Long before I was a full-time artist with one of the most prolific mural businesses in the city, my spray paint addiction led me to the top of a “Most Wanted” list.
It was January 2016, and I was walking the halls of Carnegie Mellon University’s fine arts building when I heard that the police were in my fourth-floor studio with a warrant for my arrest. Professors and fellow students had encouraged me to avoid the police and to leave the building, but at that point, I knew that my time had run out. A couple of weeks prior, Pittsburgh Graffiti Task Force detectives had raided a previous apartment of mine to find only my old roommate and none of the evidence they wanted. I immediately started removing anything from my house with the graffiti name “GEMS” on it or anything that could connect me to the act of graffiti vandalism.
I had thrown out stacks of stickers, bags of paint and over a dozen sketchbooks, while also securing any digital images and texts to an encrypted external drive.
However, none of that derailed my conviction as “Pittsburgh’s Most Wanted” graffiti writer in 2016.
Four years earlier, I had received a scholarship to attend CMU’s School of Art. As someone who grew up in the Southside of Chicago, I had never visited Pittsburgh until the day before I moved in, and I honestly expected Pittsburgh to be a small farm town. I was happy to find an urban canvas. I spent nearly every early morning climbing rooftops around the East End of Pittsburgh to spray paint “GEMS” and my wizard moniker on high walls. The undersides of bridges, sides of freight trains and pretty much any piece of rusting metal were also targets. Looking back, I’m not quite sure how I managed a schedule of undergrad art school, playing for CMU’s ice hockey team, working for the restaurant Emil’s Lounge, construction gigs and becoming Pittsburgh’s Most Wanted.
Fast forward to 2016, my senior year. I was prepared to graduate with honors and had a staff job lined up as a digital and traditional printmaking technician for the School of Art.
As I walked into my fourth-floor studio to greet Pittsburgh’s Graffiti Task Force and the CMU University Police, I was determined to stay as level-headed as possible, even as they handcuffed me and paraded me out of the building. I was taken to the CMU Police headquarters to be interrogated by the task force. As the detectives began showing me photos of graffiti and asked me to admit my guilt, I insisted that I had no idea what they were talking about and that they had the wrong guy.
Max Gonzales, of Garfield, works on a mural on Dec. 10, in Garfield. (Photo by Vondre Clark/PublicSource)
I kept this up for about 20 minutes until they pulled out a backpack I hadn’t seen since my freshman year of college. This backpack had perfect evidence to connect me to my graffiti identity: my class schedule, my graffiti sketchbook, a DSLR camera, etc. I was facing 58 charges of criminal mischief, seven of them felonies, along with potential restitution of $114,030. The task force threatened to continue their investigation to add many more charges and restitution closer to $800,000 unless I was willing to take a plea deal. I knew that I was cooked.
There was only one informant on my case. According to the police criminal complaint against me, it was a CMU art department employee who “stated that Gonzales left his bookbag in class approximately 2 years before” and somehow still had it, who “found spray paint (and caps), project applications, and a graffiti sketch book all belonging to Gonzales.” I remember when I lost that backpack: I’d left the classroom, along with the rest of the class, during class hours, and returned to find my backpack missing.
That person later denied to the School of Art that he was the informant on my case. But not before his actions completely upended my life.
‘We know who you are’
After my arrest and release on my own recognizance, I continued the rest of my semester, with the occasional court hearing as I awaited sentencing. Initially, I was looking at a possible prison sentence of two-to-three years plus restitution. Two-to-three-year sentences had become a bit of a standard for previous most-wanted graffiti writers, including those with tags of MF-ONE, HERT and MOOK.
After plea negotiations, I was given a year of house arrest, 300 hours of community service, three years probation and $52,000 in restitution and costs. My house arrest began during my employment with CMU as a printmaking technician and summer pre-college co-instructor. The university decided that my diploma/degree would be withheld for three years as a sign of disciplinary action.
During that time, university police regularly visited me in my workspaces where I would be ordered to present identification, even while being told, “We know who you are.”
Since part of my responsibilities included training the incoming staff and faculty in the printmaking facilities, I eventually asked for a raise from the $13 an hour I was receiving at the time. The art school denied my raise and the dean refused to meet with me to discuss the history of my arrest on campus and the school’s subsequent responses.
This was an incredibly isolating period of my life as I was being told by my own university that I did not deserve to be heard or receive a living wage or receive my degree, while having a massive restitution debt as a result of the collaboration between university police and the Graffiti Task Force.
Success — but $37,000 in court debt
I eventually decided to leave CMU to work for a commercial printmaking studio. I also started receiving more art commissions and more interest in my graffiti art identity as GEMS. I had begun curating and participating in visual art shows with Pittsburgh’s 2016 second-most-wanted graffiti writer, Jerome “CHU” Charles. Through our brand “Don’t Do Bad Stuff” and visual art collaborations, we were able to create a substantial second source of income.
