Bobby Puleo has always been known for his creativity. He has an eye for spots, and has maintained a certain look with the photos and footage that he’s put out throughout his career. Slam City connects the dots between Puleo’s skating and visual aesthetic in a new interview that focuses on both, and how they connect. We found the below excerpt about Puleo’s earliest memories of graffiti to be very telling.

You have an interest in graffiti, was that on your radar before you started collecting street artifacts?

Yeah way way before. Graffiti has been around me my entire life. Even growing up in Jersey, you would drive the highways here. I lived close to the highways into the city. Back then graffiti writers from New York and Jersey would write graffiti on the highways. I grew up next to Passaic and Paterson. Those two cities had their own groups of graffiti writers back in the 80’s so you would see that a lot.

My father drove a container truck for a living. One time he drove the truck to my house just to stop off and say what’s up and the container on the back of the truck had this insane graffiti piece on it and I was just blown away by it and it was right in front of my house. It was my first real memorable moment with graffiti.

He brought you a piece home…

Yeah basically, it was crazy. I remember me and my brother staring at it, like what is this? You know, a giant piece of rolling artwork.

Did that inform how you looked at things from then on and did it find you in different parts of the city?

Yeah definitely. In the 80’s and 90’s graffiti was everywhere. It still is everywhere in New York but it just gave me a different understanding of what art could be or is. Art is not necessarily something that’s just in a museum. It can be applied to a wall or sometimes it’s just nature. Your surroundings can create a visual print in your mind.

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Image Via Slap