Cristian Gheorghiu became famous as an American street artist/graffiti artist and contemporary painter under the name of Smear in the 2000s. He further rose to prominence in a series of high-profile arrests and subsequent articles on the arrests and on his art which appeared in the Los Angeles Times from 2009 to 2011, followed by television appearances and further media coverage. In 2011 the Los Angeles Times called Smear "a subculture sensation" and his work has appeared in contemporary art galleries, and a solo museum exhibit in 2009. He was also a defendant in a civil lawsuit filed by the L.A. City attorney's office, a lawsuit which largely because of its First Amendment implications has garnered the attention of international media, including the Huffington Post, L.A. Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, and the Associated Press. L.A. graffiti scene Smear has been influential in the Los Angeles graffiti scene since the late 1990s. He was one of the first Los Angeles street artists to use street art methods in his graffiti. Before Smear, street art and graffiti art were considered separate communities. Graffiti practitioners at the time in the L.A. scene rarely ventured into the forms popularized by Smear. As a graffiti artist, Smear was further distinguished from the others by his uncomplicated graffiti writing style, unlike the intricate wildstyle works which are commonly a part of graffiti art. Smear's uncomplicated style used a spontaneous repertoire of images, designs and slogans. Among Smear's most famous street art images are his "Liquor Face" character (which momentarily appears in DreamWorks Pictures' animated film Bee Movie), and another image which is a shadowy depiction of Smear's own face, with "Smear" written underneath. Marc Ecko's Complex Magazine put Smear at number 14 on their list of "The 50 Biggest Street Art Arrests" of all time. In 2006 he began exhibiting/displaying in Los Angeles galleries some of the original art works that he had created, which were in the form of paintings (on canvas and on woodpanels) and drawings, including collage and other media. Legal issues In February 2007, Cristian Gheorghiu "Smear" was arrested for alleged graffiti on LACMTA buses. A graffiti vandalism conviction resulted in a 40-month suspended prison sentence, three years' probation, and about $28,000 in restitution for tagging on buses. In February 2009 Gheorghiu was arrested again mistakenly in a sweep aimed at a tagging crew that calls themselves the Metro Transit Assassins