PHANTASMA: DANA WOULFE

Spray cans, dripping buckets and brushes are scattered about. Two artists are splattered with paint. A new golden rectangle containing shards of color is emerging from the public wall in Central Square.

“I was kindof writing my name. He was kindof writing his name,” says Dana Woulfe a week later in his South Boston art studio. “This was the first of many experiments…so we didn’t really know what was going to happen.”

The mural in Central Square was the first of a series of wall paintings that Woulfe and partner Stephen Holding (aka: Metalwing) are doing leading up to Art Basel in December where they will paint in the Primary Flight mural exhibition and do the side of a nightclub called the Electric Pickle.

“It’s basically practice for us,” Woulfe says. They just did another free wall in Beverly, Mass.

What started as a Boston-based graffiti crew in 1999 under the moniker, Project SF (Project Super Friends) has evolved into a collective of ten international artists. They’ve matured into what Woulfe calls a “full-time art hustle,” with a focus on their individual works. Woulfe has been gravitating towards abstract stuff recently– vibrant colors and lots of movement and he collaborates pretty regularly with his studio mate, Kenji Nakayama. He mixes paper gun targets and text with popping swirls of color.

But despite the confines of a canvas, his work still has the feel of the street. So it seems fitting for him to pick up these projects from time to time– it’s a place he and Holding seem at home.

Woulfe has never deemed his street work “street art,” always strictly graffiti– “an act, an illegal thing in a high-profile spot where you’re painting your name on a wall.” But he admits: this new series of murals, a project they’re calling MetalWoulfe, is charting new territory.

Much like other abstract, “post-graffiti” artists, like those featured on sites like Graffuturism.com, they’re disassembling letterforms, taking graffiti to a more abstract place.

“I’m using the idea of graffiti and painting in the same style but the visual is much different than what people are used to,” Woulfe explains. “It’s not just a big fat letter with a fill in, I’m trying to really make it abstract.”

Woulfe sees this technique, and other similar work as a new form of pop art, bottling the rave culture and graffiti aesthetic circulating through the mainstream.

“[It’s] a new movement in art that’s rooted in graffiti but is basically abstracting it to the point where it’s not just your typical graf’ gallery show where somebody’s putting letters on something.”

In theory, the letters are there. You just can’t see them.

“You become a lettersmith,” he says. “You start to figure out how to build things out of letters. You break down letters and every letter has components…I’m just dissecting letters and taking them apart. They’re still there, but the top of my S is not connected to the bottom of my S.”

Whether he’s working on the street or in his studio, Woulfe says the ultimate goal is to communicate a feeling- to create work that embodies the same energy as a sound wave.

“Life inspires me– having fun with my friends, going to see music, traveling, snowboarding, all the fun stuff I do,” he says. “An amazing time at a club in Rome– that’s what I’m after. It’s about the energy. It’s an intangible thing. I’m trying to bottle that.”

Check out Woulfe’s shared studio space with Kenji Nakayama this weekend at South Boston Open Studios.

[South Boston Open Studios. 11.5 & 11.6, noon-6 p.m. The Distillery, #406, 516 E 2nd S, South Boston. southbostonopenstudios.org]