If you are a graff art fiend, Graffiti Archeology, will no doubt, hands down turn your crank.
>>>Notables are the "Harvey's" North Side, "Cove" Eastz, and "19th" North<<<
At my rebellious core, I love graffiti. The first thing I wanted to see when I arrived in East L.A. was the down and dirty history of the streets written on it's walls and back allies. Since I was a kid graff has made me giddy, my heart skip a few beats and my eyes grow wide. The concept of painting art on the walls struck me as genius, the moment I lay eyes on my first outdoor canvass.
After years of motherly discouragement forbidding doodling on the walls of the rat infested, slum lord run apartment buildings in the low income ghetto I grew up in; my mother one day suddenly changed her tune and joined me. With broad strokes she abandoned canvasses and layered her artwork on the interior walls of our place. Every surface soon became fair game for paintings, doodles and drawings. To the point where our car became a four wheelin' rumbling spray painted, stencilled embarrassment. (Proud as I am of my painter mother, being seen getting out the stencil&spray-paint-mobile was a bit much for me growing up.) Yet, always some part of me revelled in and adored the fact that my mother, my brothers, sister and I made our mark artistically EVERYWHERE!
Here is the thing though, we made our "artistic mark". - None of this 'tagging' bullshit that Vancouver is infamous for.
Every conceivable surface of our house growing up, paint be willing was covered in art, image, doodle and drawing. Even the splatters and drips were fascinating. We made a point of visually expressing what we wanted to. No ego tripping.
At an art party awhile back, some friends covered their walls with white paint, covered everything else they didn't want painted and set out any and all kinds of ink and implement for writing and constructing visual art on all white surfaces. It was fantastic and fun! Being one of the first to arrive I set to work right away on a small but significant section of wall. From 9pm till 11pm I put my heart and soul onto a piece slightly taller than my tip-toed 5 foot 6 inch self. When I was done I set out to explore what others had got up to at this now hopping party. The music was good the, the graff was hot, the party was fucking amazing! Hundreds of people were drawing, dancing and getting into everything going on. Ripping up the dance floor with my friend Bryan everything was peach till I turned and saw some asshat standing on his friend's shoulders so that he could tag the ceiling! I blinked and laughed out loud, "hey that's cool, to each his own. If he wants to draw on the ceiling go for it." I thought. But he wasn't drawing anything! Just scribbling "DMGD" in black drooling graph pen. It was dripping everywhere! Looked fairly stupid and ridiculous. Suddenly realized they were writing the same thing everywhere!!!! Notably, and for real, I was pissed to discover, buddy had scrawled in drooling-black-tagger-fuck ink "DMGD" over my graff and the ink had dripped from ceiling to floor in big black ink rivers. "IMBECILE!" I turned to my friend and screamed over the music "I'm not a hater, but I fucking hate Vancouver taggers! They've ruined this city for me!"
Taggers here don't seem to get it. The only reason you tag something is to indicate your coming back to finish your graff - AND YOUR SCRIPT SHOULD SPEAK FOR ITSELF! Repetitive words or letters written everywhere doesn't count, it's just stupid. Even "Repent Sinner" and the more recent "RIOT 2010" is more interesting and makes me want to know who your crew is more than some black drool. That shit just makes me want to kick your ass for mucking up public space. I'd rather see a paint ball splatter. Honestly.
I guess it's all subjective. I for one think tagging is like calligraphy. In fact, tagging, stripped of colors, size, images, etc.; only relying on weight, stroke, movement, and space relationships; can be argued to be more in-line with the spirit of graffiti culture than piecing, throwups, or murals.
ReplyDeleteRegardless, tagging is a vital facet of graffiti. No graff writer worth their salt can't tag. It's a basic fundamental. When learning to swim, you wouldn't learn the butterfly stroke before the doggy paddle, just as you wouldn't attempt a burner before knowing how to tag.
That being said, I understand why it's often the object of scorn by the public-at-large. It's easily the most prolific and often the least accessible with it's specific cryptography which to non-writers or those not hip to the culture often find to be completely indecipherable.
Graff culture, in that sense, has always been sort of an exclusive club, where if you don't know the secret handshake you probably won't ever "get it".
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