By Deborah Lynn Blumberg
As a freshman at Fordham Preparatory School in the Bronx, Christopher Mastrovincenzo, 26, now a graphic artist who paints and sells graffiti-style hats and bags in Noho, reinterpreted his school uniform. Instead of a dress shirt and tie, he donned a self-made outfit under his sports jacket — a white T-shirt with a drawn-on magic marker tie.
These days, he is still using his artwork to challenge the rules.
After New York City police officers told Mastrovincenzo and a fellow graffiti artist that they could not sell their hats without a license, the two decided to take their case to court. “In the back of my head I thought, ‘I’m doing artwork, and this should be legal under the First Amendment,’ ” said Mastrovincenzo, who goes by the name Mastro.
Following an arrest for vending without a license, Mastro contacted lawyers from the Urban Justice Center last summer, who sued the city on his behalf. Last month, Judge Victor Marrero of Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled that the hats are artwork, and thus protected by the First Amendment. Marrero issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the city from shutting down the artists.
“The cops were just doing their jobs,” Mastro said. “But they couldn’t see past the medium I was working on. I wanted to prove that what I was doing was artwork.”
So at a stand on Broadway between Houston and Bleecker Sts., Mastro continues to design custom-made hats and bags using markers, spray paints, airbrushes and acrylic paints in a rainbow of colors. He draws names, cartoon characters and catchphrases — “Johnny,” “Juicy” or “Princess” — on trucker hats and canvas bags, using a variety of designs and techniques.
“Everything I do is freestyle,” Mastro said. “There’s nothing design-wise I can’t do. I love to be challenged and I love doing different styles that a lot of other people don’t do.”
Mastro draws inspiration from a variety of sources — the idea for one hat with a blue squiggly design originated from the gate at the Bronx Zoo, he said. He has painted Japanese, Chinese and Hebrew characters, and letters inside of letters, such as customers’ fraternity letters running through their name.
Most hats take anywhere from one to 15 minutes to create, and range in cost from $10-100. Mastro can design 20-40 pieces a day depending on the complexity of the designs. The paints he uses come from as far away as Germany, where one company sells an electric blue slightly different from the blues he can get in New York.
While Mastro has always been interested in graffiti art, he said, he has only sold his work professionally for the past year and a half. As an architecture major at Brooklyn’s Pratt University he frequently drew his artwork for friends, but worked as a bartender and security guard to pay the bills.
Following graduation, he printed 5,000 business cards and spent entire days popping in and out of stores offering his services as a graphic artist. He redesigned menus, made fliers for businesses and even created a clown’s business cards. “But ultimately, I did a lot of jobs that I didn’t want to do,” he said.
After first working with a local store doing his graffiti design art for what he called too-low pay, he then matched up with another sidewalk vendor to whom he paid half the money he earned for the privilege of having the other vendor — who had a vendor’s license because he was a veteran — stand around and offer protection from the police. Mastro said he gave up trying to get his own license because the waiting list for new licenses is so long.
Finally, Mastro branched out on his own.
He is the only graffiti artist on Broadway with a banner advertising his designs, and the only artist who is also a college graduate, he said.
“A college degree is an advantage that I have over most other people who are doing this, and it shows,” he said. “I’ve always found a way to take how I’m feeling and turn it into profit.”
At his table in Noho, Mastro dresses in bright colors to attract customers. In the winter he packs up his artwork and works primarily as a graphic designer for area businesses, designing business cards, fliers and logos. He also ships his work abroad and has sent hats and logo designs to companies and customers in Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan and Australia.
Mastro has worked with companies such as MAC Cosmetics, Def Jam recordings, Diesel and Ralph Lauren. In April he designed shirts printed with graffiti flowers for MAC employees to wear at Macy’s Flower Show parade. He also spent time in the store, where he customized makeup cases with personalized name labels.
“With freelance you never do the same job twice,” Mastro said. “There’s always something that makes each job unique.”
He also tries to make each hat he creates unique and often refuses to repeat designs for customers. Customers come to him with their own ideas about color schemes, but he determines the rest. “The type of expression I put on hats is random every day,” he said. “I hate when designs are done to death. Difference makes things stand out.”
His graffiti-style work is a revival from the 1970s and ’80s when teenagers would wear denim jackets with acrylic paint on the back and hats airbrushed with their names. “Everything regurgitates,” Mastro said. The graffiti style is also closely tied to hip-hop culture. “In the last six or seven years I’ve seen it happen before my own eyes — hip-hop has grown more commercial and everything involved with hip-hop has grown.”
In addition to his graffiti work and graphic design projects, Mastro also paints, builds, carves wood, break dances and has even pinstriped a car. But designing hats and providing customers with unique, personalized products is perhaps his true passion.
Some say the trucker hat fad is over, but Mastro disagrees.
“I don’t see this as a fashion trend,” he said. “I see this as a way of life, which is going to continue. There’s always a need for custom apparel, and while it’s full blast here in New York, outside of New York people are just getting hip to it.”
