Meet the Tacoma street artist Criminal Sage who’s been dubbed the ‘Northwest Banksy’
Under a curtain of rain Tuesday morning, a man dressed in black crouched by a series of rotting pilings on the Thea Foss Waterway in Tacoma. From his backpack he drew a folder of paper collages, a small bottle of glue and a paint brush. Quickly, hidden from public view, he laid a collage on the damp wood and brushed it with paste until it stuck, fogging the image with wheat glue.
The street artist known as “Criminal Sage” has tagged Tacoma with more than 150 pieces of art, mostly around the Dome District, near railways or bus stations, in parks, or on utility boxes, docks and street lights. An Instagram page run by Criminal Sage provides near-daily updates, documenting places he’s hit around the Puget Sound, including Seattle and Everett.
Although he’s amassed about 200 followers, one user on Tacoma’s Reddit thread dubbed him an underappreciated “Northwest Banksy” for his avant-garde style and political messaging. Even though he agreed to be interviewed on camera, Criminal Sage asked The News Tribune to remain anonymous in this article to protect his identity and focus the attention on the art itself.
“The idea behind the moniker is to avoid personalizing. The idea [is] that the gallery is the street and to not center it so much on myself and center it on the idea of community and community engagement, that art is for everybody,” he said. “Art doesn’t belong in a bougie laundromat, art belongs in the streets, where everyone can see it. Where a person who doesn’t have a home can walk by and see interesting and engaging pieces of art and find meaning in that.”
Much of Criminal Sage’s art around Tacoma explores themes of class, self, blight, authority and beauty. Blocky letters and cut-out text often spell poetry against black and white photographs and inked faces. Some poems are longer (“so quiet/the silence/it had a sound/it sounded like gasses escaping a pinch point/or cicadas in harmony/it sounded like the bouncing echo of a rattlesnakes tail/off the walls of a canyon”) and others short and to the point (“let the intrusive thoughts win” or “eat LSD/disrespect authority”).
Criminal Sage, age 37, said his goal isn’t to vandalize but to improve the urban landscape by bringing beauty to blighted areas perceived as ugly. Inspired by his surroundings, trash and antiques, Criminal Sage said all his art is made from recycled and repurposed materials, like old playbills, paper, plastics, wrappers, plaster, wallpapers, paint and wood.
Originally from Tacoma, Criminal Sage lives part-time here and has seen the city change since the 1980s. He has been a fine-art painter for several decades and dabbles in a variety of mediums, including miniature and large sculptures, photography, mixed media, writing and poetry. Criminal Sage said he’s been a street artist for 20 years and has art pasted in cities like Minneapolis; Austin, Texas; Houston; Boulder, Colorado; Ellensburg; Fort Collins, Colorado and Duluth, Minnesota.
Criminal Sage said it became apparent to him at a young age that the most skilled, expressive and soulful artists aren’t necessarily the ones that end up in galleries.
“Some of the most talented and amazing people and the most incredible musicians I’ve ever heard are people that play in the streets,” he said. “Classism is largely reflected in the pieces that I make because of the intense contrast that we see day to day. Just from where I put up my art pieces is an intense contrast of the extremely wealthy and the extremely poor. It’s in your face every day, and it’s everywhere. So it’s very important to me to reflect that in my art, and again, give access to the people that by class are excluded from experiencing the arts.”
Most of the pieces he makes survive Tacoma’s wet weather. This city is a good one for artists, he said. People don’t tear down his posters in Tacoma like they do in other cities, and many people send him messages saying they’re on the lookout for his art and appreciate his work.
“I’ve been doing street art for a long time, and so with that, in other states that I’ve lived, in other places that I’ve lived, people were pretty aggressive against street art, and would take it down quite quickly,” he said. “Here in Tacoma, there’s a lot of support for the arts and people really seem to appreciate it and enjoy it, especially the locals immediately seem to take notice.”
City of Tacoma spokesperson Maria Lee said it’s hard to tell if the city has received any complaints about Criminal Sage’s art because they track complaints based on address location alone, not monikers. Tacoma police spokesperson Shelbie Boyd said the department had “no information related to this alias” as of Tuesday.
Under Tacoma’s city code, citizens report concerns about graffiti or neglected buildings to TacomaFIRST 311, and code-compliance inspectors check out the area of concern. If there are violations to the city code observed, property owners are informed, and code compliance works with them to correct those violations, according to the city’s website.
As reported by The News Tribune’s Craig Sailor earlier this year, the Washington State Department of Transportation spent over $815,000 on graffiti removal statewide in 2023.
Inspiration on your commute?
Criminal Sage said he often scouts locations for his art in the early morning and often feels like a ghost walking around the city unnoticed. He’ll usually spend his free time making four to five pieces of art a day and keeps his tools ready in his backpack when he scouts places in case the mood strikes him.
A commuter, Criminal Sage said he travels a lot by rail so you’ll likely find some of his pieces at the King Street Station in Seattle, as well as Post Alley near Pike Place Market. In Tacoma he also targets the train depot and bus stops, where he knows other commuters will be.
“I think that people going to the grind in our modern world, it’s a quiet death. And a lot of people go about their day quite unhappy,” he said. “Perhaps, you know, on their way to work today, they see something that is whimsical and funny to them, or beautiful to them, that they might enjoy and improve their day.”
When asked how he feels that some call him Tacoma’s Banksy, Criminal Sage said it’s been really cool and exciting for street artists to be seen as sources of inspiration for people.
“I think what’s really cool about street art is that there is a community kind of feel to it,” he said. “There’s no gatekeeping and there’s no competitiveness, really. I mean, people are really respectful, especially in this area, with each other’s art. People don’t really paste or post or even do tags onto each other’s tags, because there’s kind of a communal thing to it.”
This story was originally published December 23, 2024 at 5:15 AM.
