The Magnet Mafia Sticks to Street Art

"And we put the two together," Matt remembers. "You could do the artwork right on the magnets. So we were able to incorporate not only our own style, but all the other mixed mediums and put it on top of another medium covered with vinyl that can adhere to acrylics, screen prints or posters, then put it out on the streets in a new way."

In his house are boxes filled with fresh rolls of industrial-grade magnetic sheeting. Fifty feet goes for about $150 online, and the sheets are easily cut into ready-made canvases to adorn at concerts, fundraisers, even poetry slams. In less than two years, they estimate, over 5,000 Magnet Mafia pieces have gone up on the streets of Denver, ranging from the size of a quarter to a six-foot-long ray gun they slapped on a bridge awning. At an event called AfroBlu, they did a picture of Malcolm X to mark his assassination; another work — spread over several pieces — depicted Matt and Harrison riding spray-paint cans like rodeo cowboys. They borrowed a thirty-foot ladder to put it on the wall above a LoDo parking lot.

Most of their art is rough, chaotic. "We don't really take it too serious," Matt says. "It's hard for me to paint without people around. I like distractions; I like people to talk to, wondering what you're doing. If I'm by myself, I think about it too much. It's cool because we get to meet people, types of people we would never have met."

Some of the collaborations go better than others. "That's one of the crazy things when we paint," Matt says. "A lot of times one of us will hate it and the other will love it. And then we start throwing paint at each other."

"Usually it's because Matt will want me to turn it into something too fast and he'll, like, write some shit in there," Harrison explains.

"He stresses," says Matt.

"We have a really interesting relationship," Harrison adds. "He pisses me off; I piss him off. Half the time we're just yelling at each other."

"Yeah," Matt says. "But that's just because we're friends enough that we can say something like, 'That idea sucks; I hate that,' and it's not being critical."

Harrison acknowledges that the two are "not the freshest painters in the world." The purpose of the Magnet Mafia is not to be the freshest, though, but to build a platform that builds a scene. And since they embarked on their magnetized adventure, Matt and Harrison have connected with countless creative subgroups across town, involving everyone from dancers to photographers to musicians to political activists to fashion designers.

They have a little trouble explaining just how this came about. "We're just down to get involved, that's all," says Matt. "We're not trying to get so unique or exclusive. We just want to share art and have people share with us."

"We're just part of the community," Harrison says, "and we're trying to help bring the community up."

And to get up, you've got to get down.

Kym Bloom was confused when she got what seemed like a threatening e-mail on October 5.

"Our company the Downtown Denver Partnership found several of your magnets this morning and as you probably know it is illegal to put these up on public utilities (signs, electrical, news boxes, light poles, and so on)," it read. "Our company, the police, and other law enforcement has kept track of the 'Magnet Mafia' over the years and are fed up with all forms of graffiti. So please stop this behavior. Consider this your warning because the police will not take this lightly if caught."

Bloom, a local artist who helps run the Kanon Collective gallery, had placed magnets of her work downtown as part of last October's Denver Arts Week, a celebration of culture organized by the Denver Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau.

"It made me nervous that they had my name and I was going to go in some database, like I'm some renegade graffiti artist out to destroy downtown with my hideous magnets or something," says Bloom. "I thought the whole idea of the Magnet Mafia was this was a type of funky graffiti that didn't damage anybody's property. People could just peel it off and take it with them, sort of like spreading artwork."

The e-mail came from Erik Helgeson, a 26-year-old service representative with the Downtown Denver Partnership, the private group funded by downtown businesses that helps maintain, improve and promote that part of town. The Partnership spends an estimated $95,000 a year for private contractors to clean up graffiti; in 2007, they dealt with 9,132 pieces. And after those contractors spotted hundreds of magnets downtown, Helgeson says, the Partnership looked for the artists' names, and then "we contacted them to let them know it's illegal."

But who says it's illegal to hang magnets in Denver?

In the summer of 2006, an undercover cop dressed as a homeless person spotted Harrison placing a magnet on an electrical box on the side of a building in Capitol Hill. Harrison was arrested and charged with trespassing (the box was considered to be on private property) and "posting unauthorized posters." He spent thirty hours in jail before he could reach Matt to come bail him out. But when his case came up for a hearing, the city attorney took one look at the file and immediately dismissed the posting charge; Harrison pleaded guilty to misdemeanor trespass.