He apologized for the cloak-and-dagger routine but said that his anonymity was still his most prized possession. "I don't want to become nobody; I just want to do what I do," he said, emphasizing, as a kind of implied message to the police, "I'm not trying to stage a major comeback or anything." (The New York Police Department confirms that he has not been on the radar screen of the Citywide Vandals Task Force since his arrest in 2000.)
But Revs fans can be forgiven for thinking a comeback is in the works. Over the last several months, pictures of the sculptures have shown up on several street-art Web sites. This has prompted graffiti cognoscenti to scour the streets to find -- and in a few places, to wrench loose and steal -- the works, most of which are clustered in or close to Manhattan, although some have been discovered as far afield as Queensboro Plaza.
"He's huge, you can't deny it," said Will Sherman, a photographer who operates a Web site called untitledname.com and has scouted out several Revs works recently. "I have a lot of respect for him not just as a graffiti artist or street artist but as an artist in general."
Peter Sutherland, another photographer, spent a year tracking Revs down. Last year, in a book of portraits of graffiti artists titled "Autograf," he featured a picture of the artist himself, though his face is completely covered by a cap. "I'm a photographer and I don't usually get intimidated or impressed by celebrities," Sutherland said. "But when I met Revs, I kind of geeked out."
During the recent two-hour interview in Brooklyn, Revs conducted a proud tour of half a dozen of his metal sculptures, only one of which he said he installed without permission: a tall, heavy piece that spells out "Revs," welded several years ago to the top of an abandoned loading dock. Asked how he was able to weld something so large and distinctive to a building without attracting a crowd and eventually a phalanx of police, he shook his head.
"I can't talk about my techniques," he said sternly. "It's a trade secret, you know? It's my cloaking device."
Over the last few years, he said, he has made more than 100 metal pieces, some weighing hundreds of kilograms, and he estimated that he has installed about two-thirds of them with permission, including nearly all his most recent sculptures.
He says that while he may not be a guerrilla street painter anymore -- some of the 1990s wall paintings were more than 3m tall in the middle of sheer walls, most likely requiring a harness and ropes to accomplish -- he is still a fully committed outsider, and his work will be seen only outside, on New York City streets, as long as he keeps making it.
He kicked one of the pieces, made from 2-inch-thick steel, part of a column left over from a construction project where he once worked near the Port Authority bus terminal.
"A car can back up into it," he said. "Somebody can get their head cracked open on it. A dog can go on it. Somebody can paint it if they want. It rusts. It's more interesting that way, you know?"
But is it any less interesting because it's legal?
He smiled. "I might still have a few little knickknacks scattered around in places where they're not supposed to be, who knows?" he said. "I'm not commenting on that."
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