DLUXstudios.com is the creative practice of Art Director, Designer & Illustrator Sean Gallagher. Sean lives & works in New York. He likes skateboarding & Robochan.
…on my jock, for the way I hold a piece of steel.
October 15th, 2009
NOTHING makes me hot under the collar more than trying to avoid an exchange of unpleasantness with ignorant human beings when they begin to berate me on subjects of which they posses no knowledge. IN PARTICULAR: GRAFFITI.
Now, for those that actually know me, and the many that know OF me, all KNOW VERY WELL that I put more than my fair share into the graffiti game from 1989 – on. I for damn sure crushed Richmond, VA to a pulp, along with MANY others. NOT that it is a big town, but if there was one thing people from my era were up on, and that was GRAFFITI HISTORY.
Nerdier than kids about their pokemon characters, knowing the players and shapers of graffiti’s past was huge part of your right of passage… If you couldn’t muster the trip down memory lane, you basically had no right to speak on it. Whatever criticism you got you got. I took a great deal of pride in reaching out to anyone and everyone I could find. And in 1993 I landed an interview in a zine I started with one of my idols, an interview with Zephyr. Zephyr sent me countless stickers, images, copies of outlines and copies of photos.
It went STRAIGHT to my HEAD.
ALL my own glory days aside, some goofy chick corners me in some BS conversation on graffiti and is AGASP when I say STENCILS aren’t REAL GRAFFITI. That is Street Art or guerilla art or whatever. And yes, MANY REAL graff writers dabble/specialize or whatever in that jazz… but that isn’t what makes them REAL writers. If anything stencils are seen mostly as a cop-out.
“Okay, okay… so what is “REAL” graff?”
1. YOUR NAME WRITTEN ON THINGS illegally (preferably with a buttery ass style)…
2. When in doubt refer to rule number one.
That is pretty much it. Graffiti is about letters, and on a more modern tip it’s about STYLE.
You get yourself your tag and you go for it. You get some notoriety or cheap fame and race your name to the top of the charts. Have some fun… form a crew, work in numbers… Go it alone and go for self.
You can do it gracefully and with style or you can fuck up and go over someone and catch a lump on your head and either come back swingin or try and move more diplomatically.
Maybe you start doing Simple bubble letters and “throw ups” or maybe you NEVER move beyond the TAG. WHICH IS FREAKING FINE. An amazing handstyle is just as much graffiti (and art, bitches) as your fucking go-all-out wildstyle super letter, crew combiner block burner. If anything I have seen more tags that interest me than “mural” like graff burners.
ANYWAY… I found myself losing more and more control over my self as this conversation progressed. I don’t consider people like Banksy, Sheperd Fairey, Blek Le Rat, or any stencil/sticker/poster people “Graffiti” writers. This only further labeled me as “ignorant”. They also professed that “Graffiti started in London with Punk Rock and was later adopted by Hip-Hop.” I could feel Cornbread, Taki 183, and Ancient civilizations all moving around in the cosmos around me like wriggling, uncomfortable, and offended people in a trapped space of anger.
Some history
First of all Graffiti in it’s native form: “Fuck you Ceaser” & “jesus LIVES” are as old as the names I’m making fun of… The word literally is the base of the word “to write” in Greek or some crap.
Secondly, modern Graffiti, aka all the shit kids are so crazed on these days, was done MOSTLY with spray paint. The rest of it was done with big ass pilot markers, deodorant sticks with a chalk board eraser jammed in and filled with T-Grade marking ink, and, occasionally people would get creative with big freaking rollers and a bucket of paint and do something BIG as crap.
Saber, from L.A. spent over a year on this. It’s done with big ass rollers, supposedly you can see this shit from outer space. You can definitely see it from a plane.
Either way, you did it YOURSELF with YOUR HANDS. NOT with a fucking stencil, poster, wall paper paste etc, etc… Now… if someone were to take a bunch of stickers and go over a whole block and SPELL OUT their tag, then yeah. Graffiti achieved.
You would think with all this “internet” out there, people wouldn’t be so dumb who claim to be so smart. Since I’m basically doing this to vent so I don’t burst a blood vessel in my eye, you can go visit artcrimes.org and 149th street. And I suppose wikipedia. And you get your internet learn on.