Quaker Graffiti Artist Todd Drake on Doing Good Without Permission

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Discussion Questions

1. Todd Drake describes his street art persona, “Quaker Pirate,” as someone who tries to “do good without asking permission”. What do you think of this philosophy? When is it appropriate or even necessary to act without permission for a greater good, and when might it be counterproductive?
2. In Drake’s portrait, he depicts Benjamin Lay holding out his hand as if to ask the viewer, “Look what I did about the genocide and the wrong of my time. What are you going to do about the genocide and the wrongs of your time?”. What contemporary issues do you feel this artwork is challenging you to confront?
3. The episode concludes with Drake’s message to “Hold fast,” a term sailors used on their knuckles to remind them to hold onto the ropes to save their lives. In the face of challenges, what does “holding fast” to your values, your community, and your voice look like in a practical way?

Jon Watts

Hello there I’m Jon Watts and before we get started with this week’s episode of Thee Quaker Podcast, I just wanted to hop on and say two things: basically, help and thank you.

Help… because in order for this show to be sustainable, we need your help. For just 5 or 10 dollars a month you can help get us closer to our Fall sustainability goal. That goal is 100 new supporters by the end of September—which might sound like a lot until you hear that we’ve added 42 new supporters in the last two weeks. So… that’s where the thank you comes in.

Thanks to so many of you for supporting Quaker media for the 21st century. This is a time when these stories are more important than ever, and thanks to your help, they are reaching more people than ever.

If you’re not a supporter yet, now would be a great time to sign up. Just go to QuakerPodcast.com and hit the support button. If you sign up before the end of September, you’ll get us closer to our goal, and we’ll send you a Benjamin Lay mug, which features the design that Todd discusses in today’s episode. Exciting. QuakerPodcast.com and hit the support button. Thanks so much, and here’s today’s show.

Zack Jackson 

Hey, friends, I’m Zack Jackson, and I am very excited to bring you this conversation that I had with the artist activist and teacher Todd Drake. Every season of this podcast features a deep dive into one Quaker who embodies the spirit of what we’re focusing on. And as you heard last week, this season’s main character is Benjamin Lay. So a few months ago, I got to work creating the thumbnail for this season, and was disappointed to discover that there is really only one portrait that was done of him during his lifetime. It was done by William Williams and commissioned by Benjamin Franklin’s wife, Deborah, actually true to the rest of his legacy. This portrait was lost for centuries and only accidentally rediscovered in 1977 when it was sold in an auction of vintage frames. The portrait itself was unrecognizable, covered in layers of dirt from being stored in a Pennsylvania barn. It’s an iconic picture now, but I don’t think it really captures the wild Prophet that he was. So I went in search of an artist who understood Benjamin’s soul and could capture his essence for the season. That’s how I found Todd Drake, and you’ll understand in a few minutes why he was absolutely perfect for this job. So stay tuned as Todd opens up about his heart for peace, teaches us the finer points of graffiti etiquette and explains the urgency behind his version of Benjamin Lay’s portrait. 

Todd Drake 

My name is Todd Drake and I am a graffiti based Quaker printmaker that lives in Manhattan. I think I got that in the right order. I also work as a manager at a Quaker communal living house in New York City.

Zack Jackson 

And you go by Quaker Pirate, right?

Todd Drake 

That’s my street name, yeah, yeah, I stole that from Obadiah a book, a book about a young Quaker who really wanted to be a pirate, and his family said, after his persistence, well, if you want to be a pirate, Obadiah be A good Quaker pirate, and Wendy cooler, a Quaker minister, told that story, and when I heard Quaker pirate, I thought that’s it, and I stole it. So that’s been my screen for a couple years now.

Zack Jackson 

What would a good Quaker pirate look like?

Todd Drake 

Yeah, well, I’ve come to tell people that you can be a Quaker pirate too. You just have to try to do good without asking permission. So I’m trying to do good with the work that I’ve put out in the world. Though it’s, you know, graffiti has the negative connotation. There is a new term being used. It’s called independent public art. So we can go with that. Well, that’s so popular independent public artist, yeah.

Zack Jackson 

Doing good without asking permission. I think that’s the, that’s the quote, that’s the phrase for, for the whole episode, doing good without permission.

