Lady Pink is one of those outstanding personalities of graffiti whose name has been heard around the world. If you are not yet hip to what she represents, this is definitely your last chance before you get left back.
Lady Pink has been married to Smith, another New York graf legend, for some time now and their house is a graffiti workshop and a mini-museum as well. Clearly she deserves much respect for her continuing quest to be out in front, but it's much too soon to write her epitaph because she's just warming up. The best is yet to come:

I started writing when I was only 15 years old. My very first boyfriend, he wrote graffiti. When he was arrested, they sent him away to Puerto Rico, where they sent all the bad children. I felt so bad and cried every day and started writing his name for him, putting it up arround the school. Hanging with his boys, I started to write graffiti. Later on I went to the Art and Design school, where I met the real graffiti writers that wrote on subway trains and stole paint and did all the activities that beeing a graffiti writer means. Those guys where the ones that where really getting up, like Seen, Doze...(etc.) They didn't take me very seriously, I was just a young girl who wanted to be a graffiti writer. But the image of graffiti writers was mean and tough, but most of all boys. They didn't want to take me to any train yard or anything like that.
I proved to the boys that I could go and bomb. Arround 1980, '81 were my strongest years of painting on the subways. Back then all graffiti writers were singleminded and only focused on subways. Nobody cared about walls or halls of fame or anything like that. The purepose was to have the stuff run. We were not even taking photos when we started. In the Seventies, most writers didn't even have cameras. Right now, if you are in graffiti , you have a camera, it's like a law. Back then, between six of us, none had a camera. Everybody called Henry, (Chalfant, who is behind Subway Art), and left messages on his answering machine. You would say: I painted this train on such and such line, and he would be there the next week catching photos of it. Henry Chalfant is like the godfather of graffiti. He supported graffiti writers by doing more then just taking photos. He always gave photos to everybody who came to his studio. He's a very nice man. He supported graffiti writers themselves, gave them money when they needed some or a home sometimes. He was always there to help solve problems. He was wonderfull.

How do you feel when you look back at the time you spent spray painting?

I've been painting for 16 years, after all this time it's just not that important in my life. There is nothing out there in the graffiti world that I could possibly want. We all write graffiti for fame. You want everybody all over the world to know you and see your name... I pretty much have that and that's about as far as you can possibly get in the graffiti world, once everybody in the underworld has seen your work. I'm a fine artist, I exibit in galleries, and have been for all this time. I also have my own small compagny. We put up proffessional murals, interior or exterior. We do all styles of art work. Graffiti has no purepose in my life. Who do you want to impress? Children in the street! The only reason that I still do graffiti illegally somtimes, is because the children who are starting now have no respect for just nice looking legal peices. They are going to cross out your work. So I think it's necessary to prove to them that you still got the balls to go out there and breake the law. That's the only thing that graffiti writers understand and respect. Ocasionaly bombing, doing freight trains and tunnels, breaking the law like the good old days is still necessary, cuz' I don't want my walls to be destroyed by disrespecting young writers. I think they should take a lesson from the big murals we do for money and realize that if they love to paint and they have talent, there is a purpus in life. They can actually have a career and live off their work. It doesn't mean that "oh well, you have some talent now but later you will have to sweep flours for the rest of your life." I'm showing them you can actually be an artist, live like an artist and use your talent to the best of your ability.

Can you tell us about some of the attitudes that are around you?

