urbanartopia
  • graffiti
  • blog
  • root

sway the vote

7/2/2017

1 Comment

 
“It’s an eyesore, a blight on our city, which not many of our citizens enjoy,” said an older council member who’d received a handful of complaints from his affluent neighbors. “Therefore, I propose we keep allocating funds to get rid of it.” A few of his younger colleagues knew that it drew people to the city and gave it an authentic and inimitable character. They disagreed with him, but there were too few of them to sway the vote.

And, so, New York City joined a thousand other municipalities across the United States and fitted out squads of workers with paint rollers and long-handled scrapers. They loosed the workers on up-and-coming parts of town, giving them license to paint over, deface, scrape off, and otherwise remove the vast collections of street art that had theretofore covered otherwise blank and underutilized street poles. The workers attacked ten thousand and one unique examples of cunning artistic expression deemed mere trash by a group of disconnected bureaucrats who cared not for the creative potency of Big Apple denizens.

The workers scraped and sprayed and rollered, destroying countless pieces of the city’s unique cultural heritage. Adding insult to injury, the city council had not even had the decency, poise, or foresight to at least take pictures of said priceless works of art before having them trashed. In the wake of the art desecration squads, the city lay bare, raped of its color, efficiently monetized, franchised, and sterilized for the benefit of profits-hungry corporations. New York City’s street-side art museums are dying at the hands of her elected officials, and the world is a less beautiful place for it.

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

1 Comment

on gathering graffiti - bicycling in dangerous neighborhoods edition

6/21/2017

1 Comment

 
Among the most dangerous places I’ve ever visited while searching for street art have been in Baltimore, Maryland. There are few other cities in the world compared to Baltimore where things go from fancy to fucked-up as quickly, first super safe then scared shitless from one block to the next. For anyone whose hobby includes combing city streets on a bicycle in search of stickers glued to and posters pasted up in dirty and dangerous places, here are three simple tips on how to stay alive and well whilst gathering graff.

1. Make eye contact with people, and greet them. Do this always, especially in dark and lonely places. Many gangsters operate on the basis of honor, and looking them in the eye and saying hello to them is an honorable act that rarely fails to calm situations. (Don’t expect them to say hello back, however; not getting shanked or shot at should be validation enough.) Greeting people lets them know that you know they’re there; it shows them that you respect their presence and are not afraid of them or anyone they may be with. If you bicycle around a corner and surprise a group of people, raising a hand in greeting (with two fingers making a V, for victory) and saying a kind word should ease tensions and allay fears.

<script async src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script> <ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block; text-align:center;" data-ad-layout="in-article" data-ad-format="fluid" data-ad-client="ca-pub-3555625860048262" data-ad-slot="7115918407"></ins> <script> (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); </script>

2. KMA - Keep moving, always. Don’t linger, loiter, stay on one block without moving for too long, or appear lost. If this means backtracking a block or two until you can shoot across a road or bicycling up on the sidewalk to avoid a traffic snarl, do it (just go slowly around pedestrians). If you see some graffiti and want to stop to take a picture of it, check that the picture is well centered and not blurry, then keep moving. The entire process should take fewer than 30 seconds, rarely enough time for someone to approach or harass you.
​

3. Make a fool of yourself. Bicycle no-handed, pull wheelies, whistle or shout loudly, and generally look like you’re having a grand olde time. White dudes on bicycles wearing helmets and burning lights fore and aft are usually the police. But the police usually don’t pull tricks, and they’re definitely not out to have a good time. Nearly every potentially sticky encounter I’ve had of late was defused by me letting go of the handlebars and lazily cruising by whoever looked like they wanted to hurt me (while giving them a last-minute nod and V, of course).

There are few better ways to hunt street art than on a bicycle. By following the three simple rules mentioned above, you’ll hopefully stay safe and gather graff for many years to come. Mahaloalowa!

