By Sophia Lucente, A&E Editor

Published in print Feb. 11, 2015

Local visual artist Jeff Beck has been a part of Greensboro’s cultural scene for several years now and is significant in his contributions to D.I.Y. community projects and solo work alike. He is the creator and central contributor to gallery and novelty shop Menace Inc. Studios, and has developed murals around Greensboro and worked with events such as Ultimate Painting and downtown’s First Fridays. Born in High Point, N.C., he is a graduate of Guilford Technical Community College and has been employed as a graphic designer for the past 12 years.

This past Sunday, I met Beck at Tried & True Tattoo Co., where he was working on an Illuminati-inspired mural in their back parlor. There we talked art, music and his community involvement since taking up residence in the Gate City.

[SL] How long have you been interested in the concept of art as a way to be engaged with your community?

[JB] I really started painting and stuff like that maybe five or six years ago, and I just decided I was tired of graphic design and I wanted to do something more creative, more hands-on…so I did some paintings and put them in an art show. And then two or three years ago I started up an art group here in Greensboro called Piedmont Artists United because I was noticing a lot of art projects were going to artists outside the community. It’s kind of gotten to the point now where…if we see events going on we post it in our Facebook group.

[SL] The style I’ve seen in your work is a little bit fantastic and playful, but very deliberate and intimidating sometimes – I’m wondering if there’s anything from your childhood or upbringing that inspired that way of thinking.

[JB] The earliest memory I have of doing art is sitting at my grandparents’ table, like, seven, eight, nine years old…my cousins were older so they had these flash tattoo books of all different designs. So I took the magazines from them and just sat down and drew them…I was just really drawn into that kind of artwork – skulls, that kind of thing. But also I grew up in the ‘80s; a lot of that had influence on me as well – bright colors, cartoonish-looking things like that.

[SL] What influences do you claim from other artists?

[JB] I’m kind of old-school with music – I like a lot of Nine Inch Nails and Rob Zombie and stuff like that. Rob Zombie has always been a big creative influence on me because he…also does artwork and movies. He kind of has that dark tone to his stuff too, like zombies and the old Universal monster movie-type stuff, and that…always fascinated me too. I listen to his music a lot while I’m painting and…lately, I’ve just been looking on the internet at different street artists and mural artists. When I’m kind of in a creative funk, I’ll try to find a really cool street art documentary and watch it, I draw a lot from that. [Polish duo] Etam Cru, and Ekundayo – those three guys are my favorite street artists. The stuff they do is amazing.

[SL] You played a big part in the curation of the Friendly Ave. monster mural. How exactly was that developed?

[JB] The Greensboro Mural Project…did a project where they went around and asked people if they rode the bus, and if they did, what was their experience or, if you could go anywhere on a bus, where would you go. They asked 250 people and they wanted me to go over the answers and find some kind of theme or something like that I could go by, because they wanted the mural to be based on public transportation. I just ran with the theme…and just make it like a fun trip to ride the bus, so that’s how I came up with the little playful monsters and creatures and things like that just to make it look like a fun experience, and kind of add some fantasy to it too…just to leave it up to the people looking at it, so they could decide where they would go. I designed it, and two or three times we had five or six people go out there, helping to block in the main parts of the colors, because with my style it’s kind of hard to tell people how to do the detail work. We wanted to get the community involved, so I made it a design too that would lend better to people who really don’t have a lot of experience – just coming in and filling out color and getting involved.

[SL] I saw that you were recently working on a piece called “Death of Perception” – What was that about?

[JB] That was for the “Size Matters” show at the Center for Visual Artists, and the theme of the show was you either had to make something really small or really big. Since I do a lot of spray can work and stuff like that, I thought it would be cool to make a giant spray can and that’s kind of where it started. But then I kind of evolved the theme with the “death of perception” – how people perceive street art and spray paint as like a kind of bad thing, like vandalizing and stuff…I usually don’t do deep meanings with the stuff that I do since it’s all fun and playful.