BOSTON—An artist who helped spark a terror scare in Boston by planting electronic devices around the city in an ill-planned marketing stunt isn't running from his past. In fact, a year later he's incorporating it into his art and trying to use it to make a buck.
Peter Berdovsky, who goes by the name Zebbler, has embraced the notoriety he's gained after the Jan. 31 antics on behalf of Cartoon Network's "Aqua Teen Hunger Force."
He proudly displays the "Artist of the Year" designation he won from a local magazine for causing the stir. He even offers for sale prints of the hospital mural he and friend Sean Stevens painted as part of their court-ordered community service for the marketing stunt.
He jokingling refers to himself as the "Aqua Teen Terrorist."
"I view media attention as useful to my potential success as an artist," he said. "Any exposure is good for me."
Berdovsky and Stevens were paid to hang the lighted boards as part of the promotion. Similar displays in other major cities were ignored, but Boston earned widespread ridicule for its massive police response -- closing bridges, roads and public transit before authorities realized the signs showing a cartoon character giving the finger were part of a publicity plot, not bombs.
The two initially were charged with placing a hoax device in a way that causes panic and disorderly conduct. But the charges were dropped when the men agreed to community service, and even prosecutors said they were unlikely to win the case because they would have to prove the men intended to create fear.
The pair tried to highlight the absurdity of their arrests with a news conference after they were released on bail in which they refused to speak about anything but 1970s hairstyles.
The stunt miffed local officials, but helped Berdovsky land interviews on national TV, enough notice to appear on a couple "best of" artist's lists and inspired a local burlesque troupe to produce a show starring a dancer dressed -- sort of -- as him.
Stevens, 29, a computer consultant, has settled back into anonymity, but Berdovsky and his voluminous dreadlocks are still recognized in public.
"I think I'm starting to realize that it's beyond my 15 minutes of fame," Berdovsky said in a recent interview in his studio. "It's probably going to just stay in people's minds for quite a while."
Berdovsky, 28, came to the Boston area from his native Belarus in 1996 through a high school exchange program. He later received political asylum and went on to graduate from the Massachusetts College of Art.
His varied interests include painting, and he's the lead in a rock band. His main focus is a video art form he hopes will catch fire, but is so new there's no single name to describe it.
It includes complex productions that "mash" other artists material into his own pieces, as well as work created largely with his own photography. One piece, for instance, captures the stress of Boston traffic by combining superfast images amid still shots of a man holding a stopwatch that's moving backward.
Berdovsky splices scenes from the Aqua Teen scare into his work, but Stevens said he and Berdovsky have not tried to truly cash in on the Aqua Teen scare.
"It's like a fine line," Stevens said. "I think to get any more out of it, you have to really sell out and become all about it. And we're just like not about it, we're about our own things."
Oz Mondejar, a human resources executive for Spaulding Rehabilitation Center, where Berdovsky and Stevens painted the community service mural, said he was impressed by their sincerity, and that they gave more than the combined 140 hours required by the court.
"There was not an attitude or chip on their shoulder at all," he said.
Berdovsky is certain he's close to a breakthrough in his art career. Still, he struggles to point to any solid commercial gains from the recent attention. His studio inside a beaten industrial building in Charlestown comes with problems you might expect when you pay bottom dollar.
The pipes in the kitchen recently burst, he explained as he strolled barefoot over plywood floors that shook loudly for an unknown reason. A recent bedbug infestation was harrowing.
Above him, saws from a woodworking shops whirr and screech all day. The expensive video and audio equipment he uses in his video pieces were bought on credit, and some of it may soon have to be sold to pay the bills.
The financial struggles come even as work picks up. In the last year, Berdovsky's performed before the Austrian ambassador in Washington D.C., and played events in Chicago, Alaska and the Berkeley Art Museum in California.
Richard Rinehart, the museum's digital art curator, said he hired Berdovsky on a recommendation from another artist, not because of his Aqua Teen fame. That wouldn't have hurt, he added. "That kind of political mischievousness plays well at Berkeley," he said.
The performance, an anti-war piece, was a skillful use of new media that got his message across without being heavy-handed, Rinehart said.
"We had 500 people show up that night and they were all enraptured by his performance," he said.
If his Aqua Teen fame hasn't brought much cash, Berdovsky claims it continues to resonate with people who believe he and Stevens exposed how a proper vigilance about terrorism has been jacked up to ridiculous levels. "Great job at making the media look like the idiots that they are," read one of numerous online messages after the incident.
Berdovsky said for several months after the scare, he couldn't go out in public without being recognized. Today, when things are quieter, he looks at it as training for future artistic success. But he doesn't think the Aqua Teen past will settle behind him soon.
"I think, regardless of what I do, it's part of the cultural consciousness of the United States," he said, before adding, "Maybe it's just in certain circles."
