Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeff Beck.
Hi Jeff, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start, maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers.
I started art at a very young age. My dad was an artist, and I would watch him draw or paint when I was little. My earliest memories of me creating art was when I would sneak and look at my cousin’s tattoo magazines and would set up my “workstation” at the dining room table and trying to draw the tattoos that I saw in those magazines. Fast forward to the year 2000, and I learned that I was going to be a father and decided at that time that I have to do something with my life, and I couldn’t keep working retail. I wanted to do something with art but knew I had to do something that would bring in a paycheck with the baby on the way, so I decided to go to school for Graphic Design. I received my associate degree in graphic design in 2002 and have been doing Graphic design for 20-plus years now.
Around 2010, I got the itch to start creating art again and not just designing logos, so I started painting for fun. I learned of a “Locals Only” Art Show at a Gallery/Designer Toy shop in Chapel Hill, NC, so I worked up enough nerve to put 3 paintings and a couple of custom designer toys that I created in the show. I was very nervous and was not used to other people looking at my art. I went to the opening night reception and learned that all of my pieces sold opening night and from that moment on I was hooked.
When I moved to Greensboro, NC, from the small town of Thomasville, NC, I was overwhelmed at the art scene and all of the art galleries. I started trying to embed myself in the art scene of Greensboro; I started doing pop-up art shows in non-conventual places like empty warehouses and various other locations. I opened the first and only low-brow themed art gallery and vinyl toy shop in Greensboro called Menace Inc. Studios. We had monthly art shows and limited-release events for art vinyl toys. The space ran its course and opened up a lot of people’s eyes to the low-brow art scene in Greensboro. In 2015 I partnered up with a longtime friend and we opened up the first Coffee Shop with a dedicated art gallery called Urban Grinders. The main art gallery was in the loft area of the space but also spread out to the rest of the shop. When you walked in it was more like an art gallery that happened to have a coffee shop inside. We had huge murals on the walls painted by some of most talented local mural and street artists. We won best Coffee Shop in Greensboro 3 months after we opened, the next year we won Best Coffee Shop in Guilford County and the following year we were runner-up for Best Coffee Shop in the Triad. We jump-started a dying music scene in downtown by having several concerts and music events at the shop as well, we even signed a deal with Sony Records as a place that their new and upcoming talents that they signed would hold cd release parties as well as pop-up concerts at our shop. We ultimately had to close the shop because our biggest customer, an office building across the street, put a Starbucks in their building for their employees.
Before the shop had to close, I visited Richmond, VA, with a friend because they had a huge Mural Festival there every year where dozens of top-name artists from around the country and around the world came to paint for two weeks. Seeing this world and talking with the artists put me on a path to start painting large-scale murals myself. We created a movement called No Blank Walls when we came back and started painting murals around Greensboro. Our partnership soon ended over various differences and I moved back to my hometown of Thomasville, NC. I met my current wife Adrienne, and we started painting murals around the Thomasville and Lexington area and decided to start up a project called the Tville Mural Project. With the help of the City of Thomasville, PACE Downtown Thomasville, and Thomasville Tourism, our project has painted a total of 13 murals in Thomasville as of the end of 2023. We are looking to expand the project to other cities in 2024. I have been painting large-scale murals for about 8 or 9 years now and have painted dozens of murals around North Carolina and Virginia. My largest mural was 10ft tall by 250ft long.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I don’t think “smooth road” is in an artist’s vocabulary. If you are an artist, there are always obstacles and challenges around every corner. It was really tough getting people to accept murals and street art in our area because of the stigma of graffiti. We had to explain to a lot of people that murals and street art are different than graffiti. Here in the South, people associate graffiti with vandalism, gangs, and the destruction of property. We had several meetings and open discussions about murals and street art with local government and community members before we could convivence them to let us do our first murals.
Another big obstacle is the majority of the public thinking that the art that you do is just a hobby and that you should do it for free. As a commissioned mural artists, my wife and I have several people approach us all the time about getting murals painted for their businesses or homes, and the conversations always start off strong until it gets to the quoting part. 90% of the time, after we give a price, we are either ghosted and never hear back, or people act surprised or offended that we are charging anything. It is a never-ending battle with people thinking that art should be done for free or next to nothing, but I look at it as it’s a trade just like any other like plumber, mechanic, etc. They do not do their job for free or aren’t expected by customers or clients to do their work for free… it’s very frustrating to see how artists are treated.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
For the past 8 years I have been focused on painting large- and small-scale murals exterior and interior. I use Montana Gold and Montana Black spray paint exclusively for my murals, it’s the best hands down. A lot of my work is influenced in some way by the 80s and early 90s. That’s where I got my art name, NOS77, which is short for Nostalgia, and my birth year. I love all things 80s, and I am always trying to incorporate that into my art with subject matter, pop culture references, and bright in your face colors. My style is mostly cartoon/illustrative, but I like to paint clean, crisp, bold outlines that remind me of vector graphics, which is influenced by me being a Graphic Designer for 20-plus years.
My proudest moments are painting these murals in my hometown and being able to paint them with my wife. Growing up, I never thought that my art would seen or that anyone would care, and now I’m painting 20, 30, 40 ft murals on walls in my hometown that thousands of people see every day; we have been on several news stories, newspapers and podcasts talking about murals, art and the community.
What are your plans for the future?
We are hoping to spread the mural project into other cities. We love going to new cities and towns and checking out the art scene and the local coffee shops. Every time we go to a new city, we always spot the huge blank walls and say to each other, “That wall is perfect for a mural,” so we scope out all of the other blank walls and dream about what could be painted on them. With the proven success of the Tville Mural Project, now we are actually talking to these cities and towns, trying to connect to the right people and talk to them about the mural project and what a couple of really eye-catching murals could do for your city or downtown area. We were just awarded a grant to paint a mural in Denton, NC, and we are talking with several other cities in hopes of bringing our project to their town. I’m getting up there is age, so I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to do this, so we are trying to cover as many blank walls as we cane between now and then. We painted a total of 13 murals in Thomasville in a year and half, and we feel it’s time to spread our wings prove to other towns that art is a powerful tool.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_nos_1977/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MenaceIncStudio/
