Hellbent got his start wheat pasting confrontational slogans around the Deep South of the United States. After moving to New York in 2000 he ventured further into street based art, this time period as he refers to as just âdoodles.â In 2005, he adopted the name Hellbent from Richard Hell, the influential instigator of punk in the 1970s and began spreading his name on the street. Hellbent began experimenting with various mediaâwheat paste, rollers, cans, and stickersâbut soon settled on making hand carved plaques that he would screw or glue around town, satisfying a desire to incorporate a folk element into recognizable urban art. Hellbent began carving predatory animals and jawbones on wood and using floral stencils to soften the force of attacking creatures. In his recent work these floral backgrounds have eclipsed the central animal and jawbone figures and become elaborate abstract fields of color and movement. Their configurations veering from organized quilt patterns to completely haphazard bands of color weaving throughout them selves. He has dubbed this series of work âMix Tapeâ as his initial sketches for later paintings were made from the tape he used to mask off sections and contained overspray of the different patterns he was using. His plaques and recent abstract murals can be found throughout New York City, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Zurich, Glasgow, and Paris, as well as in the books Street Art New York (Prestel 2010), Graffiti New York (Abhrams, 2009), and the upcoming Outdoor Gallery, New York City (Gingko, 2013).
