What do Henry’s Crime, Coffee Labs Roasters, and the backs of countless signs from here to China have in common?  The work of street artist Vinny Raffa, of course. 

While on breaks from his work as a balloon technician/electric crew member last year during the shoot for the Keanu Reeves movie, Raffa would go for a coffee nearby. 

One day Coffee Labs Roasters owner Mike Love spotted an embroidered image on Raffa’s shirt featuring his own artwork, and recognized it as something he had seen in many places including both Tarrytown and China. He informed Raffa that he had a fan. The sticker had arrived in China as part of an exchange Raffa does with people all over the world. They started to talk, and the current show is the result.

Vinny Raffa is from Eastchester and lives now in nearby Rockland County.  He went to school in Scarsdale and says that he first became interested in art when he was a student at the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  His primary interests today are skateboarding, street art, hiphop music, and guerrilla marketing. 

The DENY that is part of some of the works in the exhibition stands for Dead End New York, the name of his company, which produces clothing, footwear and skateboards with his designs on them. 

Raffa told me that the modified, pop-art skull and crossbones featured in his logo was a gentler version that is more kid-friendly than his original version when his company was called Skateboarders From Hell.  He prefers not to alarm parents so that they will allow their kids access to his work.

Where a face appears, it is Raffa’s own, done from a light box tracing.  Images that show his face covered in part by a mask refer to both protection from the spray paint and concealment of identity done by most taggers; images with the DENY strip covering his eyes refer to concealment.  Raffa includes this concept as part of the street art scene, although in his case he allows his identity to be known.

You’ll see a variety of his work at Coffee Labs, including a collage with stencil tagging, poster tagging, and sticker tagging and, on this piece only, he invites the public to embellish.  You can come in and add anything to it that you’d like, with his blessings he says, “as long as it’s an inanimate object.”

The works on glass are windows and a door from old houses that he works on with spray paint.  In this show you’ll see one that is a single version of his Dead End logo graphic, one six paneled window with the logo graphic on each panel, and a self-portrait on a glass door.

Influences on Raffa’s work include Van Gogh and Rembrandt, who he says he considers early taggers in that they would paint on any surface possible, as well as Andy Warhol. A kindred spirit and important influence who also has been involved in both skatebarding and street art is Shepard Fairey, who did the hugely popular “Hope” poster of Barack Obama in 2008.  One of the works reproduced and left for people to take for free from near the door at Coffee Labs is a version of this poster created by an unnamed friend which features not Obama’s but Raffa’s face.

Raffa has a show on www.rocklandworldradio.com called Vinny Raffa Has a Talk Show, which features local underground hiphop music and visual street art.  Check out current or archived shows and you’ll find interviews as well as street art in action.  The show I picked at random from the archives had visuals of him in the studio with varying color, light, and design effects, and varying close and distant images, and he wasn’t just sitting and talking or listening to music but rather moving for the camera.  He became part of the composition of many successive artistic images.

Vinny Raffa’s work will be on view at Coffe Labs Roasters only until the end of January, so hurry in there, and then take your time looking at the artworks over a hot cup of good strong coffee.