Graffiti gained popularity as art on New York City subway trains in the 1970s. Andree says he’s been told that it was artists named Gene, short for Genius, and Sen2 who brought it to Boston around 1980. He says his history of the Boston graffiti scene comes from an artist named Click, one of the originators of Boston’s graffiti scene.

By 1983, Boston had a full-blown graffiti culture. The elevated Orange Line route that ran through Roxbury was a particular hot spot, with graffiti works lining roofs and high walls within view of passing trains.

More than two decades later, balanced on a girder over the iron-gray water of the Charles River, Andree, now 33, is going by the name Caype, and he must be one of the most prolific and longest active graffiti writers in Boston’s history. It’s also a chapter in his life he’s trying to move past.