The Graffiteur |
a random collection of found graffiti |
I love the pink storm cloud tag on each of these doors on Elizabeth Street. The garbage can painted the same color as the doors seems like an urban chameleon of sorts, blending into it's background. (Found on December 5, 2009.)
This sidewalk stencil on Spring Street made me smile. I also like the fluorescent stenciled running men under the totem. (Found December 5, 2009.)
This week I think I'll focus on some graffiti I recently spotted in the Soho/Nolita neighborhoods. This wall shows a nice compendium of graffiti on the side of a building facing a parking lot on Wooster Street. The looming cross is an interesting counterpart to the bulbous cartoonlike drawing to the left, don't you think? (Found November 29, 2009.)
Reason 5,000,000,000,001 to love NYC: You know you're home when there's a little UFO spray painted on the entrance of your building. It's as if Martians are reading my blog and just stopped by to say hey. Happy weekend, everyone!
Another "deconstructed" collage from Madrid. This one is even better than yesterday's. What a great mashup of images. (Found January 31, 2009.)
There's another kind of graffiti artist - the deconstructivist who works reductively, peeling back layers of accumulated posters in such a way that s/he creates a completely new piece. I came across some examples that are so consistent in aesthetic & approach, that I can only conclude they're by the same artist. This is the first one I found one night on my way back to my hotel near el Prado. Unfortunately the photo doesn't do it justice - the whole piece wasn't in the frame so you miss out on the symmetrical quality of the "drawing." Nonetheless, it's pretty intricate and interesting in its composition. (Found January 28, 2009.)
A detail of a nice wall I came across on an unsuccessful attempt to see the Goya frescos in a church in Madrid. A nice consolation, don't you think? The tag is quite large and well done, but the sheer, grey blocked area kind of makes it even better. It's like the tag is bobbing in a perfectly still winter sea. (Found January 31, 2009.)
Let's start the week off right! Check out this fantastic trompe l'oeil mural I came across when I was in Madrid for an opening. I love how the painting of the building is somehow completed with graffiti on the bottom of the wall. I was so lucky the sky was almost the same color as the sky in the mural. Ooooo...so mind-bendy! (Found on January 30, 2009.)
Happy post-Thanksgiving! I, for one, am thankful to live in a city that still has great graffiti (or for that matter, ANY graffiti!). Yup! The Graffiteur came up with bupkes in Iowa. There wasn't a lick of graffiti in sight in the small town I was visiting, so today's post is one from my archives. It's from NYC, but aside from that I didn't keep any notes. Nonetheless, this poster with adorning spray paint is a beaut. Enjoy! (Found Winter 2009.) Join me next week when we check out some nice graffiti from Madrid.
These kinds of graffiti'd walls are harder and harder to come by, at least in NYC. This is also in the Little Italy/"Nolita" area. It's a wall that faces onto an empty, fenced-in (& locked) lot, and I bet anything that it will soon house a new condo building - the sad plight of so many of these types of lots. Soooo...Enjoy these great impromptu works of art while you can! (Found on November 21, 2009.)
I'm Katarina Wong, an artist and curator based in NYC. I like making stuff and writing about creativity. I also like to collect images of cool graffiti I come across in my travels. Thanks to the internet, I can now share all this stuff with you. I hope you'll want to share your thoughts with me too.
Here's a list of places you can find me on the web:
Main website: www.katarinawong.com
"Inner Workings" - my blog about life in the studio & creativity in general: www.innerworkings.net
"The Art Sandbox" - a blog documenting a group experiment in artmaking, creativity, collaboration and play: www.artsandbox.posterous.com
"The Graffiteur" - my random collection of found graffiti: www.graffiteur.posterous.com
And twitter: @katarinawong
Enjoy!