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥
1 Comment

on hunting graff

3/30/2017

0 Comments

 
Oh how I miss hunting graffiti! How I wish to have the wind in my hair and a blunt in my teeth, to be hurtling through the flashing voids on a trusty velocipede in search of street art, my elusive and mysterious quarry. Oh – and oh! – to apply my whorphans as I diligently photograph and thereby preserve the wonderful phenomenon of urban art wherever it should arise, and to rejoice in its chaotic meritocracy, actions that are among my favorite things to do. It matters little in which city I do it, for every metropolis has its own flavor and rhythm of street art, its players major and minor, its hot spots and dead-zones, its tenors and vibes, colors and styles. Finding a piece I have never seen before or discovering a work of art that within hours could be painted over by a city technician evokes within me emotions best described as joyful. Another piece of this riotous, fleeting beauty has been preserved (!!), and once uploaded it will bring smiles to faces from Capetown to Seoul, Tashkent to Los Angeles, Auckland to Murmansk. I recognize the collection and display of graffiti as among my greatest missions in life, and while I do not know where it will take me, I sure am loving the ride. Huzzah.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥
0 Comments

approaching 7 figures

3/30/2017

1 Comment

 
Los Angeles, CA 28 July 2015

Shirleigh Ratchthwana, former war-crimes prosecutor and current head of Public Relations for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) denounced today the destruction of priceless cultural artifacts within a stone's throw of the museum's main entrance. “We regularly watch as groups of vandals deputized to their duty by the City of Los Angles (City) strip layers of art from our town's various walls, sign-posts, and switching boxes – daily and without relent. Examples of this art include stickers en collage or solo, pasted-up paper pieces, and those that are sprayed-on. By its actions and those of its deputies, City demonstrates an alarming lack of appreciation for such art as it presides over, regardless if that art should hang in a gallery or on a street corner.” Art that happens to be located in public, or street art, is created by daring and talented individuals who risk fines and abuse if caught in the act of application. Pieces by the most famous modern graffitos can fetch sums approaching 7 figures. Fundamentally human in its chaotic and spontaneous nature, street art – graffiti – is one of mankind's oldest documented yet least hallowed forms of artistic expression. Whether in the walls of Teotihuacan and Giza or the ruins of Stonehenge or Sumer, the scratches and scribbles of a million faceless graffiti-writers bridge the gaps of time.

“We stand now witness to a great extinction,” said Dr. Horatio B. Gherrt, professor of art history at Harvard's Schoullenbarg School for Contemporary Art. “This extinction, however, this mass die-off, is not of beast but of beauty, not of aardvark or antelope but of art itself. A solitary artist working by herself would take months – even years, or never – to create such pieces of perfectly blended chaos, such though-evoking combinations of logo, typeface, cultural icon, and slogan – old and new, obscure and obvious, crude and tender. Yet such collages spring into being on otherwise unadorned and publicly-accessible spaces virtually overnight and completely free of charge to the city, which then expends resources to scrape them down or cover them in dull, gray paint.”

With municipalities across the world continuing to criminalize the application of street art and refusing to recognize its value and beauty, the future still looks bleak for artists who follow the ancient human urge to mark their passage with note or scrawl (but without by-your-leave). “So long as there are people, there will be graffiti,” said Ms. Ratchthwana. “Instead of simply destroying things they don't understand, we hope that City leaders will soon treat street art as they would treat a Van Gogh painting or Ming-era vase – as part and parcel of mankind's cherished cultural legacy, something that deserves to be protected.” City declined to comment for this article.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥
1 Comment

Boston destroys heritage

3/30/2017

1 Comment

 
In the wake of apparently deliberate acts of art desecration, the city of Boston, Massachusetts, USA, lies stripped of much of its artistic and cultural heritage. Irreparably damaged are thousands of unique works posted at significant personal risk by scores of talented individuals; gone are untold treasures, wiped from the face of the Earth by the censor’s brush and scraper. Once a place which people visited to marvel at the ingenuity of the human imagination, Boston has joined the ranks of many other American cities that view street art as entirely devoid of intrinsic worth, something to be rooted out, painted over, and destroyed. As someone who travels to cities around the world in order to curate their graffiti, I weep at the destruction wrought by the city of Boston upon its open-air art galleries. Light poles once adorned with riots of colorful stickers now stand bare; walls once covered by compellingly crafted murals now display nothing more than a coating of drab paint.

