The Man Behind the Cover

Over the next six weeks, 27's show nearly sold out. With some of the money he earned, 27 decided to expand his horizons. He took a train (Amtrak this time) to the East Coast, with a plan to make his mark on New York. He brought his bike and several boxes of art supplies and spray paint. "I'd stay with friends and paint every night—do as much as I could to spread it all over the city," 27 says.

From midnight to sunrise, 27 wandered through New York neighborhoods, painting the town. He hit the Lower East Side, parts of Brooklyn, and spent two hours on the Williamsburg Bridge. "That was a high-profile spot," he says. "The thing looked like I spent a day on it. It impressed a lot of other people and got a lot of attention."

By the time he left town, nearly a month later, his work was starting to become a street-art sensation in New York. Fans posted photos and comments on Flickr. The popular Gothamist blog dubbed him the "new king in town." The Village Voice tracked him down back in Minnesota and wrote an article about him.

A short time later, a Brooklyn street artist invited 27 to contribute two pieces to a New York graffiti art show at a Soho gallery, where one of his works was priced at $2,200.

In so doing, 27 became one of the new breed of graffiti artists who have used the public canvas to get a foot in the door of the art world. The most famous of them—the mysterious Banksy in Britain or the Brazilian twins known as Os Gemeos—are virtually mainstream; Banksy has sold work for more than a half-million dollars.

"That's my main focus right now is to do more art inside galleries instead of in the street," 27 says.

The week before Labor Day, 27 was in Seattle for a group show arranged by a local gallery. This time, he didn't hop a train. The gallery flew him out on US Air.