
In graffiti an artist’s name is what’s important. In street art, the name – or tag – is secondary; in graffiti it’s the focus.
Evol remembers the first time he saw graffiti. He was 10 or 11 and living in Springhill – a town he describes as in the middle of the woods where there’s nothing to do.
On the back of the school and other old and tired brick buildings he found his calling – faded art left by another bored teen. At first he looked and admired. He had always had a bit of an interest in art. As a child, he would draw boats and was fascinated by the Titanic. But this art gave him new inspiration. He created his own graffiti tag – Bear – and began sketching it repeatedly, perfecting different styles and colours.
Evol’s grandfather was actually a judge. Evol remembers having a conversation with him as a kid. He was surprised to hear his grandfather speak of it as art, like you’d see in a museum. His grandfather told him it was important not to be vulgar and to show artistic style. Done in the right place, it was OK.
That conversation left an impression.
“I’m not going to be one of those kids that goes around spray-painting dicks on a wall,” he said. “Let’s take it seriously”
He was driving in the woods on his dirt bike while still in Springhill when he saw a spray can on the ground. He picked it up and found it full.
“That night I put paint to wall and here I am.”
He describes that first taste of illegal art as both an adrenaline rush and a release.
“It made me feel like every single worry that I had was behind me. I wasn’t even me in that moment. I wasn’t the kid that I was with all my problems thinking that everything was the end of the world. I was the tag. I was the name without a face. People would look at it. Maybe they’d hate it, maybe they’d be curious and just want to know who the person is. Seeing the name would make people think, whether it be for the good or the bad.”
Bear changed his tag to Evol after a bad relationship which he says changed him.
Evol is based on the Eminem song Space Bound, released on his 2010 record Recovery, which includes the lyric “...love is ‘evol’. Spell it backwards I’ll show ya.”
“Before I met her, I wore button-ups, khakis and a blazer. By the time we broke up I was wearing chains, hoodies and listening to rap music.”
What bothered him most was that he hadn’t wanted to change, but found himself unable to return to who he was before.
“It changed so quickly for me because I thought it’s what love was,” he said. “I had a really bad look at what love was after that. Love was difficult. Confusing. Most importantly, evil.”
EVOL CRIMES
A year ago, Evol says he was in a bad place. His parents were splitting up, his mom’s mental health was deteriorating and addictions were taking their toll on his family. He was drinking a lot, using pills occasionally. As his mom’s first born, he felt a responsibility to help her, so he dropped out of school.
“For me, it looked like life really wasn’t going anywhere, and if I died any one of those days from doing something stupid when I was drinking or overdosed, nobody would know, nobody would be the wiser.”
And so, at two or three in the morning, he would go for a walk, spray paint in hand.
“With that walk, I also got to express myself,” he said. “If
I was feeling really depressed, maybe I’d put a quote next to a tag or a piece that I made and people would know how I felt in that moment. Or if I was angry, you might be able to tell by how aggressive my letters look. It was a way for me to express myself and be heard.”
So many times, he says, he feels like teenagers’ problems are dismissed – that they either just need to grow up or that it won’t be such a big deal later... that life will get better. Those responses do nothing for him.
“What if it never does? What if this is something we have to live with our entire lives?”
RESOLVING EVOL
Knowing what he does now, Evol says he wouldn’t have committed the crimes he did. Certainly not in the way he did, anyway.
With a ban on owning spray paint and paint markers, his art has been confined to the pages of a sketchbook. He’s experimenting still with his tag, trying new things and adding characters, similar to graffiti from the Bronx in the 1980s and ‘90s.
His probation is up in October. He has a proposal for town leaders: create a wall for youth in Pictou County that would be free for others to paint on and express themselves. Anyone gets vulgar, he said, he’ll take care of it. Right now he said the only one of this type in Atlantic Canada is in Newfoundland. But he believes it’s a great compromise – youth can be heard and personal property is protected.
“Most people take a look at me now and the only thing they think is ‘there’s a teenager who is messing up his life, or probably has some issues or some problems.’ A lot of people don’t look at the youth with hopeful eyes.”
Evol’s life remains unsettled in many ways. But there are times, he says, he dreams of what his life might be like. Maybe he could open a graffiti supply store or even do something in fashion design incorporating his style. He knows one reformed graffiti artist with a wife and kids. Maybe that could be him?
More than anything, he seems to want to be remembered. And that’s part of the draw of graffiti. He wonders if some kid, some day might look at faded paint on a building, see the name Evol and think about him.
“I don’t want the community to look at my name as a bad thing.”