One moment he’s working on an immersive gallery installation, the next he’s on an impulse mission, traveling on two wheels through obscure streets looking for an inconspicuous spot to tag. At the mature age of 42, one would expect studio and graffiti artist Barry McGee to slow down for a bit. But with his bike helmet in hand and a red backpack at his feet, this contemporary artist seems to be in continuous motion, just like his vivacious, explosively colorful installation in Life on Mars.

In fact, one of the first things he spoke about during his July 24 interview with the Zero Gravity interns was a recent experience riding his bike to an unspecified location to tag some buildings. The artist, who has been doing graffiti in the streets since age 18, is very aware of the legal implications: “I don’t know why I still do it. I mean, I have a wife and a daughter now, you know?” he said. “What if I get caught? That would be bad. I mean, it would be bad if I didn’t show up for this lecture. I have to think about these things.” Still, McGee continues to work in the streets—mostly, he said, in places where he doesn’t think he will get caught. In other words, he’s not doing graffiti to create a lot of attention in controversial, public locations.

He’s also not doing graffiti in the streets to establish it as a new, official art form. A tag is nothing but a tag, seems to be McGee’s attitude. And the artist certainly is not immune to the public’s concerns about graffiti. In response to the question of whether he ever feels like he is defacing or ruining something by tagging it, he said there are definitely some places he wouldn’t touch. He agreed, for instance, that he would not tag a church. McGee even admits graffiti can be a nuisance—that is, when someone else tags his house, and he has to be the one to clean it off. “Maybe I’m hypocrite,” McGee quipped.

The artist is most interested in the communicative aspect of graffiti, he said. He likes that a tag in the street allows a person to say something definitively but spontaneously—and that anyone can see and interpret that thought or expression, unlike in a gallery setting where the audience is generally limited.

Some Zero Gravity interns were particularly interested in how the artist intended for this idea of public communication and other conceptual themes to come through in his work in Life on Mars. Unsurprisingly, McGee does not create his installations methodically with an end product in sight beforehand. His emphasizes spontaneity in his process, much in the way a person might go about spraying-painting a mural or making a series of tags on the side of a bridge.

McGee likes to assemble the various segments of a particular work on site, without predetermined blueprints or sketches. He also has a number of people helping him put the piece together and does not meticulously monitor their every move. For example, the bulging walls in the Life on Mars installation were just an afterthought, a product of watching people maneuver the narrow hallway allotted in the museum for his installation. The pattern of the hand-painted, color-bursting geometric wallpaper? Inspired by a design the artist noticed on the cover of an old piano book.

The conversation with Barry McGee definitely shed some light on his work in the exhibition—but not because the artist offered concrete explanations of what his works mean. Rather, McGee gave the interns a fresh perspective just by sharing a bit of his fun, quirky sense of humor, mannerisms and humble, down-to-earth personality. He spoke to our group as if he were one of us, answering our questions directly, even if he had to think about the answers. His favorite piece in this year’s Carnegie International? Mark Bradford’s “Help Us.” His opinion on art school? “Go to a community college. You’ll meet a lot of interesting people.” And personal color choice? McGee pointed to a section of the geometric wallpaper and said, “Right now? I’m really liking this green.”