burn

[terebi_me]

One thing that most people probably don't know about me is that I am a slavish devotee of grafitti art - the lettering styles, use of color and space, and the mindblowing speed with which these gorgeous pieces can go up (as well as their generally ephemeral nature, since they get sandblasted or whitewashed off because they're "eyesores") has been

Comments

[maxomai]

And of course, here in PDX, there's such a drought of worthwhile graffiti art that I'm reduced to admiring stick figures.

This is one area where the PNW could really stand to mature.

[terebi_me]

We've got some fucking great artists in this town; they're just not tagging.

[indyhat]

Word to that. He's not really "alternative" anymore (more like part of the antiestablishment establishment), but google Banksy - one of the UK's better homegrown products :)

There's an alternative me somewhere out there who does better than just snowboarding and listening to the Beasties - she can skateboard and breakdance and spin disks like woah, and she sprays fat graffiti tags that make astute sociopolitical commentary. Makes me sad to think I blew the only childhood I had on doing well in school :P (No regrets, really, but I really hope I get another shot sometime.)

[terebi_me]

Oh, I already worship Banksy - I've got a Bansky poster on the door of my office. He's the MAN. Also love Keith Haring and Basquiat etc.

You never know - you might suddenly become a super awesome gangster in your 50's. We just need the technology to make it happen.

I don't snow(or skate)board, either. I am physically nigh-useless, though I can dance pretty good. Not being a decent visual artist, though, has broken my heart. I have no design skills, because I can't really get a solid command of visual space (I can see it, but I can't control it. For that same reason, the furniture placement and decoration of my home has always been terrible). And yeah, I was a relatively good and dutiful teenager, besides the suicide attempts, over-the-counter drug abuse, and increasing indifference to schoolwork... none of which was noticed. I wonder if I should have followed my original dream and run away to NYC when I was 14. Oh well...

[indyhat]

I didn't know Keith Haring's name, but the images were instantly familiar (Google images wins again)! Gotta love popular culture.

Amused by the idea of being a gangster in my 50s ... though, yikes, that's only 15 years away now :P Best get to it, then.

And your teenage years sound pretty colourful ... that's artist's material right there! (Doesn't have to be art art, y'know). Sorry if it sucked ... I hope you got something out of it.

[terebi_me]

My teenage years were bleak. Bleak bleak bleak. Almost no friends, writing, watching THE LOST BOYS, BLUE VELVET, and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE over and over again, being a HYOOOOOGE Trekkie, dyeing my hair black and wearing red eye shadow and black nail polish, and crying constantly. Woot. Emo two decades before there was a term for it, and being mostly shunned by anybody else who was even vaguely similar. (They just called it "being a geeky, unpopular weirdo married to her Wet & Wild black eyeliner pencil") And yeah, I am better than that now, thank God. I did write a lot, though. And Star Trek saved my life. No lie, no joke, no exaggeration. If I didn't have an episode of Old Trek every day at 6pm, I totally would have offed myself.

Never too late to be a gangster. NEVER!!

[the_automatik]

This makes me so happy! I love love love breakdancing, too. And if I could do it, I would do it every day.

As far as graffiti art...AH! So good. I used to love seeing it on the way to downtown Toronto. This one thing in particular that looked like an owl coming to earth in a comet...it haunts me still. So beautiful.

I don't get the hatred for it and the whole "it's vandalism!" angle. I mean, yes, I wouldn't want something on my wall that said, "KEVIN IS A FAGUT" with shakey handwriting. But the stuff I'm talking about is not that.

electric boogaloo

[terebi_me]

For so much of society, there is no difference between the two. Non-sanctioned street art, no matter how beautiful, needs to be covered. Grafitti = drugs and gang violence, in their mind; if they let any of it stand, then ANARCHY is right around the corner. (oi oi oi!)

Oh I'm just remembering that there's a gorgeous piece of art (sometimes changing) on a garage over by where I used to live - it's absolutely stunning, whatever it is. I remember one day when I was coming home from work and I saw that it had gotten repainted overnight, and I just stood there and stared at it. THAT will never be repainted. (it gets marker-tagged almost instantly, too, but that actually just adds to the design. Brilliantly done.)

Re: electric boogaloo

[the_automatik]

Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!

HAHA. Take a photo of that piece, I want to see it.

If I lived closer to downtown I would take photos of the ones on the train route. Of course, they're not exactly accessible from the train so I'd have to do a lot of climbing around, but yeah, I totally need to do that.

[squeakymonkey]

I can't remember where I was reading about the guy who wrote a whole novel/autobiography on the walls of subway tunnels... maybe during the Rollins interview with Shepard Fairey? And there was a whole thing about how the cops and the artists in NYC had intertwined lives.

That site is gorgeous...

Graffiti

[virgilverminous]

I have no idea who you are, but the following link is to a cool BBC story on graffiti in the underground of Rio:

Cheers.