Jason Richards: The Aspen Blvd. street artist

Jason Richards isn’t your typical artist. There are no paint brushes or blank white canvasses in his studio.

He works with cans of brightly-colored spray paint, recycling doors destined for the Dumpster and sheets of plywood as his canvas.

As for the studio, well, it’s among a row of apartment garages situated along Brandon’s heavily-traveled Aspen Boulevard.

“It (the traffic) gives you incentive to keep doing something different,” said Richards, 41. “There’s been no negativity whatsoever, and obviously, I keep it on these walls and not on the streets, so it’s been pretty cool how many people have given me compliments.”

You also won’t find his work in a gallery or see a price tag attached to any of his creations.

“Then it becomes more of a job,” he said. “And if you’re doing that all day and you come home, the last thing you’re going to want to do is paint.”

It’s also likely the creation you see today may be covered up with a different painting tomorrow.

His craft, you see, is street art. Some would call it “graffiti.”

“I would say, ‘street art. I like to throw the graffiti aspect into it – that’s why there’s a name or something in it,” said Richards, who tags his art as KNAS. “Obviously, graffiti is more the bad side of it. Some see it as you’re damaging property, but it’s cool that people are liking it more than not. Obviously, there can be negativity about it, but there’s a good way of doing it. It is a form of art; it’s just working with a different medium.”

Recently, Richards’ art caught the attention of Jeremy Dykstra, who enlisted him to tag large-scale obstacles set up at The Gauntlet, a charity mud obstacle course held last month and organized by Circuit Fitness.

“He drove by and asked me if I would be interested and I said yeah,” says Richards, who accepted the job and the three-week deadline that came with it.

The Gauntlet, in a sense, served as his public debut, to which he volunteered countless hours tagging the obstacles that included multiple logos of the sponsors. 

“I was literally putting the finishing touches on it the night before the race,” Richards said. “I felt it was important, because something like that wouldn’t be going on if it wasn’t for the sponsors, so I wanted to make sure that I could get those sponsors (logos) on anything I could possibly paint on.”

Rob Green, one of the organizers behind The Gauntlet, said Richards’ talents were a positive addition to the event.

“His work gave the event a polish I never would have expected. Last year The Gauntlet was just unfinished lumber and hay bales. This year it had a shine to it, a theme,” Green said. “I think Jason helped to give the event an identity and an energy. He made it his own. Just like everybody who swung a hammer building the obstacles made it their own. Just like everybody who helped plan made it their own. Just like everybody who volunteered or ran the course. He gave us an image to get behind and helped our collective efforts shine in ways it otherwise wouldn’t have.”

Richards first dabbled in street art as teenager growing up in California. 

“I was in a skateboard crew, and back then we did some tagging and stuff like that, but it was never anything like this. It was just simple colors and very little time; it wasn’t really that important to us,” he said. “Over the course of the years, I slowly got into it. I was drawing, maybe not this, but just drawing pieces, murals of what would be street art on a wall, and when I stopped skateboarding, I needed a hobby again, and this is what I fell back to.”

He’s long admired the art medium, even knowing that what’s here today may be painted over tomorrow.

“Seeing it on walls and knowing that the next day when you drive by it’s been eliminated by the county, and the next day you drive by, there’s a new painting. I just always thought – not the illegal aspect of it – that it was really cool that somebody did that amount of work in a short amount of time for no reason than for others to admire and appreciate,” he said.

The large-scale painting of an octopus, a jelly fish and a pot of gold that on display in his garage studio took him just a couple of days to paint and has caught the eye of several passersby this summer. 

“You want that contrast of, not necessarily all bright (colors), but when the bright ones do come out, they just pop, slap you in the face, in a sense. And with graffiti, you have so much freedom,” he said.

To keep his hobby in financial check, Richards chose plywood and doors as his canvas, which he paints over and over and over with new works of art.

“I like spray paint because there’s not many erasing capabilities. You almost have to do it correct, because if you mess up or you do something wrong, it takes so much more work or so much more paint, so you’re limited with what you do.”

He keeps a record his work in photographs he snaps on his cell phone. 

Richards spends about half of the year here working in construction and tours with heavy metal bands throughout the U.S. the remaining six months. That’s also when he restocks his paint supply, scoring deals on paint at graffiti shops in San Diego and Florida, for example. 

“You can’t buy this kind of paint here is why,” he said. “Anytime we go to a different city, the first couple things I’ll look for is local restaurants, because I love experiencing different foods, and then also the local skateboard shops and graffiti stores.”

He’s also been known to leave his trademark art behind while on the road.

“Some of the venues, if they already have some sort of spray paint in the venue or outside of the venue, I’ll ask (if I can paint). So, some places around the country you’ll see my stuff, and usually it’s towards the band that I’m touring with or my own creation just because if I’m working for a person, I want to make it known whose been here. And of course, I’ll always do my little signature on it,” he said.

A tree, he said, is the oddest canvas he’s tagged. 

“The way it was set up and the way the branches and leaves were coming off, it looked like a smiley face,” he said. “I was on tour and the whole building was spray painted by a really good artist, and I kept looking at this tree, thinking, ‘Why didn’t these artists see the same thing I’m looking at?’ So, by the end of the night I went and painted that tree up – with permission.”

Green said he can’t speak highly enough about Richards and his artistic abilities.

“To say that he’s a talented guy is an understatement. There’s something about him that takes you by surprise. He’s quiet, really mild-mannered, but when you get to know him you realize he’s been all over. He’s got stories. He’s seen things and experienced things most people will never get to. His work is an embodiment of that. It surprises you. From this quiet, mild-mannered guy comes artwork you couldn’t have dreamed of. I had no idea of what to expect when I first heard he was helping out, and the more I got to know him the more impressive he became-as a person and as an artist,” he said. “I don’t think Brandon, S.D., has ever been on the cusp of any groundbreaking shifts in the art world. It’s a quiet town. You see familiar people at familiar events. It’s easy to get caught up in routine and not realize the sort of talent and stories that are right under your nose. Meeting Jason was a reminder that everybody has their story, and thank God, they’re all different. We’re all meeting each other at a certain point in our respective paths. It’s important to remember that we need to take the time to listen to one another and realize how our individual strengths can benefit an entire community.”

Jana Meyerink, Richards’ roommate, fully admires the artist and his work, too.

“I’m a good critic. I just really like what he does and wish he would go more in depth and let more people see what he’s doing,” she said.