Todd Drake 

Permission. That’s, that’s the best I can come up with, with, like, describing what a Quaker pirate is. 

Zack Jackson 

So what does that look like for you? What does being a Quaker pirate look like?

Todd Drake 

Well, it began initially as one of the couple of things I did during the pandemic to maintain my good mental health. I had stayed in the city with my wife to run this collective house. We didn’t want to shut it down and lose the income and the community that we had created. So we elected to stay, as my brother said, we stayed on the lip of the volcano during covid. But all we could do, really, was walk the streets and look at closed buildings and, you know, boarded up storefronts. And I started noticing the graffiti culture of the city that I hadn’t seen before, and it was all this empty plywood, you know. So I started putting prints up that I was making at the time, and I picked works that I felt like elicited empathy for one another and spoke to persistence, like, like, let’s get through this. And so, yeah, that felt good. It was something to pass the time as we were, you know, whittling away our whittling our thumbs in isolation. But then it also became my practice.

Todd Drake 

Mm. Now I’ve been working on in the last couple of years, been really focusing on messages of peace and anti war and compassion for children that are the victims of war everywhere, and equality the environment. So I’ve really expanded into other subjects that I think are shaped by my shared values with the Quaker community, and so I probably put up 500 images around the city that relate to anti war messaging. Those get ripped down pretty quickly. 

Zack Jackson

So who rips them down? 

Todd Drake 

Yeah, I don’t know. There’s two types of removal. The first is, I like this, and I want to save it, right? So there’s, I can tell people are trying to pull it off, and they’ll get to a point where they realize it’s not coming off without ruining it, and they’ll stop, right? And then there’s people that don’t like the message, and they’re a lot more destructive and isolating, like on a certain word, like love or equality or something they’ll scrape out. Now I’ve developed a couple of responses to that, because I walk the same streets. I see the work as it’s being vandalized. High stake, and I’ve developed some responses to that. For example, one large print I have, says, Love, all shelter, all it has to do with homelessness, has a big heart in it, and that gets torn down after a while, initially. So people will rip off the love, or they’ll rip off the shelter, all part, and I’ve come back with smaller stickers and plastered the piece so that it’s like you’ve ripped open a pod and the spores had come out, right? So that’s a counter response to the I call it vandalism restoration with thee. So,

Zack Jackson 

oh man, you are basically emulating nature, then you are dandelion dandelioning them.

Todd Drake 

yeah, exactly.  

Zack Jackson 

Wow. Are any of these getting taken down by the city? 

Todd Drake 

No. There’s etiquette about where you put graffiti. I know it sounds like it’s lawlessness, but you pick spaces that are neutral, that in areas where graffiti is part of the zeitgeist of the community. That’s East Village, not so much uptown. It’s in locations that the owners sometimes even celebrate it, such as Angelina Jolie’s storefront that was the studio of Basquiat Freeman’s alley, which is owned by artists. The Alley buildings are owned by artists, and they celebrate graffiti. I’ve actually spoke spoken to them. I thought I was gonna get in trouble, and instead, they encouraged me to put some more up on another building, and then mutual areas like us, post office drop stations. These are the green mailboxes that you see all over the city. Yeah, so that’s it. There’s a lot of etiquette about where the work goes in. It’s driven by the fact that you want your work to stay up as long as it can. You want it in a high traffic area, but you can’t be too competitive with the commercial graffiti companies. So there’s commercial bar companies that are putting up illegal ads for perfume or a movie or, you know, Bruce Springsteen, whatever, concert and those, if you put your work there, you know, the next day is going to be covered up by commercial advertisement. You stay away from those. They try to stay away from the areas where the artists are working. There’s some respect there. And then there’s also people that just hate your messaging. And I have a few haters out there. You know, anytime I put up anything about not killing children in Gaza, I’ve been immediately, you know, attacked by those few. But they’re, they’re kind of known entities in the community. And my philosophy is, you know, you can’t find all of mine. I walk all over the city, and you know you’ll tear down a few, but you won’t get them all. So I try not to escalate that, that conflict.

