http://graffiti-indi2012.blogspot.com/

After wrapping up its 10th season last month (congrats, Dmitry!), Project Runway is back with its second season of All Stars. Our resident critics and PR fans Jill Slattery and Darrick Thomas will be dishing out recaps and sartorial snarkiness all season long.

Jill: Project Runway All Stars took it to the streets last night! A few "legal aerosol artists" lent their spray painting expertise to the contestants for a graffiti-themed challenge that had everyone attempting to create wearable art. Freeway taggers of the world, let this be your inspiration: you too can score a guest spot on Project Runway All Stars if you work hard enough and have strange names like Meres One, Sen2, and Zimad.
Darrick: I'm not sure even the wide open space of the Brooklyn streets are big enough for Althea's ego. Girl, you haven't won anything yet. What's with the superiority complex? As for the challenge, I'm into the idea that they have to create their own patterns with paint instead of using those silly digital sketch books that exist purely for product placement. Emilio has the right idea when he says it'd be silly to try and imitate what the professional taggers do because it'll just come out "amateurish." Foreshadow much?
Jill: Suede helpfully tells us that "Suede has never held a can of spray paint," while Laura Kathleen moans that she's not dressed for the challenge because "her shit is expensive." Ivy says she's inspired by "girl power meets superhero meets pop art" so basically she's just haphazardly putting words she thinks are cool together.

Darrick: What do you expect from Laura? I mean she goes by "Laura Kathleen" as first name. It doesn't get much WASP-ier than that. At least, she's one of the few people referring to graffiti as graffiti instead of "aerosol art." That's so pretentious it makes me want to gag.

Jill: We cut to Suede hard at work on...something? It has green and yellow dots and some seriously ill-advised black streaks of paint, and it looks like it's shaping up to be a real monstrosity, which...YES. I'm eager to see someone make something truly fugly and I think Suede can do it. I believe in you Suede.
Darrick: I couldn't help but think if Tobias Bluth when Suede said his design "could blow up in my face." Oh, Suede. My money's on Kayne (again) for the fugliness. He hasn't done much, but when trying to summon inspirational words, he jots down "Puerto Rico," so, yeah, anxiously awaiting a silly disaster.

Jill: Apparently Laura Kathleen is like a card carrying member of the 1% and loves to talk about it (I bet girlfriend has a horse and I bet that horse knows Mitt Romney's horse), so of course Ivy and Kayne take time out of their busy schedules to trash her in the lunch room. The exchange between the three of them is like a weird outtake from Mean Girls where EVERYONE is the Regina George.

Darrick: I just want one of them to try and make "fetch" happen. Back in the workroom, Joanna Coles shows up for another dose of positivity. (I know I harp on this every episode, but can someone give Joanna a makeover already? They have the L'Oreal Paris hair and makeup room RIGHT THERE. You look like the Tilda Swinton banged a raccoon. Sorry.)

Jill: For the second week in a row, Joanna asks Uli if they had things in East Germany, and no, those poor saps didn't have disco OR spray paint apparently.

Darrick: "I'm new to this spray paint thing because I was busy, you know, ESCAPING COMMUNIST GERMANY!" — Uli
Jill: Suede tells Joanna that his design is inspired by "earth and sky and star." Casanova's face pretty much says it all because this thing is so ugly that it should just be torched on the spot. Casanova, meanwhile, should save a little bit of that face for himself because it looks like there's some bedazzling going on at his work station. That cat never met a sparkle he didn't like and I kind of love him for it. Him, not his designs.

Darrick: Hey, look at that, Kayne lived up to expectations and created a mess. I think we're ready for the runway. The judges, who include a pair of adorable lumberjack Santas named Jeffrey Costello and Robert Tagliapietra, quickly hurry off the safe designers — Uli, Andrae, Casanova, Joshua, and Althea.

Of the bunch, Andrae's craft project with the strange purple tool belt accent and Casanova's bedazzled hodgepodge were the most questionable. On the flip-side, I thought Althea's purple and gold animal print and Uli's orange and purple sunburst with pointy shoulders could have made the cut for Top 3, but both probably landed in the safe zone for missing out on the "could I hang this in a gallery?" metric.

