To be unexpected

Editing of text? Check.  Foot notes converted into end notes? You betcha. Academic jargon stripped? Well, sort of. There's still a lot left in the manuscript, and that's how I likes it. Gotta say more than just "Graffiti murals are cool, here's how some of them came to be," right? It's always painful to revisit words written a long time ago, even if that "ago" is less than five years; and indeed, some of what I wrote for my thesis, I can't even begin to wrap my head around. Needless to say, that was the easiest stuff to scrap.

Now I'm in the middle of a much less fun part: Pictures. Ugh. Along with a manuscript, I have to turn in a disc with all the images titled properly, along with a spreadsheet with corresponding captions, and if necessary, photo release forms. The rule for the latter is that if a picture was taken by me on private property, or if the picture belongs to someone else, then I need to get permission. If it was taken by me on public land, then it's mine to do with it what I please. Thankfully, roughly 75 percent of the images I want to use fall into the latter category. But I'm still going to have to wrastle up a few forms from folks.

Then there's the issue of photo quality. Some images aren't high res, and some, like this one, just aren't as good they should be (chain link fence in the front, shadows in the back). What can I say, I never really imagined I'd be considering this sort of issue when I embarked on the thesis four or so years ago.

So I'll be making a few trips to Inwood and possibly Staten Island in the next few weeks to snap a few more pics. I won't bore ya'll with the ins and outs of securing permission from folks to use their pictures or get proper captions; needless to say, I feel like I'm really close to being done. Formatting the text properly and making sure the new art goes where its supposed to is going to be very un-fun, but I've got a whole month left to make it happen.

Anyhoo! Saw this little guy earlier this month on a run through DUMBO:

 

If you've read much of my blog, you know I'm a sucker for figures in graffiti, and this has the added value of being somewhat cheeky and cute at the same time. And low and behold, Luna Park has written about him on her invaluable Street Spot blog. Apparently many pieces from Art is Trash are literally assembled out of trash, which makes them especially fleeting in nature. I like that notion; it's very much the way that New York City works. It can be jarring to see things come and go so quickly, especially when they're restaurants or stores that have been around forever (ahem, J&R, Pearl Art), but it's also what keeps things fresh.

But with all due respect, I'm not sure I agree that there's a need for an antidote for permission walls, at least not down this way. Mind you, I understand where her rationale from. A visitor to Williamsburg, Greenpoint or Bushwick these days can easily become overwhelmed by street art of all stripes; I know this because when I visit there, I hardly know where to look first. It's fair to say northern Brooklyn, the epicenter of NYC street art, is close to a saturation point. And this is coming from someone who likes this stuff.

Y'all sure ya didn't miss any spots there, eh?

It's an unfortunate reality of New York right now: Some places are filled to the rafters with street art, both sanctioned and unsanctioned, and others, like say, Sunset Park, are pretty much barren. Even down my way, Gowanus has a pretty sparse selection of inspiring graffiti. Sure, we get interesting entries here and there, like this, but rarely anything that makes you just go 'Whoah."

 

Well, until now. A few weeks, ago, I went for a run along Nevins Street, and stumbled on this, on the side of the Lower East Side Ecology Center's e-waste warehouse. Yes, I know the Lower East Side is in Manhattan. Haven't you heard everyone's moving to Brooklyn? I've dropped off various electronic gadgets here, and always thought this wall would be a great one for a mural; It's large, flat, blank and it's often tagged by random writers.

Apparently the good folks the Wallnuts thought so too. 

Werc Hernandez

I haven't been down to the wall since June 2; in that time the wall has had much, much more added to it. I can't wait to get back down there to see the finished product. I would imagine many people will be stopping and lingering awhile to see what is a bit of a rarity here, and which, for me, was as pleasant a surprise as the Art is Trash piece. Which just goes to show, as long as you don't overdo a good thing, it can retain the ability to amaze, impress and inspire.

