It kills me that I can’t just write on everything. or typography or anything. So I did a bunch of really bad stuff for a long time, and then once I realized that the skills I had as a kid doing calligraphy with my grandfather blew ninety percent of everything I was looking at out of the water, I was like 'wait a minute, I've had this the whole time, what have I been doing?' Once I realized that, I started doing it for the right reasons, and things got better." From there, Danny branched out and began working in various media, including commissioned calligraphy pieces on store windows and bedroom walls, which can take a few minutes to a few hours to create. In the beginning, Danny traced his own work from projections on the wall, but now he's able to work directly without any crutches. He shows me his favorite tool, a Copic wide marker with a special calligraphy tip that he uses for much of his work. "There's zero room for error with this," he says. "It's the most permanent stuff I've ever seen. If you make a mistake, you just have to go with it, mess the whole thing up and incorporate it into the piece. But I try to never make a mistake. I concentrate real hard, knowing that there's no way to cover it up."
154
\ stardust-mag.com
I ask him which discipline he is most passionate about, whether it's the calligraphy or the silkscreen prints or even his custom, handmade jewelry, and his answer doesn't surprise me. "I think it's just making something. It doesn't matter, it could be with crayons or whatever I have around me, but I'll never be bored. I just like making something." Even with chalk. Danny takes the somewhat permanent and anonymous act of graffiti to a much more temporary and visible extreme by creating art with chalk whenever and wherever—parks, sidewalks, street corners—the mood strikes him, whether it's born from joy or necessity. What once were drawings—hearts, angels, whatever— have increasingly given way to writings—mostly gibberish or cryptic nonsense—meant to conjure a smile, not confusion, from the viewer. Either way, working with chalk in public places helps Danny find a strange balance of notoriety and anonymity. "I still have that graffiti itch, and it kills me that I can't just write on everything," he says, laughing. "So, if it gets particularly bad, I can go out with chalk in broad daylight and I don't have to hide from anybody, which is actually better, because then people are super happy to meet you and they wouldn't have had that