Does Boston at least photograph these works of art before forcibly removing them from view? Would it allow an art-loving citizen such as me to precede its roving Art Desecration Squads so that I can at least photograph each piece before it is scraped off or painted over? Likely, it would not, as such a concession might lend credibility to the artistic endeavors of rogue but creative individuals who spend their time and money on trying to make the world a more colorful and exciting place. In our American police state, it appears, the only works of art that have the right to exist in public are politically correct advertisements selling us drugs and clothes, snacks and cellphones.

​To be fair, there are some street artists whose primary aim appears to be the destruction of property. The majority of these elusive and cunning individuals, however, seem to be acting out of a desire to challenge the sterilization of our communal spaces, to bring color and design to areas devoid of both. Mankind’s oldest form of artistic expression, the application of graffiti spans millennia, continents, and cultures. From the Egyptian pyramids to the caves at Lascaux, from America’s oldest structures to ancient Southeast Asian cities, graffiti - more than perhaps any other form of artistic expression - unites mankind. To the graffiti lovers of the world: avoid Boston! Little remains here of our unique and exuberant cultural heritage.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥
1 Comment

graffiti, a meritocracy

3/30/2017

1 Comment

 
Design an image, crafting it lovingly from the aether. Make it appealing to look at, and fill it will subtle meaning. Then, after much gentle and loving effort, venture out into the night and glue it to a pole, abandoning it there. This is the life of the street artist. Once his picture is up and his work is done, he vanishes into the darkness to wait and see how the Universe will respond. As a seasoned veteran of the streets, he operates cunningly and without ado; occasionally, however, he struggles with memories of earlier agony. Oh how he would sweat when first starting out, and quiver, his knees shaking on the way to check and see if his image were still up or if it had been scraped down or covered over in the few hours since it was born. Oh how he would wallow in sadness at finding his tender little piece plastered over with another person's art, or, worse, hacked off and discarded by a member of one of those Artwork Desecration Teams. The budding street artist suffers trepidation because his graffiti – one it is stuck up or otherwise applied – stops belonging to just one person and becomes the common property of anyone who might look at it; it merges with the harsh and tumultuous meritocracy that is graffiti.

If the graffiti artist wants to keep his sanity, he will realize (by delving deeply into his soul-space and maintaining a proper equilibrium there) that his street art, along with the graffiti applied by the next vandal, is just one segment in a giant, shifting mosaic applied by hundreds of selfless SDUBS (Self Directed Urban Beautification Specialists) whose goal is to enliven the otherwise colorless and visually barren asphalt landscape (the phaltscape). With enough experience he will understand that by covering only a portion of his piece instead of defacing it entirely, the other street artists deem his art edgy, unique, or beautiful enough to merit a continuing existence on wall, pole, and street-sign. (Exceptions to this rule include if his work is so terribly lame as to be worth neither time nor effort to cover over or if he is particularly good at putting his pieces in places few others might reach, which in itself would prove his mettle.) As long as he stays in the graffiti game, he shall, in time, develop a vandal's eye of his own, which will allow him to judge which pieces to cover over, which to incorporate into his newest work of art, and which to not touch at all.

His is a dangerous game of applying and fleeing, watching and forgetting, shrugging and re-applying. His is a world in which his city destroys his art nearly as quickly as he can apply it, a world in which his work must stand not only the test of time but also appeal to the sensibilities of any subsequent vandal whose primarily purpose is to cover the phaltscape. He must keep one eye out for meddlesome and ever-watchful cops while contending for display space with some of the finest artists operating today, artists who plaster over poor and inferior works of art mercilessly and without hesitation. Such is life in the harsh meritocracy of the graffiti-writer.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥
1 Comment

encyclopediamericanifesto entry - phaltweariness

3/29/2017

1 Comment

 
Phaltweariness is a state of fatigue caused by bicycling for many kilometers on sun-baked city streets. The phaltweary person is known to go to bed easily, to sleep well through the night, and to exhibit a healthy and flexible physique. People suffering from PW (the peedubs, the phaltweariness) will experience aching muscles, 1000 yard stares, and prolonged periods of wild-eyed, fundamental indifference.

