When Michael De Feo's status says that he's 'planting flowers', it means he's pasting art on the streets of whatever city he happens to be in at the moment. His work is magnetic, from the screen-printed flower emblem to the free handportraits and sinister, copulating corpses. Somewhere on the 'flower' end of his spectrum , Michael has published children's book and produced lemon illustrations for the annual High Line Street Festival's World's Largest Lemonade Stand. Alphabet City, is a picture book tour of the alphabet using paste-upstreet art on the streets of New York. A is for ant; B is for beach ball ; C is for cherries...and yeah, F is for flower. Nothing softens inner city streets like toddler-friendly illustrations plastered onto trash bins and rotting clapboard. "Ever since I was a kid, I've wanted to make a children's book. Over the years I've come up with numerous ideas, however, none of them strong enough for me to approach publishers. It finally dawned on me that I should marry this desire of producing a children's book along with my passion for street art. Remarkably, I just emailed Gingko Press some images and described the concept. They loved the idea and requested a partial dummy copy. Once they I gave them that, they gave me the go-ahead."

So, you're in Hong Kong right now. What's going on?

Thus far I've installed tons of flowers both small and large all over the city. I intend on getting up some self portrait paintings this evening. Aside from doing my own work, I've been seeing a lot of interesting museum and galleries shows. Most notable are JoseParla's show at Ooi Botos and the Louis Vuitton exhibition of artists they've worked with or collected at the Hong Kong Museum of Art.

And you'll be in Toronto soon for your show at Angell Gallery. I got to see some of the pieces when I was in your studio. They look great. How did this show come about?

I met Gareth last December in Miami during Art Basel week. A few months later Gareth came by for a studio visit which led to he and Jamie inviting me to participate in last summer's "Works On Paper" group show. My paintings got a positive response so they invited me to show with Alex McLeod this August.

The best part about these interviews is poking around other people's studios and yours is pretty cool. Not many people get to share a work and living space.

Most definitely, I have all the comforts of home and it helps to keep me immersed. My five year old daughter, Marianna and I sometimes work in it together which is very rewarding for me. I wouldn't mind having my studio on the top of my home so that I'd have more natural light, but that's OK. I'm quite pleased with it.

You have a really grounded view of your work, especially when street art has a rep for being territorial. I like the story about Wooster Collective's project at 11 Spring St.

What story about Spring Street?

About getting up over top of another crew's tag. I like the image of your little flower causing beef.

Oh, yes. I was the second person to go up on the exterior of 11 Spring for that exhibition and in doing so, my twelve foot flower painting had gone over half of someone's tiny marker tag, fifteen feet off the ground. This was a huge problem for the crew. A friend of mine who knows them told me they now had beef with me and that I should be watching my back because their crew runs deep. This didn't last long because another artist going up on the exterior had done one worse so their sights were diverted.

Do people stop to chat when they see you putting up work on the street?

Some do. Some yell at me (seriously) while others give me smiles and thumbs up.

Published in Urban Influencer