Graffiti

We have a longstanding romance with the American train, a slow and poetic vision that crosses rivers, slices through mountains and connects towns, cities and new frontiers. The railroad has been the subject of songs, novels, paintings and film, but the train car itself has an intimate and unique relationship to graffiti. The American folk history of hobo and rail worker graffiti is steeped in our culture, from the Beatniks to the contemporary graffiti movement that has stretched from Colossus of Roads to the likes of Jason REVOK, Barry McGee and the late Margaret Kilgallen. Los Angeles-based Tim Conlon has documented, painted on, and now recreated trains, from canvases to models in his studio practice. It is a style that…

Right off the bat, the guy on the other end of the encrypted conversation tells me, “If I state something, it’s really just a question.” He goes by the name 10FOOT, not because he’s the most prolific writer in London but because he’s that tall, or seems that way, like it’s a childhood nickname, and judging from the response I’m getting from people in England when I tell them I will be talking to 10FOOT, he’s a legendary reprobate. So I guess he wants to make certain I know his uncertainty, that he and the rest of his mates are agnostics. That’s a good place to start.

The beautiful part of graffiti is that it’s such an ephemeral art form; most of its greatest works only lasted days, if not hours. But the archives are rich, and what remains are historic and essential. ZEPHYR, one of the most influential graff artists of NYC, kept a scrapbook that would become pivotal to the history of the graffiti, and weighing 7 pounds with 243 full-color pages, ZEPHYR: Graffiti Blackbook/Scrapbook 1978 and Beyond is an exact reproduction of the most essential years of artistic discovery. “I’m hopeful that there is content here—historical and/or sentimental,” ZEPHYR says. More importantly, it’s the real thing.

On the occasion of his latest book, Monumental Graffiti, Rafael Schacter sat down with our good friend Doug Gillen of FifthWallTV to talk about just that, his love for graffiti and his book that “focuses on the material, communicative, and contextual aspects of these two forms of material culture to provide a timely perspective on public art, citizenship, and the city today.”

There is something so comforting about a HUSKMITNAVN show at V1 Gallery. Not that the work is comfortable, but that you know HUSKMITNAVN will paint about domestic life in a way that feels relatable, or create a collective sense of anxiety and humor in his illustrations. It’s comforting because you know he has an eye out for us, he’s paying attention, he gets it, he gets what is going on at home. He has always had an empathetic eye, and in A New Day, that understanding of the mundane being profound is ever so apparent. As the gallery notes, “There is a joyful defiance in A New Day, a sort of call to arms to appreciate and celebrate our daily lives. If…

The perks and drawbacks of being a masked figure are roughly the same: nobody can know you. While this anonymity frees graffiti artists like GATS (Graffiti Against the System), it also means the painter has had to connect with their audience beyond a personal identity. Over decades of painting city walls, warehouses, underpasses, and highways worldwide, GATS has built a community that instantly recognizes the bearded or toothed mask as representing the artist’s presence. In their newest solo exhibition with Harman Projects, Midnight, GATS recontextualizes the familiar masked face with a sense of play and irreverence, leaning into the freedom of being a masked figure themselves.

Right from the jump; it’s all here. FUTURA 2000, the Bronx, graffiti, street culture, 50 years of art history…, like there are few art forms, and an artist for that matter, that represent a particular era (and the transcendence of said era to move through the years) quite like FUTURA. He and graffiti go together, even though FUTURA didn’t linger in graff for too long. He took the freedom, the expression of it, and took it with him. I think that is an important part of the lore of the great FUTURA; his is a story of taking the essence of a thing and moving it through his life, applying it to all endeavors while not repeating the act to…

Ah, its nice to have a little color talk here on the podcast. Dublin, Irelands’ ⁠ACHES⁠ is a theorist of color. He combines a multitude of ideas and styles into his work, whether graffiti, murals, painting, graphic design, all into an aesthetic that is deservedly his and one of the more unique in the street genre. When you see an ACHES, you know its him.

In spring 1974, thirteen-year-old Lee Quiñones took his schematic drawings into a tunnel and spray painted “LEE” in gold, white, and black on the small panel of a New York City BMT train. An inspired outlaw with a meticulous design process and precision painting skills, his voice responded to the social and civil unrest of the era and found expression in painting graffiti, an ancient art form that he and many of his peers had to defend in the larger art world. On a clear, crisp morning, we met to talk about his legendary 50 years of painting, which is celebrated in his new book, Lee Quinoñes: Fifty Years of New York Graffiti Art and Beyond, as well as solo…

There are just certain artists who know their subject. For Tim Conlon, freight train graffiti is his muse, his subject, his love, his investigation. As a freight graffiti artist himself, Tim took that passion and understanding of the North American railroad system and turned into wonderfully constructed photoreal paintings of graff on trains as well as a series of train set works featuring graffiti pieces. His work is about not only a love of graffiti, but a story of movement, of communication and connection, friendship and the insight to a subculture of America that collect rail ephemera. It’s a story of the industrial revolution, but also of the power of moving art.