  While any avid bicyclist will occasionally encounter PW, phaltweariness affects the street art vagabond in particular, that isolated individual who prowls the Earth's cities on foot or on bicycle taking pictures of street art and uploading those pictures to the available data networks. Although the forces of homogeneity and societal control look upon him with blatant mistrust, the street art vagabond labors to perpetuate and to preserve for posterity as digital photographs the beautiful diversity of posters, stickers, paintings, and other graffiti that constitute the global Street Art movement.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥
1 Comment

on plantago lanceolata and street art

3/29/2017

0 Comments

 
The ribwort plantain, or plantago lanceolata, is a healing plant. When consumed as a tea, it opens the airways and clears up congestion while cleansing the kidneys in a soothing manner. When applied to an external wound, its antiseptic qualities will speed up the healing process and reduce the chance of scarring. For these reasons and for many more, plantago lanceolata has been used as a healing plant since before the dawn of civilization. In caves inhabited by early homo sapiens, we find remnants of ribwort right next to remnants of ocher, and of iron oxide, and of other materials used to make pigments.

We might deduce what ancient homo sapiens did with the plantain, but did he do with pigments? He used them to beautify his environment. He drew with them upon his favorite rocks and trees, and he covered the walls of difficult to reach underground caverns with detailed pictures of his daily life in a process that would today be called graffiti, or street art. 

We have established that in graffiti lie the roots of humankind's artistic passion, and that street art is the wellspring of its genius. But, you ask, how else does this ancient practice resemble the healing plantain? Both appear as if overnight in underused and neglected places such as empty lots and abandoned buildings, where they thrive and spread. Great bunches of healing plantago are mowed down and landfilled weekly, their healing powers ignored, whereas great patches of street art are torn down and painted over daily, their chaotic beauty lost forever. Both benefit all who take of them, for they give of themselves freely and without ado, yet neither requires attention or maintenance, since each can damn well take care of itself. Both can cure the ills that plague humankind, with ribwort attending to the body's needs, and graffiti exciting the soul. So enmeshed are these two with one another, so vital are they to the vitality of our species, that they will be with us always, or at least until the last woman breathes the last breath.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥
0 Comments

on street art in NYC

3/29/2017

0 Comments

 
I am yesterday come direct from New York City (NYC), that fair, Mid-Atlantic island-metropolis. Being a purveyor of street art, and a person who collects images of these most fleeting slivers of mankind's dazzlingly bountiful imagination, posting them occasionally at urbanartuploads.blogspot.com, it is my rote to explore a city's avoided and trash-strewn places, taking pictures of any graffiti I find living there. Having collected street art in Berlin, Los Angeles, Amsteram, Philadelphia, Long Beach, San Diego, Flagstaff, Albuquerque, Tampa, Boston, and, most recently, in New York, I have amassed an internal sense-knowledge-base of the many different and various trends, techniques, and habits that graffiti writers tend to exhibit; ergo, I believe I can gain a rapid understanding of a city's predominant trends-in-vandalism from seeing but a small portion of the overall milieu.

Perhaps I was in the wrong areas (Hunter's Point, Long Island City, and Manhattan), or perhaps I was on the wrong streets (primarily down Broadway from 42nd to Battery Park, and near the World Trade Center), but most images (except for those examples that will be uploaded to urbanartuploads.tumblr.com in about three months, due to backlog) that I managed to capture were obtained from only a handful of areas around town, including near Canal Street, on the Lower East Side, and in the East and West Villages; the rest of Manhattan was either swept clean of its no-charge-to-the-consumer open-air-art-galleries or the police forces of certain areas are so adept at patrolling and desecrating the works of art that street artists labor to apply there that these clever vandals know well enough to stay away.

Compared, moreover, to the cities mentioned above, Manhattan's street artists seem to prefer primarily self-adhesive name badges sold by one of the major office-supply chain stores, upon which they write – in nearly illegible, seemingly gang-or-crew-specific script – their own names, identifying numbers, or the name of the group or home area. (Such stickers were seen primarily in parts of NYC with little to no other graffiti, as opposed to graffiti-rich areas, which exhibited such profusion of street art that the aforementioned stickers became all but invisible against the colorful and riotous backdrop of other works). Whereas in, say, Los Angeles, one finds curious and strange examples of graffiti adorning otherwise-blank surfaces in nearly every part of the city, whether in the financial district, in the heart of Hollywood, or in the sleepier parts of Koreatown, graffiti in New York tends to be applied to almost any available surface – adorned or blank, private or public – that happens to be in arm's reach of the sidewalk. Whereas in most other cities graffiti-writers generally apply their works of art to the backs of street-signs, to public utility-boxes, or to hatches and those metal doors that cover access panels – mostly avoiding stuccoed or painted surfaces – in NYC, vandals appear to not give a fuck about what they spray over with their pressurized paints, which pisses off the city's property owners.