Jill: Onto the Bottom 3, which unsurprisingly includes Suede and Kayne, along with Laura "I go swimming in money like Scrooge McDuck" Kathleen. Kayne's paneled skirt is definitely all over the place, but I can at least see what he's going for with it. Sure, his stick thin model's butt looks huge and there are like 50 different spray paint motifs going on, but at least it looks purposeful. Laura Kathleen's spattered neckline was pretty, but the rest of her cocktail dress was ill-fitting and drab. But it's Suede's one shoulder gown with paillettes that really takes the cake. Isaac Mizrahi says it reminds him of a Party City store and Suede insists that he stayed true to his aesthetic. When this is your aesthetic, you should not stay true to it, bro.




Darrick: I was pretty surprised to see Laura Kathleen in the bottom. Sure, the hem's a little screwy and it's short, but it wasn't THAT bad. I actually liked it better than Ivy's repeat coat with ridiculously obvious words splattered sloppily all over it. Nope, that piece made it in the top three. The coat was well constructed (because that's what she does), but who wants to wear a jacket with "Tenacity" and "Passion" spray-painted down the front of it? And how is this gallery-worthy? Anthony Ryan's black and neon blue graphic mini-dress with a Rorschach-style ink blot at the collar was by far the coolest thing on the runway. What girl wouldn't look cute in that? But, as the episode had been pointing to from the beginning, it was Emilio who walked away the winner for his bright, bold jacket and skirt. Anthony Ryan, robbed again.

Jill: I also didn't like Emilio's as much as I liked Anthony Ryan's adorable little dress, but I wasn't mad at the judges for crowning him the winner. It was definitely a show-stopper. As for our poor purple-haired eliminated designer, at least he went out with a defiant, "Suede OUT."

Art in the Streets' at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA

It’s generally not a good idea to censor a mural you commissioned, especially when that mural is part of a show about uncommissioned street art.
When Museum of Contemporary Art director and curator Jeffrey Deitch whitewashed a mural by Italian artist Blu in December, the episode perfectly illustrated how graffiti’s unruly, in-your-face attitude, even when sanitized under the banner of “street art,” might not be a good fit for a museum retrospective. The very idea of the exhibition “Art in the Streets” at the Geffen Contemporary asks whether this erstwhile outlaw culture can or should be folded into the grand narrative of art history.
Despite its first, faltering steps, the exhibition answers this question with a resounding “Yes.” Viewers will encounter a bombastic, near-overwhelming cavalcade of eye candy: colorful swirling murals, immersive installations, walls papered with candid and provocative photos, and a custom-designed skate ramp. Immodestly anticipating the response, there’s even a big “WOW” painted on the inside of the building’s roll down doors. But the exhibition’s strong suit is not its impressive array of large-scale work but rather its art historical treatment of an outsider form, complete with a timeline, “period” rooms, and plenty of video and photographic documentation.

