Tie One

Infobox Artist
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name = Tie One


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birthname = Jonathan Lim
birthdate = June 19 1979
location = Philippines
deathdate = March 18 1998
deathplace = San Francisco, USA
nationality = American
field = Graffiti
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Jonathan See Lim AKA Tie One (1979–1998), was a graffiti artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was well known in the graffiti community for his aggressive style of graffiti art and the large amount of work he produced. Lim was born in the Philippines to ethnic-Chinese parents. During his early childhood, his family moved to California. As a youth, Lim expressed an interest in art. He was shot and killed at age 18 on a fire escape outside a Tenderloin apartment at 120 Taylor St., having been taken for a burglar by an armed resident.Van Derbeken, Jaxon. "Tragic Collision of Life and Art: Photographer who killed tagger may be charged", San Francisco Chronicle, December 14th, 1998.] The resident was not indicted for the killing.Van Derbeken, Jaxon. "S.F. Grand Jury Exonerates Tagger's Killer", "San Francisco Chronicle", December 15, 1998.] In its aftermath, friends of Lim planned a 100-foot memorial mural to him in Mission Dolores Park. [Editorial postscript to Spie. [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/e/a/1998/04/29/EDITORIAL1881.dtl "The untimely death of a graffiti writer",] "San Francisco Chronicle", April 29, 1998.] The death of Tie One and the subsequent lack of any prosecution in connection with it had a profound and lasting effect on San Francisco's graffiti community. [Hill, Nic (director). "Piece by Piece", Underdog, 2005.]

Graffiti

Lim did a lot of graffiti in San Jose, so his parents sent him to live with his sister at Venetian Bridges Apartments in Stockton, California. He met more established graffiti artists there, kept placing graffiti, and was frequently pursued as a vandal by police; at age 17, he dropped out of Lincoln High School. Eventually his family settled in San Bruno, just outside of San Francisco.

Lim professed himself as a Buddhist and a firm believer in nonviolence, in accord with his upbringing. By this point in his life he had become an exceptionally active graffiti writer, frequently making trips to paint in San Francisco. By his late teens, Lim had become a permanent fixture in Bay Area graffiti culture, and painted in many additional American cities.

Working as "Tie", he came to be considered a graffiti "bomber", focusing on large quantities of tags, throw-ups, and block letters. Unlike some graffiti artists who create elaborate colorful art pieces that can take hours to produce, Tie focused on quantity over quality.

Tie's work was mainly black and white, big, and aggressive. He incorporated the peace sign into his work, wrote youth-oriented phrases like "Let's play ball" and "Joy of life" next to his graffiti.Spie. [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/e/a/1998/04/29/EDITORIAL1881.dtl "The untimely death of a graffiti writer",] "San Francisco Chronicle", April 29, 1998. Via Pacific News Service.] He later developed and created some characters and sometimes placed faces within the letters of his throw ups. Seo and Shae were his other aliases. The graffiti crews he worked with included Reds, RTC, R10 (ROTEN), THR, T2B, BBB, and KCW.

Travel and meetings

Tie studied the art he observed on the streets of San Francisco and Stockton, California, meeting up with DVS, Meta4, Teez, and the JOA, ATA and SA crews including Minds, Mazon, Kase and the Lords from Modesto, and Reds Crew in San Jose. He rode a Greyhound bus to Los Angeles, getting out and bombing at every stop, and then attending the LA Graffiti show that included art by Twist, Man One and other mixed media work that influenced him. At the show, he met Spie from "terror media created", Cokes from Oakland, and Dream, Gyro, and others from the Los Angeles area, whom he admired for work he had seen on the streets and on rail cars in Oakland and Emeryville rail yards. Tie also made a Greyhound graffiti pilgrimage to New York in the same wise.

He frequently returned to San Francisco in a VW Squareback on "bombing runs", sometimes painting all night. In 1998, he was influenced by Barry McGee and MQ. The volume of his work and the circumstances of his death have contributed to his own influence.

Death

On March 18th, 1998, Tie One was shot on the fire escape of a residential building in the San Francisco Tenderloin, and died on the street below; a grand jury returned no charges against the shooter, who said that he shot in self-defense as Lim grabbed at his gun. A 41 year old woman in a parking lot below told police she heard Lim yell, "Wait man, hold on!" The resident disputed this account. His bicycle was on the street below. He was carrying a bag containing a spraycan.

References