Persons looking for high-quality street art in New York City will do well to avoid the shiny and the well-swept areas, preferring rather the grimier and less-well-kept areas, which will exhibit such bountiful and beautiful examples of graffiti as one might expect from a world-class city such as the Big Apple. Just remember to stoop slow, to revel in the filth, and to keep your head on a swivel, because the NYPD is alert, and it is everywhere.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥
0 Comments

on graffiti in Philly & LA

3/29/2017

0 Comments

 
(or, a whorphan's take on the street art scenes of two fine American cities)

At first glance, street art in Los Angeles has much in common with that in Philadelphia. In each city, the graffiti is vibrant, irreverent, daringly-placed, socially-critical, and to be found in most neighborhoods regardless of their social status or overall character. Certain designs by well-established artists appear in both cities, proving that the SDUBS (self directed urban beautification specialist) likes to travel, that he knows not to change a cunning or successful design, and that his art is relevant in any asphalt-landscape, or phaltscape. As in LA, it is nearly impossible to see anyone in Philadelphia actually applying street art – as this is done generally at night or during periods of inclement weather – a fact which points to the wily and suspicious nature of the street artist as well as to his desire to stay anonymous and to attract as little attention to himself, and as much to his work, as is possible. In both cities, SDUBS utilize such self-adhesive mailing labels as are available free-of-charge at branches of the United States Post Office; I found it far more daunting a task, however, to find such stickers on the East Coast than it is out West, where they seem to abound. In Philadelphia, I noticed a greater number of pieces stuck up by apparently classically-trained artists seeking perhaps to spread the word about their abilities by going rogue; in Los Angeles, the street art that survives not only the rigorously brutal meritocratic evaluation process as done by the street artists themselves but also removal or destruction by the city's own Artwork Desecration Teams tends to be of a more gritty and distorted nature than some of the abstract – even gallery-worthy – pieces as are found in Philly.

In LA, street art is removed or painted over continuously – sometimes daily – whereas in Philadelphia, pieces can stay up for months, even years (see the dusty, weather-beaten FRESH sticker on the rear of a ONE-WAY sign on the north side of Arch Street, near the Troubadour). This can have a stagnating effect on the street art scene, with the best spots dominated by the more aggressive, tenacious, or merely lucky SDUBS, while in Southern California the best spots are constantly painted over by roving bands of the city's own counter-vandals, people who seem to hate beauty, creativity, and any artistic expression other than that found in for-profit art galleries. The riot of different styles and slogans and symbols found in LA trumps the scene found in Philly, which, upon closer inspection, appears to be dominated by a mere handful of artists who nonetheless pursue their Happiness with youth-like vigor and obvious zeal. Furthermore, I noticed in the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection a tendency toward cute designs with anime-style eyes and slightly distorted bodies; in Los Angeles, any and every imaginable style, color-palette, medium, and subject-matter is on display, twenty-four hours a day, in miles of street-side, no-cost-to-the-consumer art galleries.

In all, however, I must applaud Philadelphia's street artists for pursuing their Happiness with fortitude and vigor, for affixing their pieces to unconventional and hard-to-reach spots, for working tirelessly to enliven the phaltscape with bright and flashing colors, and for spending their own time and their own money on the materials needed to beautify their drab and conformist surroundings. That a city a fraction of the size of such a sprawling and surface-filled metropolis as that western behemoth can produce and maintain such a lively and compelling street art scene bodes well for the town that birthed our Independence. Mahalo, friends, and aloha.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥
0 Comments

on graffitos' patroness

3/29/2017

0 Comments

 
For all of their differences in style of clothing, method of address, performance under fire, gait while walking, and ability to tolerate bullshit, street artists share one thing in common: a life-long love for the dandelion (and for kicking off their white, fluffy, puff-ball-like heads). As an individual who spends his time altering the appearance of things that everyone else seems to be ignoring, the graffiti-writer will – should the opportunity present itself – run wildly into a field of dandelions just to decapitate as many of them as he can, as quickly as possible. The dandelion requires just this sort of action to deliver her seeds to the Shifting Winds of Fortune; she gains of the graffito's destructive tendencies; thus, she is his goddess, his flower-patroness.