Although bright colors, lights and sounds beckon from the galleries on the main floor, it’s worth spending some time with the terse but informative timeline upstairs. It moves briskly from the movement’s beginnings in tagging in New York and Philadelphia in the 1960s, through cholo graffiti in L.A. in ’70s, and the form’s emergence on the New York gallery scene in the ’80s.
It also charts graffiti’s overlap with punk and skateboarding cultures and the emergence of the “Wild Style” that famously blanketed New York subway cars in the ’70s and ’80s. The timeline stops abruptly in 1989, when the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority began its anti-graffiti campaign, but picks up again on the other side of the galleries to chart the movement’s increasing popularity: the founding of Juxtapoz magazine, Shepard Fairey’s Obama “Hope” poster, and last year’s Academy Award-nominated documentary “Exit Through the Gift Shop.”
Because of its outlaw status (despite its long-running influence in art and fashion), street art has not been fully welcomed into the annals of art history. At the press preview, Deitch, his co-curators Roger Gastman and Aaron Rose, and artist Fab 5 Freddy compared street art’s effect to that of Cubism, Constructivism, Dada, Surrealism and Pop Art. That might be a stretch, but this hyping of the exhibition is completely in step with graffiti’s ethos of self-presentation. Spawned with tagging — scrawling one’s name on every available surface — graffiti began as a simple act of self-assertion. In fact, perhaps the first piece of graffiti was created by World War II shipyard inspector James J. Kilroy, who inscribed every piece of equipment with a long-nosed cartoon face and the words “Kilroy was here.”
This character is revitalized in Lance Mountain’s and Geoff McFetridge’s custom skate ramp, basically a collection of inclines and blocks decorated with large, Kilroy-esque faces. Nike, a co-sponsor of the exhibition, will send members of its SB skate team to skate the ramp twice a week, filling the galleries with a soundtrack of scraping and crashing. It’s not the first time skaters have been welcomed into a museum — co-curator Rose built a skate bowl in the 2004 exhibition “Beautiful Losers” at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco — but in the context of this show, their performance underscores the importance of the body and self-fashioning in street art.
Created on the street, at night, often in inaccessible places, graffiti writing is itself a species of physical performance. It’s not surprising then that images of the artists and their friends appear everywhere in the exhibition. As Deitch noted, graffiti is an ephemeral form. Like performance art, it is often only experienced as documentation. This ranges from Gusmano Cesaretti’s gritty photographs of the cholo scene in 1970s L.A. and Martha Cooper’s vibrant portraits of New York artists in the early ’80s to darker images of more raucous, sometimes violent youth by Ed Templeton, Teen Witch (Andrea Sonnenberg), Dash Snow, Terry Richardson and Larry Clark.
If Pop artists responded to the shiny new consumer culture that emerged after World War II, graffiti artists responded to its decay, reflecting disillusionment and broken promises. This underbelly of consumerism also surfaces in several large, immersive installations. “Street Market” by Todd James, Barry McGee and Stephen Powers is a facsimile of a clutch of narrow city streets lined with decaying, fetid buildings and bedecked with cheap electric signage. The buildings are filled with what look like miniature art studios and makeshift living spaces that can be glimpsed only through the windows; they’re like little dens of creativity amid the ruins of consumer society.
In a more illusionistic vein, Neckface has created a dark, filthy alleyway littered with broken bottles and debris whose only purpose seems to be inspiring trepidation. Such installations were obviously never intended for the street. Rather, they attempt to re-create a “street” atmosphere that is both carnival-esque and unsettling. In this, they are not unlike the works of mainstream installation artists — Mike Kelley comes to mind — or for that matter, the artificial environments at Disneyland.
This extension of street art aesthetics to illusionistic installations raises the question: What happens to street art when it is no longer in the street? Certainly it loses some of its shock value — part of the beauty of street art is that it might take us unawares. Perhaps the examples above are attempts to shock us by bringing the street into the gallery. But they feel overly labored and oddly, a bit fussy.
This elevation of street art in the museum — essentially, the show’s premise — is the target of the ubiquitous Banksy’s contribution. He asked local high school students to tag panels in myriad colors and then framed them inside a drawing of a Gothic arch that resembles a stained glass window in a church. Below, he added an illustration of a praying figure kneeling next to a can of paint. The piece suggests that enshrining graffiti art within the museum turns it into an icon requiring our submission. In case we missed this point, Banksy has also placed a real, full-sized steamroller in the space as a not-so-subtle reminder of the implacable march of commodification. Ever the contrarian, he brilliantly continues to bite the hand that feeds him.
In the end, the show is not just about showcasing street art but about recovering in some way what has already been lost. Henry Chalfant’s installation of hundreds of photos of graffiti-laden New York subway cars is oddly touching, not just for its nostalgic look at the past but because it’s a testament to the sheer volume of work that has been erased.
L.A. artist Saber responds to this phenomenon in a huge white and gray mural — a grisaille, really — with a trompe l’oeil tear in it that reveals layers of graffiti underneath. The piece acknowledges not only that graffiti is a temporal medium — painted over layers and layers of previous work — it’s also a nod to those writers who came before. Street art may be a product of a particular moment, but as the energy and variety of this show attest, it is constantly reinventing itself.

The Graffiti Art Culture

The Pop Culture of Graffiti – Street Art and Graffiti
The actual word, Graffiti, singular graffito; is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property. Graffiti is any type of public markings that may appear in the form of simple written words to elaborate wall paintings. Graffiti has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. Today paint, particularly spray paint, and marker pens have become the most commonly used graffiti materials. In most countries, marking or painting property without the property owner's consent is considered defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime.  Sometimes graffiti expresses social and political messages and a whole genre of artistic expression is based upon spray paint graffiti styles. Recently to some it is an art form worthy of display in galleries and exhibitions; to others it is merely repulsive vandalism.
Outsider Art Movement

Both art forms, street art and graffiti, are a part of the outsider art movement – that being artists with no academic or formal training in the visual arts. Art history has shown us for centuries the progression of the visual arts is moving further away from this elitist viewpoint. In the past art was seen as a technical skill that only a few talented chosen artists mastered. The wealthy commissioned, bought and determined what, was “good art”.   Gradually as time has moved on, we have gravitated towards more of a freedom of expression and the brave have taken huge risks towards revealing the question of what makes art,  'art'.   A combination of Art History and Art Therapy training has made me questioned this often.   I have realized that, art is a visual form of expression, inherit in all of us. Although some art connoisseurs still to this day hold on to their traditional views and disagree. Whoever takes the opportunity to expresses themselves visually may be considered an artist. It's a form of communication that we all interpret differently.  During our modern world we see more innovative artists exploring new territories and crossing the boundaries of traditional art.  The Art world has veered into the commercial environment as well, used to attract and sell items.  Nowadays many professional artists find themselves in the position that they must learn to market their creative work in order to survive financially.  These marketing techniques get extravagant and gives more rise to the question, "what is art?"