The attitudes now among graffiti writers are very, very different in New York. Its all about being a gangsta, vicking people, (mugging them), stealing their paint and going over people you have beef with. That's the big thing right now, you got to have beef. If you got beef everything gets crossed out and toyed. This attitude is very disapointing. Now on the other hand, the attitude of European writers is very encouraging. They are out there bombing and risking their lives to put up their names on the side of a train. The consequences of their actions are a lot more sever then in the States. I admire the guts they have. What I don't like about them is some seem to feel that if you do murals for money, you should be crossed out, that's the bottom line...you're selling out. I think that sucks.
Mural work, wich is what we all do putting our name up or whatever, is part of a long and repected traditon. Don't listen to anybody saying that you are a sellout, 'cuz you are not painting the trains and breaking the law. I think that is narrow minded and wrong. It's going to stifel a lot of wunderful work that could possibly come out. I mean is anybody out there telling Mode 2 or Loomit or any of these guys, that they can't do big beautiful murals? They should do more, I love the work that comes out of Europe. There is a lot of potential for the people there, wheras in New York there is no unity. No one is gonig out there doing big wonderful stuff. Some guys from the Bronx's FX crew, T-Kid and those guys are part of the handfull of artists in this big city. We have let our traditions die and we no longer teach young writers. They are learning from magazines and hearsay in the streets.

So your goal as a writer isn't just impressig people when you paint, like by only hitting walls that are hard to get up on?

My hunsband and I get dressed in dark clothes sometimes, and go out at night and hit a freight train, breaking the law by doing somthing that we like. But that's mainly personel because we are a strange couple (laughter). Others would rather go out for dinner and a movie, we might rather go bombing but that's mainly just a thrill. We don't focus in on impressing people... It's a thing that's not there when we are doing a legal wall that is missing. Diehard graffiti writers will never stop!
As a female writer your sexual reputation is run through the dirt. Boys will not tell each other that a girl said no to them. People were saying crazy things about how I wasn't doing my own pieces and so on... So I went painting with guys in the Bronx and all the way down to Brooklyn to make it clear that I didn't need anybody to carry my paint or whatever. They saw that I was serious. I never went out painting with a boyfriend in my life, it's only now that I married that I do so. We get along very well and get the job done with out him just being paranoid about me getting caught.

Where did you get your name?

I let my friend SEEN pick it for me. See, when I started there had been a history of female writers like Barbara and Eva 62 who had already came up, but when I came in they had all quit. I wanted a name that stood out as a feminin one. I also like the letters in the name Pink. Even if it seems like a stereotyped name for a women, as if I played with little pink dolls, that was far from being true since you could see my name on subway cars next to all the male writer's names. I was a feminist speaking for women's rights even before I ever heard about anything like that. When I started it came to the point where I had to beat up a few boys with baseball bats, but after awhile people knew me and knew who my friends where so they whould not mess with me.

What do you try to expres with your name after 16 years of painting?

There is only so much you can express threw the lettres of your name. Piece after piece, it's got very boring for me. Everybody wants their 4 meters of space to put up their name and nothing else. I really admire the groups around the world that work togehter to achieve big massive beautiful murals and their names are still in there in a way that has been worked out. With my friends we try to do murals that people, ordinary people from a neighborhood will like. Peolple will give you their walls asking you to paint them without thinking you're putting up graffiti. That's what I like. It's a good way to do graffiti, instead of doing a half assed piece that doesn't look good in the day. We all can take over the city.

Where did you get your name?

I let my friend SEEN pick it for me. See, when I started there had been a history of female writers like Barbara and Eva 62 who had already came up, but when I came in they had all quit. I wanted a name that stood out as a feminin one. I also like the letters in the name Pink. Even if it seems like a stereotyped name for a women, as if I played with little pink dolls, that was far from being true since you could see my name on subway cars next to all the male writer's names. I was a feminist speaking for women's rights even before I ever heard about anything like that. When I started it came to the point where I had to beat up a few boys with baseball bats, but after awhile people knew me and knew who my friends where so they whould not mess with me.

What do you try to expres with your name after 16 years of painting?

There is only so much you can express threw the lettres of your name. Piece after piece, it's got very boring for me. Everybody wants their 4 meters of space to put up their name and nothing else. I really admire the groups around the world that work togehter to achieve big massive beautiful murals and their names are still in there in a way that has been worked out. With my friends we try to do murals that people, ordinary people from a neighborhood will like. Peolple will give you their walls asking you to paint them without thinking you're putting up graffiti. That's what I like. It's a good way to do graffiti, instead of doing a half assed piece that doesn't look good in the day. We all can take over the city!