The graffiti artist known as Doze Green has made a name for himself in the vibrant art scene of Wynwood. He’s also built a career spanning the globe from the streets of New York City to private collections across Japan.
This past weekend, he joined Wynwood’s Museum of Graffiti at a very personal exhibit at a gallery called The Art of Hip-Hop, 299 NW 25th St.
The event was held just across one of Green’s murals,which includes eight breakdancers and over-the-shoulder boomboxes.
This weekend provided the public and RSVP’d guests an opportunity to get to know Green and his work- particularly his early contributions to hip-hop.
Green was born in New York City in 1964. At nine years old, he discovered break dancers, sometimes called B-boys. Only a few years later, he became a member of the legendary breakdancing group known as The Rocksteady Crew.
Green joined a lineup of other B-boys and individuals who saw and contributed to the movement first hand.
Admirers were pleasantly surprised to find familiar faces of the early B-boy days in the crowd as well. Their photographs were displayed across the walls of the exhibit and throughout the museum.
The night became an unofficial round table dedicated to talk about where it all began.
“First time I started seeing b-boying, it was ‘73, ‘72, ‘73 and I started doing it around ‘76,” Green recalls. “I was doing graffiti more than that at the time and that’s the thing- before it was called hip-hop we were just doing what came natural, so it was like all the cats, all your friends, were bombing… “
A framed photograph taken by legendary Hip Hop photographer Henry Chalfant hung on the West wall of the exhibit, featuring a young Doze Green in the early days of the culture’s beginnings.