Revolt Against Noise Pollution

Many graffiti artist revolt and make their statements about the commercial world we live in. Noise pollution is an issue in the urban areas and with advertising and branding.  This commercial quiet visual pollution surrounds us every day. Some graffiti artists see their creative process as a revolt against visual pollution. The overwhelming billboards and messages that pollute the streets in the city can leave us feeling financially inadequate and helpless at times. Often feeling empty.  Some see the street art and graffiti art as a revolt against the arts media marketing. Why must only the commercial world have control of this form of expression and visual dissonance? However, the controversies that surround graffiti continue to create disagreement amongst city officials/law enforcement and graffiti artists who wish to display and appreciate work in public locations. There are many different types and styles of graffiti and it is a rapidly developing art form whose value is highly disputed.

The Growing Appreciation of Street Art

Graffiti has often evolved into a pop culture existence often related to underground hip hop music, b-boying, and a lifestyle that remains hidden from the general public. Graffiti can be used as a gang signal to mark territory or to serve as an indicator or "tag" for gang-related activity.  This is not the case for all graffiti art.  There is a huge controversy in regards to the evolved graffiti art, stencils, sticker art, wheatpasting / street poster art, and street installations. However, the ‘Street Art’ is typically used to differentiate this new movement from graffiti, vandalism, and corporate art. Many non profit organizations encourage creative self expression among youth and start mural projects among the street to beautify the lower income areas. Often there is a large amount of cross over between the two art forms.  For example, in New York City, Spring Street was one of the World’s most known Street Art canvases. On December 15, 2006 the outside and inside of the building, in need of flat roof repair among other things, was opened to the public in one final and mass display / installation of Street Art before the building was cleaned up and turned into apartments. In Toronto there is an increase in the value and the beauty of the graffiti and street art forms as it becomes more acceptable in certain places. Queen Street has it's own beautiful Graffiti alley.  The art form is more appreciated if it is respectful of private property. Many graffiti artists realize this and have established rules of conduct with bombing on the streets.  Local walking tours such as the Murals and Public Art in the Junction Triangle has organized a free walk in west Toronto that is bordered on all three sides by railways tracks and underpasses, making it an ideal place for public art. This walk on Saturday May 7, 2011 at 10am explores the painted murals, ghost signs, graffiti, and other public art throughout the neighbourhood.  It nice to this appreciation, interest and potential understanding for this Outsider art increasing.

The Street is my Canvas, Danger

The graffiti art sub-culture can be very dangerous. Many of these bombers or artists not only risk being caught by authorities vandalizing insulated concrete forms of public buildings, but they also risk their lives. The term bombing is done everywhere and can be as simple as marking. These bombers often don’t feel like they have a voice in society and this tagging one’s signature can feel empowering leaving a legacy behind in a place where you feel ignored or forgotten. Such is the case for 18 year old Bardia Bryan Zargham in 2005. On a section of the CPR tracks in mid-town Toronto, the young man was struck by an oncoming train. Bardia Bryan Zargham was a graffiti artist and he was writing his tag – his graffiti name – on the side of a stationary freight car when a train hit him. His tag was Alpha, the beginning of everything. Alpha was known as the King of the Bombers. He was known to be good at writing his name in big letters in a few short minutes and then moving on to do it again.  This was a tragedy that graffiti artists must not ignore  Rest in peace Alpha.