Beyond the symbiotic interdependency of dandelion with graffito, the two also share other traits, albeit ones perhaps less obvious to the casual observer. Both are loathed by the population in general, the flower for its tendency to grow nearly anywhere regardless of efforts to keep it out, the artist for his tendency to access most any imaginable surface – regardless of perimeter fencing, guard, closed-circuit television camera, or watchdog. Both are loved by a small but growing group that keeps its opinions to itself and enjoys beauty wherever beauty should arise. Dandelions grow in neglected, contaminated, and otherwise ignored places (gutters, trash heaps, empty lots) where little else can gain foothold; street art is applied to neglected, contaminated, and otherwise ignored places (alleyways, abandoned buildings, concrete highway embankments) where few people venture. Cities hire squads of individuals, outfit them with brushes and paint-buckets, and send them out to paint over great patches of well-executed works of art, thus providing the graffito with fresh canvas upon which to erect new works and encouraging him to pursue his Happiness upon surfaces always harder and as a rule more dangerous to reach. Cities treat the dandelion similarly: it is sprayed with poison, assaulted with shovels, dug under the soil, weeded, treated, and burned, all to little avail - a cheerful and resilient little blossom, it will re-appear during the next growing season in larger numbers and with deeper and more tenacious roots.

It is as hard to catch a vandal in the act of applying his craft as it is to catch a dandelion in the act of colonizing new terrain. Both street art and dandelions improve the human condition freely and without ado, bringing beauty to the world without seeking thanks or a by-your-leave. Street art covers and enlivens surfaces that just a day before had been blank concrete walls, and dandelions appear just as suddenly, shining yellow faces enlivening lawns that just a day before had been mono-cultured swaths of grass devoid of Nature's abundance. We, the Self Directed Urban Beautification Specialists (SDUBS) of America, ask the inhabitants of Terra to search for beauty in all places, to pursue Happiness with us by blanketing the urban and the natural environments with bright and vibrant colors, to rejoice in the sudden appearance of beauty in places forgotten and forlorn, and to remember to honor our common goddess, the dandelion, by kicking as many of her puff-balls as we possible can. Stay on your toes out there, dear friend, and may you be filled always with divine breath.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥
0 Comments

on harrowed rats

3/29/2017

1 Comment

 
While paging through a dictionary one day last year, I came across something called a ruptured duck. (Now, I cannot locate this entry in my New Oxford American dictionary, and, without access to Lord Googlebot, I cannot do an Internet search. Help!?!) If memory serves correctly, the ruptured duck is an Old World heraldic symbol consisting of a detached human arm – bent at the elbow – embossed upon a shield with square top corners and a rounded bottom. I remember reading the description of the ruptured duck and finding therein few answers to pressing questions.

A few of my questions were as follow. 'Who chose the name for this emblem?' 'Is there an emblem of a whole duck, before its rupture?' 'Is the ruptured duck a secret image designed to enrage the simple-minded or is it merely a bit of medieval nonsense that somehow survived the ravages of time?' These questions well never be answered, but my initial puzzlement inspired me to start designing a coat armor, or coat of arms, for the modern street artist, graffito, and vandal. So far, there are two (similar) designs, found here and here. The goal is to develop a coat armor simple enough to recreate in less than sixty seconds that depicts both the tools of the graffiti trade and the graffito himself.

