​Jason Young: self-taught street artist comes to Fargo

By Matthew Musacchia

matthew.j.musacchia@gmail.com

Those passing by the corner of Broadway and Second Avenue in Fargo may have seen artist Jason “Squintz” Young. Often leaning over a project on the sidewalk with cans of spray paint in hand, Young is an artist who uses an entertainer’s permit issued by the city, and creates many of his pieces on the spot. Young is also unique in that he is a self-taught artist who developed much of both his artistic and business skills while in prison.

“I had a lot of experience, you know, from the incarceration…going to jail, going to prison,” he said, “So I’m really good with pencil, I’m really good with pen, pen and ink, and gel pens, and colored pencils… It’s just the things available for a person incarcerated. And then later on in my career as an incarcerated individual, I basically just got money sent to me from my tribe and directly invested it in paints, acrylic paints, and canvases and business- related materials and teaching myself how to get myself a job when I get out.”

A member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe in Montana, Young is currently spending the summer making paintings and drawings for those who stop by. His style is quick and efficient, hands often hovering above several cans of paint in the space of several seconds before choosing one. Kimberly Mund, a bystander who says she had been coming often to watch Young, describes the process.

“People will come up and he’ll be like ‘I do a portrait, or I can do a graffiti, you choose’” she said, “and then they will wait for about five or ten minutes and get a masterpiece.”

Young’s subject matter is diverse. Ranging from flower prints, graffiti tags, and celestial themes to a pencil portrait of recently slain Fargo Police officer Jason Mozer, he uses several mediums and styles. Young cites Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso as influences, but says his art is not “concretely” embedded in his Native American identity or bound by any particular style.

“When I create art I don’t know what I’m going to create” he said “I enjoy the, just the unique personality of that piece that I’m creating, every single time it’s just an idea, and a feeling, an enjoyment…. The artwork that I’m creating right now with the spray paint medium is not meant to be, you know, gallery efficient, it’s not archival, but it’s enjoyable. It looks good, it’s cool to create for me, it’s fun. At some point, I’ll be able to do a lot more things for myself once I start generating more capital and a better network of artistic individuals.”

Young was born in Lame Deer, Montana. When he was three he moved with his adopted family to California, and then to northern Virginia, where he attended high school, and later community college. Around fifteen he described himself as “rebellious” and did not formally study art, but does recall an early success when in a class he was asked to make a drawing. He chose an eagle, which he said came out well for being done only from memory.

Young also relates how a few years later his mom had him enrolled in a painting class. He said he didn’t take it seriously, but the painting he created won third place in his school’s competition. Young said that memories like that reminded him that he had artistic ability, but it took time in prison for him to develop it. It was there he taught himself to draw, beginning with tattoo magazines. He describes his family as “tough love” so there was no support except for what he was able to do with his art.

“It took being locked up and having nothing else to do but to use it to help better my standard of my living on the inside” Young said. “…I’ve been able to that for years, since 2000. When I have time to sit down and create a piece it’s really high level.”

At nineteen Young went back to Billings, Montana. He relates that it adjusting to life there was difficult, and most of his time incarcerated was during his twenties and thirties.

“It took a little bit of rough days getting introduced to a Native American community” he said. “The aggressiveness to it, the animosity, the whole game of respect, and knowing when to speak and when not to speak, when to throw a punch and not throw a punch. It was a crash course in insanity. Throughout the years I’ve dedicated myself to being the best part of it.”

Young said that he worked hard to become a part of that community, a high point being invited into a tribal warrior’s society, the Northern Cheyenne Dog Soldiers, in 2005. He feels it is important that Native Americans keep their identity in modern society, no matter how much integration and advancement occurs.

“We’re always going to have our pains and hurts from our troubled history,” he said. “But if you look at it from a clean intellectual aspect, any growth comes with struggle and conflict… Compared to today we’re more generally open and accepting, race wise. I’m happy to be Native American, and I’m happy to stand up for Native Americans.”

In 2010, however, violence in Billings drove Young and his long-term girlfriend to Fargo. There he enrolled in some business classes online, but after two relapses, he started prison time for a DUI in July 2011. He has not been incarcerated since his release. Now using street art to help further his career, Young says he eventually wants to help those artists he says are still struggling in prison.

“It’s just like the NA program that I’m involved in, it’s just for today,” he said. “Every day is an opportunity for me to tell my story. That I’m clean and sober, that I went through prison, that I went through treatment, I’m in a residential program, and that’s given me an opportunity to continually build on that stability of being a strong artistic person, have that artistic freedom just to be able to build a company based on that art and hopefully, invest in the artists that are waiting to contact me in prison. I mean they’re looking forward to it. Who wouldn’t be? …There’s so much stress for people on the inside that they don’t have no money.… it’s really horrible. As an artist it took me drawing a hundred dollar piece of art and only sell it for five buck or a bag of coffee, and that’s just stress, and when you get out you don’t want to do that. They never made much money on the inside and why would you want to do it on the outside? So that mentality’s broken. So if I can change the way artists do time, that’s my mission statement.”