My name is Pete Iswallager.
I'm an internationally known stencil artist.
I am known for my signature eye.
I put it out on the streets to wake up the world.
The reason I'm doing eyes on trains, about a year and a half ago, a scrapper was following
me on Instagram and he said, Pete, would you like to come to my scrap yard?
I'm scrapping full size locomotives.
And to a graffiti artist to paint a full size locomotive is everyone's dream.
So of course, and it spawned this entire series of going to the scrap yard week after week
after week after week and painting trains and then essentially picking them and using
them as my canvas for my exhibition.
Most of these trains are being scrapped, they're being melted down, they've traveled millions
of miles across America and ultimately are worth more as scrap metal than as a train
on the tracks.
And part of me doing the show is to save those trains and to also kind of be the mortician,
you know, the mortician to the trains before they die, to really just give them a face
and identity just to kind of, you know, give them their final farewell.
And in a way I kind of feel like I'm saving their lives in some sense because I'm reclaiming
a lot of the parts of these.
The show is going to be at Hoffman the Chance Gallery in Maplewood.
Like I said, it's been a year and a half in the making.
It's been just a lot of just figuring out how to get from A to Z.
I mean, we moved a train into the gallery and, you know, I don't know what it takes
to get that, but luckily I have a good friend by the name of Eddie Bauer who knows how to
do that.
He went and picked up a train from the scrap yard, brought it to my studio and then really
brought that train from my studio into the gallery, which was quite an undertaking.
So about six months ago I was asked to do a massive mural in Indianapolis.
The only stipulation is like we want a mural with positive messages.
So I get to this wall and I'm looking at it and it's this really, it's really wide and
short and there's 40 of them all separated and I'm like, man those sure look like boxcars.
Each logo on the train, which I've carried over now to my show, has positive messages
like instead of the Frisco logo it says forgive and it's the biggest mural now in Indianapolis.
But if you want to see that, the hashtag is the Monon Love Train.
These trains have traveled millions of miles and it's one of the most iconic images that
we see there in everyone's life and they're kind of dying, you know, in a way and I want
people to realize that this isn't just a piece of art, this is something that's traveled
across America that now has been reclaimed and hopefully we'll sit in someone's house
for the next, and maybe a museum for the next 300 years, you never know.
I mean to see this train going to this door, it was almost like that weight that I've had
on me for the past year and a half knowing that oh my gosh, eventually I got to get a
train in the door and we did it.
It was one of the best feelings of my life.
It's finally like you have the idea, here it is and you know, now it's in there.
So you know, I'm doing this train show and the first thing you think of when you think
of trains are the mini trains.
So this has been another part of the whole aspect, I mean I've always been into trains,
I've painted a few trains in the past in my life, but I never really got into the model
world and one thing I wanted to kind of show is a miniature version of this scrapyard.
So I've been going to all these train shows, been meeting all the foamers, which by the
way is a name for the people who foam when they see these big trains and freak out, but
that's the name.
But I mean, there could be a whole documentary just filmed on these folks who are die hard
trainers and it's mostly not the non-graffiti stuff, they like it clean.
So I'm hoping somehow I can break into that world, you know, like be the next Thomas the
train, but for 2015, you know.
So the key people for this show have really just been kind of the drive and the motivation
for it are about five people, one being Nick Pistone who owns the scrapyard.
My home girl Irene, she has been completely all a part of this from the beginning.
I think she was even like friends with this guy on Instagram and was like, we need to go
out there and it was really kind of the drive to getting this whole train things going and
she's a bencher.
She hangs out in the train, so she's really kind of helped me.
The third being Eddie Bauer, who I've known my entire life.
This is the guy who moved the train from here to here to here.
And then I have an assistant by the name of Cam, just a neighborhood cat who's been there
a lot and then Will Rimmel, who's a very great artist and, you know, has been helping me
get from A to B, you know, so right to Z.
Trains are the beginning of the industrial revolution.
I mean, they are, you know, we got a super train coming up next.
I mean, it's the next generations of trains happening.
I mean, the trains especially that I'm covering are the ones that I saw growing up.
I didn't see the steam engines and that's what you see the train shows, you know, and
I like the old rusty big Union Pacific orange train.
So it's been an amazing opportunity.
I don't think I'd ever have something like this fall in my lap again.
You never know.
But it's just like one of these scenarios that like, all right, I got to see this through
and I'm about that close.
So after St. Louis, I'd love to travel this technically on a train to different cities
to Miami, New York.
I have a couple of galleries that I've been talking to, nothing set in stone.
So if you know anybody who wants to take a train to their city, this could be a pretty
impressive show.
But yeah, I want to travel this, let the world see a little bit of St. Louis and a little
bit of our history.
Take these trains back to the cities they've already traveled to and, you know, it could
be pretty awesome.
Hold me doing one more.
Eyes on trains, y'all.
Peace.