The rat represents street artists because they frequents hidden and scary places, bringing life to the ignored, the dirty, and the underutilized portions of their respective cities. And even though they tend to be interesting and productive people, graffitos are reviled by nearly everyone else, by cops and property owners, magistrates and fence builders, security guards and taxi drivers. Besides other graffiti writers and buxom female teenagers, the only persons who tend to applaud a vandal's work are ones who sell paint. The anarchy symbol seen in both pictures represents a common attitude held by Self Directed Urban Beautification Specialists, or SDUBS: no one person owns the world, it belongs to us all; therefore, we will make the drab spaces beautiful by risking life, limb, and liberty in order to paste, spray, draw, and bomb our art into and onto the boldest possible spots. My design skills are paltry, and my ideas want for much, but perhaps if I keep bashing my head against the wall for long enough, something useful might come out of it.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥
1 Comment

on the SDUBS codex

3/29/2017

0 Comments

 
Street artists have a method, yet they have no known method; they follow a code, yet they follow no known code. There is a rule and a measure to the business of graffiti, a codex of unwritten, non-binding, and unspoken rules that are themselves constantly in flux, and always changing. As it would be foolish to attempt to capture these rules or to try to fix them in ink and in time, and as few who dare write about them live to tell the tale (let alone receive any sort of respect from their peers), let us examine a few of the more apparent entries in the SDUBS codex, or the Self Directed Urban Beautification Specialist's rulebook.

To celebrate the glories of socialism, the SDUBS applies her artwork primarily to public property such as street signs, USPS mail boxes, pavement, asphalt, utility poles, subway and light-rail cars, city buses, and to any otherwise unadorned surface located in or on local, state, or federal government buildings. (Graffiti will find its way onto privately-owned property, but if it does, it more than likely belongs on whatever boring and otherwise unadorned surface the vandal decided to deface.) Since she cannot hope to please all persons who might cast eyes upon her labors, the SDUBS works to satisfy her own artistic sensitivities and not those of anyone else. As her work is constantly exposed to external and internal criticism, she allows her natural abilities to flourish ceaselessly, and strives to make her artwork more vibrant, more colorful, less oppressive, more daring, less confusing, and more dastardly than all the rest; it is her goal to criticize those things as she sees wrong with the society in which she lives. Driven by a righteous purity that even she cannot quite explain, she is always on the move seeking out virgin surfaces upon which to display her talents. A creature of deep serenity and pervasive inner calm, she goes about the business of graffiti accompanied only by her own steadfast conviction, never hesitating in the application of her work, never fearful of the potential consequences of her actions, never glancing about to see who might be looking at her; she is a seasoned operator who cares about little but the task at hand. She does not linger near the applied work, nor does she deviate from her course any longer than it might take to stick up her dearly departed piece. And, finally, she experiments with any and every conceivable style of artwork creation and application until she has found the mixture that suits her best: Hereby, she avoids frustration, plays to her greatest strengths, and stagnates neither in style nor in daring.

The author hopes that this brief but poorly-worded and insufficiently-researched list might help the uninitiated to gain a better understanding of street art, of the street artist, and of the goals and aspirations of these strange and wonderful persons. To the night-crawling, alley-lurking, pride-swallowing, risk-taking SDUBS of the world: May your pens not leak, your nozzles never clog, and your hearts stay free of pride and malice. Mahalo, friends, mahalo

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥
0 Comments

on the use of eyes in street art

3/29/2017

2 Comments

 
Stroll through downtown Los Angeles, up New York's Broadway, or along the avenues of Philadelphia's Center City, and look in the forgotten, in the grimy, and in the underused places. With a keen glance and a bit of luck, you will witness the riotous beauty known as street art. Oh, what a profusion of style and color, of shape and size, of message and image, all blending into a whole that, if viewed from afar, resembles little more than visual clutter; but get in good and close, and follow the guidance of your peripheral vision, and your most tender of sphincters will drink invariably of the intoxicating power of street art.

But why do we look? Why are we powerless against the urge to sweep our gazes into worn and sticky places and up onto soot-covered utility poles? Eyes, my friends, we look at graffiti because it is full of eyes (and not just any type of eyes, but human eyes). Perhaps they stumbled upon the technique accidentally, perhaps they copied it from advertisers, or maybe they just plain Knew to tap into one of mankind's most primal and deep-seated fears, but, however it occurred, street artists employ one of the most basic methods for getting people to look at something – to give it eyes.