Zack Jackson 

Can’t find all of mine. I love it. You really are a dandelion that’s you’re just growing out of the out of the sidewalk, and you’ll never get all the seeds, sorry,

Todd Drake 

and, and what I’m trying to see is that experience that you might have had in a museum. I have had it where you’re you walk into a room and you see a work of art that really speaks to you, right? And you had no expectation of that message. Yeah, but it’s profound and it’s personal, and I’m trying to create that experience on the street. Most graffiti on the street is just self promotion. I’m less interested in that. I want people to walk down the street and see a work of art that reminds them of some humanist belief that they’ve shared with me, and they go, yes. And what’s interesting is, because of social media, there’s this dialog that goes on. You see your work reproduce people saying, you know, thank you, graffiti artists for putting this on my mailbox. You made my day. You know, I’ve gotten I’ve seen messages like that.

Zack Jackson 

Can you tell us a little bit about your journey into Quakerism and how this faith has informed the work that you do?

Todd Drake 

lost my father and my stepfather at a very early age. My father died at two. My stepfather died when I was 12, and the way that I got through that loss and the way that I navigated the trauma in my own family, my mother, of course, being a double widow, the effects it had on my brother is I centered my attentions on the ideals of boy scouting. The men that were my scout masters became role models for me. And while the world can go wrong, and people can do things that they don’t they shouldn’t do. The ideals are, are complete, right? They are they are constant. They’re like a North Star. And so to get through my my adolescence and and childhood, I I patterned on those ideals. And as an adult, I went through other faith communities and found some really severe contradictions between those ideals, the ideal that Christ is the Prince of Peace, but war is justified. You know, some wars are very justified. For example, was a banging of principles that didn’t resonate with me. And when I found Quakerism, I found basically an adult faith that had and I feel like it centered these ideals that can help navigate me through my adult life. And while we as Quakers are never perfectly expressing those ideals, they’re there as a way to move through all this, all the challenges that we have after

Zack Jackson 

the break. Todd shares the inspiration for his portrait of Benjamin lay and we look at some other Quaker troublemakers who can help us to navigate our own acts of resistance. Stay tuned. 

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Zack Jackson 

On this show, we often talk about what it means to live faithfully in a complicated world, but what happens when you feel spiritually hungry but there’s no community around to feed you. Recently, I had a conversation with a podcast supporter named Jackie Joy. She lives in South Texas on the border, and was feeling weighed down by the anger, division and hopelessness that she saw all around her, she started looking for something else, something that could ground her, both spiritually and relationally. So earlier this year,

Jackie Joy 

I was on Tiktok, and there was a couple of people on there who are Quakers. And then I was like, Ooh, this sounds interesting. And then I looked more into it. And then, you know, the wonderful spices popped up, the the testimonies of Quakerism. And I was like, am I a Quaker? Is this what I was looking for my whole life?

Zack Jackson 

Jackie dove in. She started reading books and websites, immersing herself in this new discovery, and as she told me, 23 episodes into the podcast, it had become a big part of her journey.

Jackie Joy 

Just like I’ve been talking to friends about this, we’ve got, I’ve done a lot of long walks with friends, right conversations over meals with friends about my journey, and they’ve let me info dump about, like, different things I learned and like, oh, did you know that monopoly was founded by a Quaker woman? Or did you know that the Quakers are suing the Department of home land security? You know also, I think when I found out about the the Stu the young students in the UK who were who were getting arrested at the Quaker House. I think that was the pivotal moment where I was like, I feel like things are kind of sort of aligning right in my spiritual journey. I

Zack Jackson 

But here’s where her story takes an unexpected turn. Jackie’s journey didn’t stop with her just listening. She realized that she wasn’t the only one in her area who might be searching,

Jackie Joy 

because we don’t have a local group down here, and there’s not but I’ve been hopping onto zooms for Austin, and I was like, why don’t I just start a group? What? How hard would that be?

Zack Jackson 

So she did. She started building a Quaker Meeting from scratch.

Jackie Joy 

I started an Instagram page and a Facebook page, so I’m intentionally trying to meet my community where they’re at. So everything is bilingual. It’s in Spanish and English and and I’ve been posting about right we’re wrapping up today the spices, so every day, we’ve been doing each letter, and have a Google form, and we have a location, so we’re going to meet on the 13th of July, and hopefully we can get five people. 