The difference between street art and graffiti

So WFUV's Robin Shannon got wind of my work on graffiti, and has asked me to talk to her, along with two others, about the difference between street art and graffiti for a show called Fordham Conversations. It’s an honor to be thought of when it comes to a topic like this, considering how many folks there are out there who can speak authoritatively on the topic.

Anyway, I was hedging as to whether to lend my voice to the project, and then went for a nice fast three mile run last night. Talk about a whirlwind of thoughts that crossed my mind!

Now, before I try to answer the question, I must note that Banksy is in town this month, promoting a show in rather hilarious fashion: Putting up pieces of “graffiti, which is latin for graffito, with an I,” along with a phone number leading to a recording that excoriates the hoity toity-ness of the art world. How fortuitous it is to talk about the difference between “street art” and graffiti when the most famous “street artist” is referring to his piece as graffiti?

Right, so there’s a couple of answers I would give, in no particular order.

Q: What’s the difference between street art and graffiti?

A: Well, that depends. In 1964, Supreme Court Justice Potter said:

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.

You could say the same thing for art, and as I discovered in my interviews, you could interview ten different people about a mural, and get ten different opinions about whether it was any good, or if it was even art, and not vandalism. A better question might be, is it vandalism, or art?

Graffiti? Yeah, probably

 

Not street art?

A: Street art is something that people buy; graffiti is something that gets erased. The aforementioned Banksy is a perfect example, as I mentioned back in December, walls with his work have literally  been carved up and sold at galleries. You just don't hear of the same thing happening with traditional graffiti anymore, mostly because, well, who the hell knows why. Maybe the traditional graffiti mural is just so well known and ubiquitous, it doesn't generate the same sort of feverish insanity?

A: To a cop, nothing. If it's illegal, it's illegal, and you can be arrested for it. To a building owner, also, nothing. I've seen countless times where owners buff art that has no relation to the traditional tags, throw ups and pieces that define what the public considers to be graffiti.

Alas, gone from Red Hook

A: Graffiti is done with spray paint, markers and stickers; street art is everything else, like wheat pastes, yarn, and chalk drawings. Oh, but then there are those times a graffiti artist like REVS distributes iron sculptures of his tag in out of the way locales.

Does that look like spray paint to you/?

A: No, wait, graffiti is text-based, and street art is pictures. If that's true, there are an awful lot of graffiti artists who have unwittingly done street art in their murals.

Say hello to my little friend, Queens

A. Graffiti is old school; street art is a new phenomenon. This seems somewhat plausible, since guys like Shepard Fairey only burst onto the national scene in 2008 when he designed the HOPE poster for Barack Obama's campaign. Old school graffiti, with wild style lettering on the sides of subways, dates back to the 70's and 80's. Alas, to buy into this requires forgetting Keith Haring, who got his start by posting his work in New York City subways. By any measure, he would qualify today as a "street artist."

A. Graffiti is done in poor areas; street art is done in rich areas. Ah, now this is more interesting, isn't it? I can't say I've been to a ton of poor neighborhoods in New York, but when I think of the few that I have been to, there is something to this. You can find lots of graffiti and street art in wealthy places like SoHo and DUMBO, for instance, but head up to Hunts Point in the Bronx or out to Jamaica, Queens, and you can be pretty certain that the only adornment you'll find will be traditional spray paint-based graffiti. To every rule there is an exception, of course; I've seen RAE sculptures in the not quite gentrified area of Bed-Stuy.

Which brings me to my final possible answer:
A: Graffiti is local; street art is international. Eh, sort of? It's awfully hard to make that case when an art form (graffiti) that started locally has gone world wide, and artists regularly travel here from across the globe to ply their craft on NYC walls. I would venture that in areas that are low visibility, either geographically (Hello Staten Island!) or socio-economically, graffiti, in the traditional sense, is the outlet of choice. If you're aspiring to be the next big thing in street art, you're not going to plant your artistic flag on Third Avenue in Sunset Park, but if that's your neck of the woods and you're searching for an outlet to make your mark, well, there are tons of nooks and crannies beneath the BQE over there.

Stay tuned for more on Fordham Conversations. Can't wait!