Since our time as forest-creeping, prairie-running, skull-bashing troglodytes, the species homo sapiens has developed the uncanny ability to recognize the shape of the eye even if it should be obscured by layers of seemingly random patterns. While experts may argue whether this ability is restricted merely to recognizing the human eye, or if it applies to the eyes of all of our former predators (think bear, cougar, coyote), few persons dispute the fact that our brains are really good at figuring out if someone, or something, is looking at us. Advertisers exploit this evolutionary adaptation to our status as Top Predator Of One Another by blanketing the phaltscape with pictures of pretty people who nearly all happened to have been staring directly at the camera's shutter when it opened. (Now, however, instead of our powers giving us the upper hand in a fight-or-flight situation, they allow us to be convinced that we need that new and re-formulated cucumber body scrub; woe be unto mankind.)

All quasi-scientific, pseudo-evolutionary nonsense aside (I am not a scientist, nor am I particularly intelligent or well-versed) – why do graffiti-writers use so many eyes in their designs? Why in the name of Beelzebub do they wish for people to look at their works of art, and to what purpose do they make use of our aforementioned ability to pick eyes out of the ether? As the SDUBS (self directed urban beautification specialist) is wily and suspicious by nature, and since she maintains a level of honor, decorum, and discipline so profound as to make inquiry into her personal matters a life-threatening endeavor, these questions shall likely go unanswered for many generations to come. For now, however, please enjoy the street-side galleries of free-to-the-consumer art wherever you may be, and rest easily in the knowledge that, by looking back at eyes that look at you, you are merely executing a deeply-ingrained survival reflex that is as natural to humans as is laughter. Never forget, however, to keep an eye out for your fellow man, he who has been hunting you for longer than you shall likely ever know.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥
2 Comments

---

3/14/2014

0 Comments

 
I retreat to warmer climes will update this when there is time
0 Comments

on Saturn's day

9/14/2013

3 Comments

 
On this Saturn's day, the 14th of September 2013, I rest from my uploading activities, in part to honor lord Saturn and in part so that Christians don't try to kill me for working on the Sabbath. Starting again tomorrow I shall be uploading pictures of graffiti I took while in Los Angeles during the Spring of 2013. I look forward to sharing the photos I took in Houston, where street art was just as fine and subversive as anywhere else. mahalo. X
3 Comments
    $2.99 ebook here!

    Author

    updates and insights about the process of collecting and curating graffiti

    I gather street art from cities around the world and curate it here for the enjoyment of mankind

    please visit my other sites:
    americanifesto.com
    thousandmilesyoga.com

    please help support me in this endeavor by making a donation:
    paypal.me/americanifesto
    ​

    Archives

    July 2017
    June 2017
    March 2017
    March 2014
    September 2013

    Categories

    All
    Anarchic
    Anarchistic
    Antiseptic
    Art
    Asphalt Landscape
    Baltimore
    Beautification
    Beauty
    Beneficial
    Boston
    Canal
    Cave
    City
    Clean
    Cleanse
    Colonize
    Color
    Congestion
    Contact
    Corporate
    Cultural
    Dandelion
    Dangerou
    Dangerous
    Desecrate
    Desecration
    Destory
    Destroy
    Directed
    Emblem
    Extinction
    Eye
    Eyes
    Free
    Gallery
    Gangster
    Gather
    Gentrify
    Graffiti
    Graffitio
    Graffito
    Greed
    Greet
    Habit
    Happiness
    Heritage
    Hertiage
    Honor
    Hunt
    Icon
    Keep Moving Always
    Kidney
    Kma
    LA
    Lacma
    Lanceolata
    Landfill
    Lasceaux
    Los Angeles
    Manhattan
    Mankind
    Merit
    Meritocracy
    Mettle
    Ming
    Mural
    Museum
    New York
    Nyc
    Over
    Paint
    Partoness
    Phaltscape
    Phaltweary
    Phildaelphia
    Philly
    Photograph
    Place
    Plant
    Plantago
    Plantain
    Police
    Predator
    Prehistoric
    Preserve
    Profits
    Prove
    Rat
    Ribwort
    Root
    Ruin
    Rules
    Ruptured Duck
    Scar
    Sdubs
    Self
    Similar
    Specialist
    Squad
    Sticker
    Street
    Style
    Tenor
    Trick
    Uban
    Urba
    Urban
    Use
    V
    Vandal
    Van Gogh
    Vibe
    Victory
    Weed
    Works Of Art
    Worth

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly