![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
so, i don't dislike graffiti. in fact, some of it is, i think, pretty frickin awesome. it's ephemeral art. and yes, it's art. a lot of it isn't any *good*, but it's art in the same way that painting on cave walls is art. it's the same urge that put graffiti on walls in pompeii.
i find most plain old scrawled tags kind of boring. some stickers are interesting, although i haven't seen a lot around locally that rock my world. but i actually like big colorful well done sign-ins on places like highway underpasses that are otherwise dingy and boring. (also, i love twisted things like graffiti by using cleaning products to make "negative space" graffiti. a guy who tags as "SYM" looks to have done this along the southeast expressway, and i laugh every time i drive by it.) i keep resisting the urge to print up and paste up a bunch of the graffiti report cards that someone made up to critique graffiti and pasting them on walls around town.
i dislike vandalism, and i think it's wrong, but i have to admit there's something hypocritical in me if i think that someone painting their name in 6 foot high letters on a railroad bridge over a highway is bad, but think it's hilarious when someone paints "SURRENDER DOROTHY" on the railroad bridge over the highway overlooking the mormon temple along the DC beltway.
some of this comes out of considering turning my truck into an art car. some of it comes from stencilling some t-shirts i did a while back. and some of it comes from reading posterchild's blade diary with his stencils.
anyways.
this spring, i noticed a lot more very colorful graffiti showing up than i remember in past years. so i've started photographing it and putting the photos up on flickr. i'm also using the geotagging to map where, roughly, it's located.
the photos are here. i suspect there's a way to tell flickr to give you an rss feed of it if you're curious about when i upload more of them.
my favorite bit of graffiti is actually located around the corner from my house, on the side of a building that faces the railroad tracks. here's a shot of it, and here is a closer view. i'm conflicted -- on the one hand, it's on private property, but on the other hand, it's bright and colorful and as pleasing to my eye as some of the local mural art pieces i've seen around.
i find most plain old scrawled tags kind of boring. some stickers are interesting, although i haven't seen a lot around locally that rock my world. but i actually like big colorful well done sign-ins on places like highway underpasses that are otherwise dingy and boring. (also, i love twisted things like graffiti by using cleaning products to make "negative space" graffiti. a guy who tags as "SYM" looks to have done this along the southeast expressway, and i laugh every time i drive by it.) i keep resisting the urge to print up and paste up a bunch of the graffiti report cards that someone made up to critique graffiti and pasting them on walls around town.
i dislike vandalism, and i think it's wrong, but i have to admit there's something hypocritical in me if i think that someone painting their name in 6 foot high letters on a railroad bridge over a highway is bad, but think it's hilarious when someone paints "SURRENDER DOROTHY" on the railroad bridge over the highway overlooking the mormon temple along the DC beltway.
some of this comes out of considering turning my truck into an art car. some of it comes from stencilling some t-shirts i did a while back. and some of it comes from reading posterchild's blade diary with his stencils.
anyways.
this spring, i noticed a lot more very colorful graffiti showing up than i remember in past years. so i've started photographing it and putting the photos up on flickr. i'm also using the geotagging to map where, roughly, it's located.
the photos are here. i suspect there's a way to tell flickr to give you an rss feed of it if you're curious about when i upload more of them.
my favorite bit of graffiti is actually located around the corner from my house, on the side of a building that faces the railroad tracks. here's a shot of it, and here is a closer view. i'm conflicted -- on the one hand, it's on private property, but on the other hand, it's bright and colorful and as pleasing to my eye as some of the local mural art pieces i've seen around.