Zack Jackson 

They actually ended up with six people at their first meeting for worship/potluck, and they plan to keep doing this on the second Sunday of every month from here on out. This is why we make thee Quaker podcast. It’s not just about producing episodes, it’s about creating a resource that can empower people like Jackie to build real, tangible and inclusive community where it just didn’t exist before. Stories like this are only possible because of the support of our listeners. So I asked Jackie what moved her to become a monthly supporter.

Jackie Joy 

And there isn’t a big, like I said earlier, a big Quaker community in where I live. So I was like, Man, I can donate $5 a month. That’s a coffee and a half. The content has been Golden, and this is yeah, because this it fills in the hole of your heart that, like you need, you need some softness.

Zack Jackson 

If this podcast has ever offered you a little bit of that softness, if it has been a resource for you on your own spiritual journey, I hope you’ll consider joining Jackie and becoming a monthly supporter. Your contribution, no matter the size, helps us find and share these stories and keeps this podcast free and available for everyone everywhere who might be searching for a spiritual home. To become a supporter, just go to Quakerpodcast.com and click support in the top right for as little as $5 a month, coffee and a half, you can help us to build this community together.

Thank you. And now back to the show.

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Zack Jackson

You’ve done a series on early Quakers, right? This is what I first saw that made me think, ooh, this is a guy who could do a really interesting piece of art. Can you tell me a little bit about the inspiration you’ve drawn from those who have gone before us? 

Todd Drake 

I think you have to be careful when you look at heroes in the past. I think they shouldn’t be called Heroes, because a hero’s perfect, right? And none of our humans are perfect. No human is perfect. But as I’ve tried to figure out how to navigate my own path as an artist. I’ve looked at Quakers that have preceded me as mentors. Benjamin lay is a great one. Isaac Pennington. Isaac hopper here in New York City, his daughter. And just to keep it simple, Benjamin lay, for example, was disruptive, but also had, I think, a good bead on, like, what ultimately was the core value that we needed to be expressing as Quakers, right? That that value, core value had been, had been lost, that idea that that all humans are human, and we’re all equal, and none should be sequestered into slavery. I think you know, gives me bravery to do that today, to stand up and say, none of these wars are justified y’all. They’re never in the best interest of any party and Russians. Don’t need to be dying. Ukrainians don’t need to be dying. Jews and Palestinians don’t need to be dying and be able to navigate that resistance. Now, I haven’t been thrown out of the Quaker community yet. You know, Isaac Hopper was, Benjamin lay was and I’ve been thinking a lot about why that was and the thing is, I think what we’ve done as Quakers is we’ve thrown out these characters, and then 100 years later, we’ve idolized them into heroes. They become the icons of who we say we are as Quakers, right? When, in fact, they were outcasts. So I don’t know if that answers your question, but that’s what I’m thinking about right now. About these, these individuals

Zack Jackson 

you mentioned, Isaac Hopper, and I’ll be honest, that’s not a name I know. Can you tell me his story as you know

Todd Drake 

it fascinating, one of the most active Underground Railroad conductors in the history of that movement. Originally from Philadelphia, to his own account, he helped over 1000 people seeking their freedom. He came to New York to run a bookstore of that sold abolitionist materials. Now Isaac Hopper looked like Napoleon. He was nicknamed, that you know, little Quaker Napoleon. And when there was a race riot in the 1800s he stood at the front of his bookstore and stared down at a mob that he come to burn it to the ground, and it was just his spirit, just his his bravery and his non violent approach, that stymied them, and they went on and burned down somebody else’s place. This was in the early 1800s and Isaac had a daughter who was also involved in underground railroad and together, they were staunch abolitionists here in New York City. They were eventually thrown out of Brooklyn meeting by my home meeting because Isaac had spoke out against a Quaker pastor who had condemned slaves. So this this other Quaker pastor had said, I hate slaves, basically, to summarize, and Isaac stood up and said, that’s wrong, and because he publicly engaged in conflict with another Quaker in the community, then he was written out of Brooklyn meeting. And every time I sit in that sanctuary in the meeting, I sit on benches that he helped cure for our meeting. I don’t think he made them. I think he probably arranged to have a mate. And it’s been said that Isaac, at one point, was still coming to meeting, and someone said, Isaac, you’ve been shunned. Why are you coming to meeting? He said, You shun me. I haven’t shunned you. Now. His daughter left the Quaker faith as well, and this was at a time when abolitionists, Quakers and others were becoming very militant, and there was something in the Quaker community called Autism, where they said, you know, we’re being thrown out. And she had her house burned in the draft riots because they knew she had it. Her home was an underground railroad stop, and she only escaped by climbing over the roofs of other houses. It’s the only documented underground railroad station in New York City. She then went on to become a civil war nurse, helping. I don’t know if she helped both sides or just Union soldiers, but we have photographs of her in Washington. They’re both buried in another graveyard. They’re not buried in the Quaker graveyard here now, some years later, Brooklyn meeting apologized for this, but that’s the story 

