“When Keith looked at the blank panel, he saw only a big, clean blackboard asking to be brought to life with white chalk. So, he quickly resolved to be aboveground and buy some. At the time, white Magic Markers were popular with graffiti artists, yet Keith knew that black matte paper would absorb the marker, and he would not achieve the tactile, sharp, crisp white line he was imagining.
“The chalk was crumbly and broke easily, yet he soon discovered the answer to this technical problem when he moved on to low-dust Crayola Chalk: '50 cents, 30 works,' he said. In his first drawings, he stuck with his street logos — the crawling baby, the barking dog, the UFO. Treating the drawings as a diversion on his way to the Mudd Club, he would hop off the F Train if he spotted a blank panel — most of these drawings wound up at downtown stations, especially Broadway and Lafayette. 'Keith’s subway panels greeted you like welcome mats at each downtown stop,' wrote Ann Magnuson, 'personalized petroglyphs that spelled relief from the piss-soaked wreckage of the Lower East Side.'
“When he checked in a week or so later, Keith was most surprised to discover the drawings usually still intact.”
