Sitting in a cafe in the greenest fort in Brooklyn sits Joseph Ari Aloi, aka JK5. He has a seemingly tough exterior and tattooed frame which appears to be a full body sleeve. But when the light hits right you can catch glimpses of the excitement in his eyes as he tries to hide them behind dark shades, as he breaks down his biggest project to date. “I just found my biological dad,” explains Joseph. “He’s the Darth Vader, dark father factor in my equation. So much of my work was endlessly explored searching constantly for my father.” He was adopted, and found his birth mother 23 yrs 5 months 2 days after his birth, or what he refers to as “the womb-ride.”
JK5 talks quickly and with more animation and life than one of his colorful creations. In spite of his size he speaks in a soft voice. When explaining, he uses colors and shapes when describing situations and settings, and sprinkles his dialogue with references to Star Wars and its mythological characters. JK5 was a moniker that was given to him by some childhood friends in Philly. The “JK” or Jedi Knight originates from his love of all things Star Wars and the “5” from “I Got 5 On It” from The Luniz’ ode to sticky. All this and more is explained by JK5 as he speaks-hands in the air and everything.
JK5 grew up in White Plains, NY. Although adopted by a conservative Irish/Italian family, drug references and the mixture of penises and vaginas in his art were never frowned upon. His parents were always very supportive, even when he built his own liner machine in his friend’s basement and tattooed himself for the first time. “I remember my dad saying, ‘Well, you drew on the walls, you drew all over your sister, you drew all over everything in the house. I’m not surprised you drew all over yourself,” says Joseph. Certainly rebellion was never a stranger to JK5. As a miniature Jedi in the making, he was expelled from Catholic school. “Sexuality has always played an important role in my work and I’ve always been a sexual dude… kind of countering Catholicism, and always being that honest, unedited, spastic kid with a crazy libido-it all manifested through my work.”
Since then, JK5 has manned his share of art shows, and put in design work for Freshjve and Mishka, while simultaneously banging out a bad-ass body of work for his Saved Tattoo shop in Williamsburg. And all this work paid off when Kid Robot brought his artwork to the shelves in the form of his 12 tiny characters, each rich with personality. After the birth of his first character, Kid Kreactivator Flowvex- a dragon that sports pencils and crayons as arms-the rest of the Flowbots soon followed. JK5 realized that these characters were going to be his portal into a much larger world of work and creativity. So he’s now working on a movie script about the Flowbots. Although he remains pretty tight-lipped about it, he reveals that the story is going to resemble his personal life and his adoption. “My work has always been autobiographical, there’s a whole mythology and a whole world that synthesizes and marries what I lived through and what I created.”
He shows me some meaningful tattoos on his full body sleeve, an orgy of colorful characters and quotes including his latest, which he performed freehand after receiving some tragic news about a friend, Heath Ledger. It reads: For my brother Heath, R.I.P. 1/22/08. An ode to someone he describes as a beautiful soul with brilliant boundless energy. As a friend, Heath saw a shitload of potential in JK5’s work. So much so that Heath had joined him on his vision in bringing his biggest ideas to life. It was through Heath’s production company that they planned to release the Flowbots movie.
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