El Segundo - Second to None

Artist DUSTER's signature style at Beinfield Architecture designed El Segundo 

"Decades ago, the work of Bronx artist Duster UA was spotted by avid New York City collector and curator Dolores Neumann. The well-known graffiti writer, whose tags and visual musings could be found on the sides of trains and the city walls that were his first canvases, made the leap to put paint to actual canvas and became part of Neumann's private collection that included Picassos, Matisses, Miros. As a board member of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the curator also got one of his paintings accepted there (he describes their relationship in a 20 IO interview/ short documentary, searchable on Youtube). 

Norwalk's Peter Bondi has amassed his own extensive collection of street art over the years, including Duster's work, and through Bondi and Ironworks and El Segundo architect and designer Bruce Beinfield, an introduction was made between the artist and the owners of the bar. "They said they wanted the place to look like an abandoned building where writers had gone· through .. .I've done that kind of stuff before, on movie sets," (Duster's cache includes work in Hollywood for the likes of the Wayans brothers). The detailed piece at the back of the room of a train face is a signature painting that he originally imagined and created on the side of a New York train car. "It's a wild-style piece that says, 'Duster,"' he muses".

Read more of Foodster Mike Mackeys'  article in The Beat here