Exit Through the Gift Shop

Understanding and research of graffiti art is essential before cities begin to destroy all aspects of it on the streets.  The documentary movie Exit Through the Gift Shop is an insightful and interesting view on graffiti or street art. It’s a story of how an eccentric French shop keeper and amateur film maker attempted to locate and befriend Banksy, only to have the artist turn the camera back on its owner. The film contains footage of Banksy, Shephard Fairey, Invader and many of the world's most infamous graffiti artists at work. So many artists have incredible messages.  Some have a large amount of respect for the city streets and private property and they have so much they want to share with the public on the street with not recognition or reward received. Living in the city of Toronto I must admit there are times I see these tags or art works and I am repulsed; however, more often I feel a great amount of joy and appreciation for creative work involved, including their colourful beauty. I recognize that I feel these contradictory emotions in an art gallery as well. Art evokes emotions. Graffiti is part of our modern day urban pop culture and has it's own value of art accessible to all.   It would be a shame to have all of this expressive art eliminated from the streets in Toronto.   I relate it to music, and feel it has a place on the city streets and not just galleries and cafes. 

Sketch letters A-Z: simple alphabet on paper

A-Z alphabet design on paper. be an extremely simple design that once. no staining in the design process. creativity of an artist graffiti alphabet  to make the famous again.

Bubble Letters Graffiti 2011

Bubble letters graffiti applied to the concept so as to produce a work of art is spectacular and so interesting to make a masterpiece in this 2011.

Bubble Letters Alphabet Graffiti On The Train

Bubble Letters Alphabet Graffiti On The Train. Via : Printable Bubble Letters

Draw Graffiti Bubble Letters

Draw Graffiti Bubble Letters. Via : Printable Bubble Letters

Please for the visitors of our respected for providing input and comment, thank you.

Graffiti Bubble Letters Alphabet 2010

a Graffiti art created by using bubble letters, graffiti art in the making is clearly not out of the alphabetical list that already exist at this time.

Graffiti Bubble Letters 2010

Other than as a letter to be printed bubble letters are also used in graffiti art, graffiti art was initiated by the young people who are creative and energetic in the art.

Graffiti Bubble Letters

Graffiti bubble letters shapes made with a combination of letters with the symbol itself of the image, so that meant that there was a message in the graffiti to be more easily understood.

Learned to Make Bubble Letters for Graffiti

In order for the creation of a graffiti can be a reliable and powerful, it is necessary to make the learning process so that very useful to get a great technique of teaching teachers who first mastered the techniques in the manufacture of corpulent graffiti, then do not forget to learn to make graffiti from basic to master correctly.

bubble letter graffiti alphabet shadow

bubble letter graffiti alphabet shadow

bubble letters in the category can also with graffiti art, graffiti bubble letters in the alphabet is made up as though that bubble letter only as a shadow, but in the form such as this also does not reduce the beauty of the bubble letter.

bubble letter graffiti alphabet black ribbed edge

bubble letter graffiti alphabet black ribbed edge

bubble letter was only to do with the color on the edge, this can create interesting. Origin of all of that with the attention to color in the media bubble that created the letter.

graffiti bubble letter alphabet "JAT"

graffiti bubble letter alphabet "JAT"

graffiti bubble letter alphabet is made on a wall that have a motif boxes with a display of words that indicate a meaning that is very knowledgeable, the form of contract to show a certain sense, such as "JAT"

bubble letters in promotion

bubble letters in promotion

Although we will not focus entirely around project graffiti lettering, we will touch base on the concept of basic structure of the font.

photo-spray-painta

He used to be a simple subject in the school / community, as a way to graffiti can be taught without going through each step of illegal obstructions. Similarly, it has a very negative meaning associated with the old and destruction. Of course, this ideology is far from the truth.

Here is one way that I have been successfully tested graffiti to teach in the classroom, while adhering to state standards and educate the youth of street art is much more than writing on the wall. My process ...

Step one, redefine the term "graffiti". I give students Oxford Dictionary definition, then I own that is provided. This is based off personal interpretation, so that it can be different for the teachers of teachers. However, I especially encourage to mention a brief history (when and where it came from), how far it spread, and use the graffiti:

* Self-promotion
* Social / Political Reflection
* Commemorating a sweetheart

Next, I show an image of graffiti, particularly in Chicago to engage my students more. (This can be adapted to trigger the process in your town) Get them to identify how graffiti is all around them.

Bubble Letters Graffiti.

Picture

Bubble Letters Graffiti

Still speaking in a bubble letters graffiti, when made with the earlier model that seemed simple and classic, bubble letters graffiti made this appear more modern and bring in more color and interesting.

Bubbles In Graffiti Letters.

Picture

Bubbles In Graffiti Letters

Bubble letters appeared to be a very good art and beautiful when used as a graffiti, just how each of the art show is sure to make a good and interesting, because the bubble letters only to have an interesting art, try to make you into a graffiti.