Zack Jackson 

So can you take me through your process of imagining this portrait that you did of Benjamin lay and why you why you made the decisions that you did?

Todd Drake 

Yeah, yeah. So, of course, working from the original portraits, the few that were made, or the one that was made, I basically wanted to keep the look of his face right, the big white beard, the he’s got these great Caterpillar eyebrows. He’s got a certain nose and a very small mouth. And I was like, okay, that’s Benjamin Lay’s face, right? But what can I do with his body that really puts a point on what he was about. And so in the traditional portraits, he’s carrying a cane, and he’s got his book, right? He’s very proud of the book that Benjamin Franklin published for him on his life, his life, thinkings and stories. But instead, I went to that most famous performance piece of his where he took a Bible and put a, I think, a pig’s bladder in it and filled it with pokeberry juice, which looks like blood, and then standing up and meeting, took a sword and condemned the slave owners for their wrong and said, basically, you’re you Were doing the equivalent of this to the Holy Spirit. And he took the knife and ran it through the Bible, and the blood dripped everywhere, right? So in my portrait, Benjamin lay in one hand, is holding a Bible with a sword through it, and some some drips are coming through. But more importantly than that, the other hand is Palma, and he’s basically saying, Look at what I did. And in my mind, at least the completed sentences. And now, what are you going to do? Look what I did about the genocide and the wrong of my time. What are you going to do about the genocide and the wrongs of your time? So it’s a provocation. It’s not perfect for the wider world, because people don’t know Benjamin Lay’s story, but I feel like a Quaker community will mostly know the famous moment of the sword in the Bible. And so it’s really pointed towards the Quaker community to say, okay, what are you going to

Zack Jackson 

and the other interesting thing I think about the way that you did this, I don’t know if this is intentional. I mean, in this story, he takes the book and he, you know, it’s a hollowed out book, and it’s filled with this bladder, and he stabs it through. Your book is not hollowed your book is full. It is a normal book that has been stabbed. And it’s as if the book itself is bleeding real blood, not theatrical blood, but that it is really bleeding actual life blood from It Was that intentional?

Todd Drake 

Sure. Yeah. I mean, look, graffiti is a bit like advertising, right? You’ve only got somebody’s attention for just a moment, and so you can’t put too complex of a point on the work that you’re doing. Kendall Hill recently has asked me to do a illustration for them for their 95th and there’s about six things going on in it, right? And I’m very happy with it. They’re very happy with it. It meets their needs, but it doesn’t fit in to the standard way that I create work, which is I want people to be able to decode and quickly get the messaging right. Keep it as simple as possible, keep the text as short as possible. Go for the heart, go for the gut, but recognize that it has to be a quick read. And so that’s, you know, I wanted to go to The quickest read as I could for this piece. I

Zack Jackson 

What’s the process like, physically, of making this?