After curating several open-call art shows that focused on promoting BIPOC and LGBTQ artists, we received a Lift Grant from the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council for $12,500 to put on a pop-up visual art and music event at the Ace Hotel, titled “The Glow Up”. During a local warehouse arts event, Jerome and I were approached by Dr. Stacy Lane, the founder and medical director of Central Outreach Wellness Center, to create our first commissioned and paid mural. As two BIPOC LGBTQ individuals, this experience and the subsequent five other locations we’ve painted for Central Outreach were instrumental to our success as full-time artists and muralists.
I would never say that our initial success is due to our infamy as graffiti vandals, but I can confidently say that the pressures of looming restitution and incarceration compelled us to capitalize on any opportunity that we were presented with. As I lost the ability to illegally paint my moniker, I realized that if I wanted to retain my public identity as GEMS, I would have to achieve that through other means.
In 2019, as my spray paint mural career became my primary art focus, I saw Shane Pilster pursuing the same. We had recently become more acquainted as I joined him with Hemispheric Conversations: Urban Art Project [HCUAP], an organization partially funded by the University of Pittsburgh. HCUAP focuses on bringing graffiti artists from Spanish-speaking communities and countries to Pittsburgh to give lectures, run workshops and paint murals.
At that time I was also working for the Carnegie Libraries of Pittsburgh as a STEAM programming developer and teen department librarian assistant. More educational opportunities appeared as I started doing guest workshops for all age ranges and organizations: Assemble, Winchester Thurston Upper School, Pittsburgh Public Schools, Pitt and even CMU’s School of Architecture. All of these opportunities were provided to me through my identity as GEMS, a BIPOC and LGBTQ artist, activist, curator, educator and muralist.
Since then, I have officially partnered with Shane under our mural business, Do What We Love. One of our first collaborations was a grassroots effort to have graffiti writers clean up and paint abandoned spaces, which eventually grew into a much larger mural initiative all across New Kensington. During the rise of the Black Lives Matter protests, we also acknowledged the lack of Black presence in Pittsburgh’s mural and graffiti scenes. In response, Shane, CHU, Brian Gonnella and I organized as the Pittsburgh Artists Autonomy Collective [PAAC] to start the Pittsburgh Black Muralist Initiative. We were able to raise over $10,000 to pay local Black artists to learn the art of spray paint and to paint murals at Fiasco Art Center, Spirit Walls and the Carrie Furnaces.
One of PAAC’s main focuses is to make graffiti art accessible to all demographics, while still ensuring that the “old heads” in our scene are given the praise they deserve. We were able to start Pittsburgh’s first and only legal graffiti alley. After the success of this location, we were approached by Friends of the Riverfront to help revamp Color Park with a Graffiti Jam.
We also try to help local business owners find solutions to any unwanted tagging by offering them graffiti productions — sanctioned events in which graffiti writers spend a day or more painting a wall using their graffiti names with a common color scheme and concept — asking only the cost of the paint. As the ages of our local writers range from teens to grandparents, we understand the importance of their chosen identities and we never want to devalue their monikers and typographic styles by forcing them to paint outside of the aesthetic traditions of graffiti culture.
Although I have been able to find success artistically, I have yet to be removed from the constraints of the criminal justice system. My probation has been continued every year since its set expiration in 2020, as I am served a probation violation hearing every year for unpaid restitution, which now sits at $37,707.73. With each probation violation hearing, I am given more court costs added to my restitution.
In response to the excessive sentencing history for graffiti in Pittsburgh, I have started a research study with a grant from Pitt Law School’s Center for Civil Rights and Racial Justice in collaboration with Pitt Associate Professor of Communication Caitlin Bruce. One of my personal goals with this study is to be able to concretely present the patterns of this sentencing and the unintended outcomes to community leaders, elected officials and the general public in a way that could encourage:
- More oversight of graffiti enforcement
- Limitations on restitution calculations
- Curbs preventing felony-level sentencing
- Reclassifying these crimes to a more specific charge than criminal mischief.
When I began drawing graffiti at age 9 and then began vandalizing at age 13, I never could have imagined that graffiti would take me to spaces of education and law, while also providing a full-time career. In a perfect world, I wouldn’t have to be caught up in a graffiti enforcement PR campaign for the City of Pittsburgh while defending my freedom, but I still feel fortunate for how things are unfolding.
Max Gonzales is available for murals, exhibitions, festivals and interviews, and can be reached at mgonzales.gems@com or DoWhatWeLove.com.
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