Montana LOOKBOOK #08 / 2023

MC Your pieces carry a

MC Your pieces carry a lot of traditional graffiti elements like illustrative drips, bubbles, stars, and fat highlights. What elements do you like using the most and why? LAIA I like to use a thousand things and at the same time my pieces look “simple.” Sometimes it is difficult to know when I have to stop adding things. I love using fat highlights. I love everything that shines a lot. The drops too. They make me see my pieces as if they were something sweet and edible like cake or ice cream. Something that you will never see me doing is a classic bubble background! MC Wait a minute… Did you just say you wouldn’t do a cloud/bubble background? This is interesting. Why is that? These are fundamentals of graffiti, like arrows, shadows, and outlines. LAIA I know, but I prefer to paint backgrounds that look like slime, bricks, stars, or whatever. I don’t know why but I don’t like the classic bubble background with big bubbles, small bubbles, and millions of bubbles of all sizes mixed. I think it reminds me of the kind of elements you use in your first pieces. Don’t get me wrong, I have full respect for those who do bubbles! Especially if they do them well. But they are not for me. ↑ Always ready, LAIA can proudly carry her Artist Edition Montana BLACK cans in her own design “Take Away” Montana Cotton Bag. ↘ LAIA has perfected the “less is more” technique and chosen black, yellow, and white to achieve it. I like to use a thousand things and at the same time my pieces look “simple.” Sometimes it is difficult to know when I have to stop adding things. direction when I go to paint. Normally when I prepare sketches, in the end, I always end up doing other things. I think my head is made to enjoy the act of painting, let it flow freely, and in terms of graffiti, it does not accept much preparation in advance. MC Which comics would we find on your bookshelf? LAIA You would find many old Hanna-barbera or Disney comics and books from the 70s and 80s for example. That kind of drawing fascinates me. 24 Black Artist Edition/Interview Laia

MC How did the design for the Montana BLACK Artist Edition can come about, and is there a back story to why it is as it is? LAIA Yes, I always thought that if one day I was going to design a spray can, everyone would believe I would do it with a thousand beautiful and fun colors. I wanted to break that mold. Simplicity is sometimes better! I eventually decided to design it with some very traditional graffiti elements, such as the Throw-Up. I combined that with my “quiet” approach when I paint murals. For this, I chose the combination of two colors that to me represent classic in the street graffiti. Those colors were black and yellow. I did not want to fall into the typical stigma of “Oh, she is a girl and does beautiful things that look feminine” (how horrible). I paint graffiti, all types, and in all its modalities. So I made a mix. It is like collecting, I need to collect memories of places that I have visited and after visiting one place, I need another, and another, and another. ↑ In all there glory, a display box full of LAIA Artist Edition cans moonlighting in front of her work in the Montana Store Vienna. ↓ Not to mention the limited edition Montana BLACK LAIA t-shirt design that was released in an exclusive print run to celebrate the release of the can. MC And what made you choose the color Yellow over another variation of the color yellow? LAIA As I said, sometimes simplicity is better! Why choose a variant of yellow when you can have the king of yellows? Black Artist Edition/Interview Laia 25