Todd Drake 

Well, I look at the previous Benjamin light work that I really love, it does some other things that this one doesn’t. I looked at your needs, you know, how I thought you were going to want to use the work as advertisement for the podcast, and the fitting within the the framework was the way that you structured that so. So looking at what I’ve done, looking at what the need is, and then I started sketching. I’ve spent a whole lifetime, both in school and as a professional, just doodling and letting my subconscious work. So I just started doodling for you and thinking about, like, what’s the core messaging about Benjamin light? And, of course, the Bible and the blood is, is, you know, his icon, right? Is his Nike swoosh. And so I just went for that. And then at first the hand was pointing, I used hands a lot, and they’re so expressive eyes hands, to me, are what humanizes a work of art. And so I ended up photographing my own hand in the way that I wanted. Took pictures and then used that as the model. So after that’s all drawn out, then I paint it again onto wood, and then carve it, and then I ink it, lay paper on top, and press it and see what comes out of it. There’s a thing that happens when you do a wood cut, the work transforms. It’s no longer that loose sketch that that that kind of, yeah, kind of unstructured feel that you get from just drawing, when you go into wood, then the wood itself speaks, and there’s a monumentality that comes out afterwards, and that’s why I take the time to convert most of my work to wood cuts. I love that, that cohesiveness that a woodcut gives to a work.

Zack Jackson 

Yeah, me too. There’s, there’s a kind of, I don’t know I’m looking at it now. It’s, it’s almost more more real. It feels like a sketch, because you can see the you can see where it’s being carved, but it also has such gravity, such depth to it, that you wouldn’t get with just a just a sketch, and especially, I mean, you’re basically mimicking the process of the printing press. And, yeah, you know, that was very important to him,

Todd Drake 

yeah, it was. And to early Quakers, it was, we are a book Making people. We are writing people. You know, we we didn’t like images for a long time. We still don’t trust poetry, for example, the some of our printing presses, but we’re, we’re a book people, and we have other wonderful Quaker woodcut artists. You know that I’m following the tradition up, and also what cuts are the mass media of middle class and poor people, right? I can produce large images that people will see across the street, and I can do it for $1 or $3 a piece, right? Which I could never pay a printer, you know, digitally produce. And so I think of it as, it’s an activist medium, right? You don’t have a lot of money, you don’t have a lot of infrastructure, but you have something to say. So you can go to this media.

Zack Jackson 

So we’re kind of nearing the end of our the end of our time together. I’m wondering if there’s anything on your on your heart, on your mind, any message that you want people to take.

Todd Drake 

I If I could say one thing to my fellow friends is, is Hold on. You know, Benjamin lay was a sailor, and I’ve often thought about having this tattoo made that says, Hold fast. Sailors used to put this on their knuckles, right? Because holding onto the ropes was how you saved your life, right? Hold fast. And I think, I think we’re going to go through a hurricane. I think there will be a bright day beyond it. I think we’re in store for a hurricane, and I think we have to hold fast. Hold fast to our values. Hold fast to each other. Hold fast to our neighbors that we’re commanded to love as ourselves. Hold fast to our voices. I am more and more worried about time. Consequences of free speech, but I’ve made the decision that I’ve spent half a century as an American with the freedom of speech, and I will finish my life with that same freedom, whether or not I’m given permission.

Zack Jackson 

Thank you for listening, and thank you to our guest, Todd Drake. For discussion questions, a transcript of today’s episode, and links to more of Todd’s work make sure you check out Quakerpodcast.com and while you’re there, be sure to subscribe. This episode was hosted, produced and edited by me Zack Jackson, Jon Watts wrote and produced the music. Thee Quaker podcast is a part of Thee Quaker Project. We are a non profit Quaker media organization dedicated to giving Quakerism a platform in the 21st Century. If you like what we’re up to, please consider becoming a monthly supporter. You can go to Quakerpodcast.com  and click support in the top right window. It takes less than five minutes, and really appreciate it, and now our daily Quaker message, as read by Grace Gonglewski,

Grace Gonglewski 

Newton Garver, 1983. “Our first task is to love one another, to be valiant for the truth upon the earth, and to remain attentive to the true spirit in all that we do. This task infuses all our lives. It is indeed not so much a specific thing to do as a manner in which to do all things.”

Zack Jackson 

To get Quaker wisdom in your inbox every day, go to dailyquaker.com that’s dailyquaker.com

Hosted, produced, mixed, and mastered by Zack Jackson.

Original music and sound design by Jon Watts (Listen to more of Jon’s music here.)

This season’s cover art is by Todd Drake

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