Bad PR

Some who read this blog might think that I celebrate all graffiti, that I have no limits on what counts as artistic expression but that's not quite true. The image above is of graffiti on the ruins of Foushee's Mill built in 1819 and it just looks stupid and sloppy - not artistic, not enlightening, just ugly. And it's bad PR for the good graffiti artists. 

Graffiti's status

I may be wrong, but it seems to me that the status of graffiti is changing - though, local governments still hate it and spend inordinate amounts of money cleaning it up. My earlier posting about BANKSY's film Exit Through the Gift Shop getting nominated for an Academy Award for documentary was the first hint that graffiti is being taken a bit more seriously than it has in the past. True enough, there are plenty of bad, sloppy or just plain vandal painters (an upcoming post will be on defacing an 18th Century mill) but many graffiti images are thought provoking and insightful commentary about contemporary life. 

BANKSY did not do the illustration below, but a recent issue of the 

The New Yorker magazine featured the following image, possibly suggesting that some people are beginning to look at graffiti (or at least artistic graffiti) with a fresh perspective, open to the meaning and commentary suggested by the image. 

Scary Dollies: WTF? Graffiti? Misogyny? Doll Fetish?

OK, so I find a lot of strange things in my RVA ramblings, and these images are some of the strangest. I took the doll-mobile picture about a year ago, and in the past month I took a picture of the single china-faced doll hanging on a bench. 

Do these "count" as graffiti? The doll-mobile seems potentially misogynist, but hard to take seriously - harder still to interpret. 
If not anti-woman, perhaps a critique of the eating disorders partially inspired by impossible doll physiques. 

I found these pseudo-barbie dolls hanging on a branch underneath the Nickel Bridge, complete with a litter of missing limbs below them.

I found the doll below more recently, hanging from a bench right next to the Old Pumphouse in Byrd Park. Unlike the pseudo-barbies, this doll seemed less of an "installation" as the placement of some kind of sentinel to watch over the Pumphouse....who knows? She was a creepy little thing who disappeared the next day. 

Watch out for stray dollies!

I'm watching you!

Three Meditations in Marker

Rainbow of ribbons on a fence atop Montreal

I'm beginning to think that the category of "graffiti" includes more than the traditional painted tag. It could include yarn bombing,or ribbons tied to a fence as I once found in Montreal. Or it might even be a bizarre mobile made from doll parts - an image you'll see in an upcoming post.

But perhaps the simplest graffiti is written with a marker on a suitable surface as in the image below. These three sets of marker wisdom may have been written by the same person, but each could represent a separate philosophical statement. 

"HE LOVES YOU" is written beside an inverted pentagram with a goat's head inside that some read as the symbol of the Devil, or possibly the symbol of Baphomet. Hell or no, everybody knows that the Devil throws the better party and is most interested in our pursuit of pleasure and happiness - now that's love. Though the two characters are not equivalent, the phrase echoes the "Jesus Loves You" slogan so prevalent in Christianity. Recent photos however indicate that perhaps Jesus definitely does NOT love you. 

"WHO ARE YOU? WHO AM I?" is as existential as it comes and raises the question of identity - something we often take for granted. Recent news reports indicate that the human body, the personal "I" we think of ourselves as being, an integral, single, human unit is actually a teeming community of microbes and plenty of DNA that isn't even human. 

"LiFE'S A RIDE SO ENJOY" could be the Devil's advice, but it also seems like wise advice to celebrate life while you have it - before your ride is over (and who knows when that will be?).

borf?

Just a short entry today....

I took this picture several years ago on the walkway beneath the Lee Bridge. It's grey color gave it a subliminal feel, not immediately noticeable. Most significant however is the message in the cryptic statement - took me a lap around Belle Isle to figure it out (a bit slow).

Good advice, no?

Originally I thought "borf" was just the name of the tagger, but then Wikipedia expanded my understanding (oh, heresy!).

Graffiti Posters & Re-purposing Junk Mail

I may be expanding the definition of "graffiti" a bit when I include creative, non-commercial posters pasted up, not unlike what Shepard Fairey does with some of his potent designs.

Earlier this summer of 2013 I saw a set of traditionally printed posters with intriguing images pasted on the Northbank Park stairway:

I couldn't find much about the phrases on the poster "undisturbed conscience" and "the revolution has begun" but a Google search of "undisturbed conscience" brought up a flag-like image with the strange sigil in the upper left and the text of the First Amendment written on the white stripes...a tea party group? The sigil looks slightly fascistic to me, but I could be wrong.

The homemade poster below is cut from junk mail advertising and then decorated with paint and marker, perhaps a parody of consumer culture or a spoof on the fact that we all subsidize the junk mail we despise.

And there were other faces and posters pasted on the stairs...

         

Though I still don't know the origin of the "Undisturbed Conscience" posters, the corner of one that was ripped down wins my heart with it's image of Edgar Allan Poe with a halo...