This is a co-work short film made by filmmaker Yanghuixiao Gao and Yingtong Li.
They are second-year grad students majoring in film and media art at Emerson College, Boston.
The documentary explores the fabulous artworks done by a street artist, Auks One, who has been working on graffiti art since he was15 years old. It consists of the creative process of him doing a graffiti piece at Graffiti Alley, Cambridge, MA as well as how the public art shapes his attitudes and values about life.
Auks One’s real name is Thomas Lucero. As a graffiti artist, he is self-taught and self-triggered. After insisting on exploring street arts for more than 20 years, he is now a professional graffiti artist who owns a personal studio and expanded his interests toward different creative fields, such as wooden crafts and video editing.
Different from general art forms like sculpture, oil painting, music, and films, which can exist and be preserved for decades, most graffiti artworks have a short lifespan. Even so, to Auks, the process of expressing himself through painting values the most. Besides, he feels that when he does stuff in the public space, basically anyone can see it. It’s free, and it’s available, and people come by. And there’s a reaction, and it’s almost always positive.
