Leon Reid has given elements of "pure bling" to True Yank (above). Picture courtesy Ian Williams, © Urbis and Leon Reid IV
"I made a decision five years ago not to do things illegally," confides the street artist known as Leon Reid IV, speaking from his New York home.
"I didn’t want to be running from the police at 50 years old. I wanted to learn the skills of negotiation and persuading cities that some of my ideas are good."
A graffiti connoisseur who lists Manchester as his favourite English destination because "the people are so much more down to Earth than in the South", Reid has reneged on some of his renegade principles to work with the local City Council on his hip-hop reimagining of American Founding Father Abraham Lincoln.
He has no regrets over his newfound co-operation with authorities for the tack-covered statue, overlooking the city's Lincoln Square while wearing bracelets, medallions and "pure bling".
"The tactics of executing street art and graffiti were holding me back," he admits, having spent six months negotiating with his Lancashire hosts. "This is where I want to go because my ideas are now exceeding what I could do as a street artist."
Urbis, whose State of the Art: New York programme features Reid's creation, helped make a "good argument" for the development of True Yank, which Reid hopes will inspire laughter and curiosity about Lincoln’s links with global themes on the bicentenary of his birth.
Picture courtesy Ian Williams, © Urbis and Leon Reid IV
"The African medallion was popular in hip-hop for a while, and contains a little bit of symbolism because he had a huge impact on the African citizens in America," he explains.
"You've got the Yankees hat, because it's in conjunction with State of the Art and Urbis, and also because it's the New York Yankees, and I wanted to drive home the fact that Lincoln is the Yank’s Yank. Then we have a red doo rag, which is popular as streetwear here in New York."
It was, in fact, the English urban landscape which informed much of Reid's thinking, particularly "very unique" aspects such as Belisha beacons, the green man traffic light icon and CCTV cameras.
"That kind of changed the context of my work on the street, because it was highly specific to British infrastructure," he points out, discussing the backdrop to True Yank. "Lincoln looks like anybody walking around here today. He's very contemporary.
"He needed an update in his clothes, you know? He'd been wearing them for about 150 years."
