by MATTHEW WOODLEY

Before delving into Montreal street artist Other's train intrigue, let's set one thing straight: he's not that kind of guy.

Though he spent more than a decade leaving his nomadic mark on boxcars, Other has never taken to leaving behind the ubiquitous graffiti scrawl. His moniker isn't the centrepiece of his art, he doesn't use spraypaint, and he'd much rather be known as a painter - period - than another graffito who rose in the art world by first painting trains at night.

"There are kids who buy stencils and do that and all of a sudden they're this big thing," he says, though without a trace of bitterness. "They do shows and only use the train thing as a stepping stone. Actually coming from that, I'd like to be seen as a painter without people even knowing the rest of the history. I'm always hesitant about talking about trains because I don't want to spoil it. I'd just rather it be more my personal thing. What happens in the bedroom stays in the bedroom, you know?"

Other is in his livingroom sprawled on an old chair - a relic of Montreal's bountiful alleyways - wearing a bright red sweater with patches on the elbows. He loves things that are old, is a traveller and collector. He's a train guy, but very much in his own wandering way.

"I'm just a natural explorer of my city, he says. "I found train yards through a friend about 12 years ago. There was something so romantic to me about drawing on trains. So at first I spraypainted, then I thought, ‘Why not use oil sticks?' There are no fumes, it's not terribly smelly, there's no noise, no hassle, you can just put it in your pocket. It's not like the kid with the sideways hat walking with a knapsack in the dark. It's more to the side of Woody Guthrie than to the side of Flava Flav or Eminem. It's folk art - I'm more intrigued by that. I know people who are 60 and they've been doing it for like 35 years and have worked on railroads all their lives. They go to all the hobo conventions."

Hobo conventions?

"Yeah," he continues. "There are a lot of them in the American Midwest. "They have giant train yards out there - places where tons of hobos can hop off and meet. They name number-one hobo of the year and stuff. You can actually find info about them on the Web, which is funny, but there's a connection there. You send work off on a train and you never know who's going to see it, and you can send it off on the Internet and never know who's going to come across it, too."

Besides travelling by rail and information superhighway, Other's work has seen the inside of a growing number of galleries and art spaces in several countries, fuelling his "dream to see the world." His art is the product of a meandering mind. He's hopped trains in the 100-year-old tradition of Jack London, has painted on the Berlin wall, exhibited around the U.S. and, a couple months ago, got back from showing in London and Amsterdam. That said, he's equally inspired by the shadowy nooks of his home in Montreal.

"I love wandering through the streets here at night and looking at the buildings, the bricks, these weird little cherubs," he says. "I just go to the corner store and buy some beer and walk around all day looking at shit. You know those old men with bikes and 15 bags hanging off them - I'm right in with them. Though sometimes they get frustrated and grunt at me, you know, ‘What's this young cat doing here.' Like a dog growling at the food bowl."

The stuff he finds usually forms the canvas for his art, old pieces of plastic or wood or whatever material spurs him to add something of his own. "Those things already have character," he says. "I'm intrigued by things that are falling apart, that look like parts of it were done a long time ago with new parts added."

Tony wuz here

To his flat, found scraps, Other paints on additional elements. Words and sentence fragments mix with, say, a vacuum cleaner, a van, an old flying man with a crown on his head. Going beyond letters is becoming more common in street art, but Other has been at it for a long time. "I could never get into lettering," he says. "I'd get really frustrated and I naturally took to characters. When I first started, it was terrible. People would cross out my work, hate me, want to beat me up because I wasn't 100 per cent hip hop. But I think it's all changed now, because there's this whole street art culture that's started up. People doing simple line drawings, leaving sofas nailed to walls 20 feet high over the city. It's more thought out than say, ‘Yo, I'm Tony and I'm gonna write my name all over the city.'"

He seems to have a thing for Pope-like hats. "I've been very influenced by religious arts," he explains. "I really like Russian Orthodox work and a lot of the hats that I draw on these people are actually parts of churches that I see in Montreal. Or if I'm in another city, I'll spend my time sketching the churches so I have these more ornate hats when I come back. The church was the corporation of the past and all these old painters that I love are sponsored by the corporation of Jesus Christ. Now all the art seems to be sponsored by, you know, Nike. I'm more interested by the past. That's where the beauty is for me."

Other's art can currently be seen at Massive Riot Gallery (5392 St-Laurent) and starting Feb. 3 will be showing at Sub-V Gallery (1126 de Maisonneuve E.) at the Limited-Edition Silkscreen Show hosted By Graffitable NDG, visit his photo blog, updated daily, at www.fotolog.net/nothinginside