Chor Boogie
Chor Boogie is an American spray paint artist based in San Francisco, California.
Early life
Chor Boogie was born Jason Lamar Hailey in Oceanside, California in 1979. He was introduced to art in general at the age of five by a teacher in grade school, after which he decided he wanted to be an artist when he grew up. He first used spray paint at age 10, and chose the name "Chore" for himself at age 11 to describe his enjoyment of art from a professional standpoint. He did not receive formal art training, because spray paint was discouraged as art.Career
Chor volunteered as the director of mural projects for Writers Block, a San Diego group that created art with high school students. He curated shows at the San Diego Museum of Art and the city's children's museum.Primarily an autodidact, Chor Boogie lists as influences Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Klimt, Van Gogh, and Salvador Dalí, along with early spray paint mentors from the Hip hop culture PHASE 2, Vulcan, and Riff 170.
Chor Boogie paints exclusively with spray paint, in sizes ranging from miniatures to building-sized murals. He refers to his colorful style and its intended spiritual and emotional impact on viewers as "color therapy".
His first major commission was a rock wall he painted in his early teens for a series of motivational speeches by Anthony Robbins. He since had public art projects commissioned in San Diego, Beijing, China and Melbourne, Australia. He designed and worked with volunteers to paint Edgewood at the Edge of the World, a mural in the Edgewood neighborhood of Northeast, Washington, D.C. He has held shows in Mexico City, Brazil, and Dubai, traveled with musicians for live painting, and has painted a number of spray paint portraits of celebrities including Hugh Hefner, Jay-Z, Ol dirty bastard, and Rage Against the Machine.
One of his more prominent works, The Color Therapy of Perception, is a mural commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission's "Arts in Storefronts" project to improve the city's blighted Tenderloin neighborhood. While painting that work he was stabbed by thieves trying to steal his painting supplies. Mayor Gavin Newsom visited Chor Boogie in the hospital, and helped complete the painting.
Corporate Zombies is located in New York, NY at 5 Bryant Park. The building's owners commissioned Chor Boogie to paint a mural inside the empty space on the corner of 40th Street and Avenue of the Americas, as part of the lot's rebranding as 5 Bryant Park.
In August 2024, Chor Boogie and wife co-ran an iboga ceremony at their retreat in Costa Rica during which a participant died. Iboga is a psychoactive substance unregulated in Costa Rica and has documented medical risks, including past fatalities. The incident prompted public scrutiny of the retreat's safety practices and its handling of medical emergencies.