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Biography

My name is Jonah Anderson, I'm 34 years old and come from Minneapolis, Minnesota. I started drawing when I was only five years old. Keeping on with it into High School, drawing cartoons for various school organizations. I received a National Art Award for my cartoons in the Roosevelt Standard, my high school newspaper. It featured my art in every issue.

At the end of High School, I started running my own business, "The Air Brush Shack." While running that I met a couple of air brusher's named "M.F. Kal and Nioz." We had all the underground airbrush business in town. Eventually, the three of us moved to Lake Street in Minneapolis. Re-openned the shop and did very well.

Around that time, I got kind of tired of the freezing winters up in Minnesota. So in 1993, I moved to St. Louis. I got some air brush work at the Union Station Mall, working for a friend. After I got used to St. Louis, I got an excellent gig in the heart of downtown at "Gus's Fashions". I worked for Gus, custom painting all sorts of wearing apparel, seven days a week. That led to other custom work, including cars, walls, and backdrops for performing artists. I was fortunate to do work for Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence, Jon "B", and Brian McKnight. That all got me connected to some other fine folks like Salt-n-Pepa, 2 Live Crew, Brand Nubian, Fuschnickens and Common Sense. You can see some of that work at Backdrops in the Archive.

One thing led to another and I started doing a lot more commercial work. I got an offer from Kamel Cigarettes to paint advertisements around town in clubs. Then Coca-Cola had me do some "IYDKYDG" advertisements in St.Louis and New Orleans. Painting in the clubs spread my name around and before long I was doing entire cutom interiors for bars and shops. Two that I'm really proud of are The Cheetah Club and a club called Liquid. There's pictures of those at Interiors in the Archive.

Aside from the commercial work I was doing, I was also involved in the graffiti world. Myself and a few friends went to work with the City of St.Louis, creating the flood wall project, which was known as "Paint Louis". It became an annual event that drew graf people from all over the country. Eventually, we painted most of the three and half miles of flood wall along the Mississippi. I worked four years on the project and sat on the Board of Directors. Unfortunately, a very small group of the artists didn't appreciate this opportunity and did some tagging around the city. That messed it up for everyone, and the whole project got canned.

In June of 2000, myself and a friend were attacked in an alley in St.Louis on the way home from a club. I was hit in the head with a 2x4 and almost died. But, thanks to many people praying and caring for me, I didn't, and the story continues.

Since 2001 I've been back in Minnesnowda. When I got back on my feet, I started working with my computer a lot. I digitized my drawings using the computer to color and reshape them. Most of the designs in Merchandice are done that way.

While I was living in St.Paul, I got an e-mail from a friend. Attached was a photo from the Spiderman 2 video game by Activion. It was a peice I did on my birthday in Atlanta back in '98. When I got ahold of them to find out what was up, it turned out they were really good people. They bought that peice and some others. Just recently they bought the rights to one of my character canvases, Stunville Bird.

I moved across the river to Minneapolis a few years ago. Currently I spend most of my time working on my canvases, custom airbrush jobs and designs for the on-line store. You can usually see one of my walls at Intermedia Arts at 28th and Lyndale in Mpls. I'm not traveling as much as I used to, but I still get around. I painted at Scribble Jam in Cincinatti in '03. I still make yearly trips to Kansas City, St.Louis, Iowa City and other places where I paint legal walls ONLY, and NO trains!