Artist Dartagnan Curiel, 31, said he used to scrawl graffiti in his Los Angeles neighborhood, but grew sick of the violence associated with the activity. He now paints murals with positive messages to encourage graffiti vandals and gang members to lay down their arms. “Why would you want to put spray paint on a kid’s face?” he says. “We live in the same community. We are all in this hellhole together.”
LOS ANGELES - One man got stabbed. Another got shot in the chest. A 6-year-old boy was temporarily blinded when he was spray-painted in the face.
And they were the lucky ones among those who have had run-ins with graffiti “crews,” or gangs.
Over the past 2 1/2 years in Southern California, three people have been killed after trying to stop graffiti vandals in the act. A fourth died after being shot while watching a confrontation between crews in a park.”We have seen a marked increase in these graffiti-tagging gangs taking to weapons and fighting to protect their walls, their territory, their name,” said Los Angeles County sheriff’s Lt. Robert Rifkin.
Los Angeles County has battled graffiti for decades, spending $30 million a year to paint over or clean up the emblems, names and images spray-painted on stores, concrete-lined riverbeds, rail lines, phone booths, buses, even police cars. On Wednesday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law requiring convicted graffiti vandals to remove their scrawl.
Taggers ‘target’ people who call police
For some taggers, protecting their work is akin to defending their names and their honor.
“If we see someone calling the police, then we target them,” said Mario Garcia, 20, who describes himself as a former tagger trying to become a professional artist. “You are trying to stop me from what I live, what I believe in and what I breathe? We are not going to let no one get in the way.”
Workers who remove the graffiti say they take caution if they find a crew at work. They wait until the taggers leave before cleaning up.
“We won’t say anything to them,” said Rogelio Flores, whose company Graffiti Busters contracts with Los Angeles to blast away the markings with high-pressure hoses. “We don’t know what kind of weapons they have.”
Police tell residents to resist the urge to confront graffiti crews.
“It’s not worth the risk,” Rifkin said. “Take a deep breath, back off and call law enforcement.”
Some of the violence has been between rival crews, which are increasingly acting like street gangs. And some of the bloodshed has involved real street gangs that mark their turf with their names or emblems. But some of the victims have been innocents.
In an attack last month, two youths spray-painted the face and body of the 6-year-old boy who spotted them scribbling gang signs on a wall near Compton. The boy recovered from chemical burns to his eyes.
On the same day, a 51-year-old auto mechanic was shot in the chest in Los Angeles when he confronted two suspected gang members painting the wall of his shop.
‘Write on your own wall’
Another man, Michael Lartundo, 26, was stabbed in the hand and arm after yelling at a group of graffiti vandals scrawling on a wall in March behind his brother’s house in suburban Whittier.
“I just told them it ain’t right,” Lartundo recalled. “I said, ‘If you are going to write on the wall, write on your own wall.’”
The most recent attack occurred July 15, when a 16-year-old boy was shot and killed after rival graffiti crews converged on a Los Angeles park for a fight. The victim was in a crowd of onlookers.
Last August, Maria Hicks, 58, was shot in the head and died after flashing her headlights and honking at a teenager spray-painting a wall near her home in Pico Rivera, a blue-collar suburb east of Los Angeles. Four people have been charged with murder.
Ten days after Hicks died, Seutatia Tausili, 65, was fatally shot and her grandson wounded when he told taggers to stop vandalizing a trash can outside their home in Hesperia in San Bernardino County. Three men were charged with murder.
Robert Whitehead was shot to death in 2006 in the Los Angeles County area of Valinda when he tried to keep taggers from marking a neighbor’s garage. Investigators arrested one man with alleged ties to the Mexican Mafia, a prison gang.
Artist Dartagnan Curiel, 31, said he used to scrawl graffiti and grew sick of the violence. He now paints murals with positive messages as a way to speak out against the bloodshed in his Los Angeles neighborhood and to encourage graffiti vandals and gang members to lay down their arms.
“Why would you want to put spray paint on a kid’s face?” he says. “We live in the same community. We are all in this hellhole together.”
AUGUST 16TH, Artist Reception 7 - 10 PM
Curated by Marka27 & ManOne, the exhibit will bring together several street-artists and designers from coast to coast to show their view and appreciation of female beauty, sexuality and empowerment for the upcoming exhibit : "EYE-CANDY" at Crewest Gallery in Downtown L.A.
Interpretations will be presented through paintings, sculptures, designer vinyl toys, and installations. There will also be live body painting by select artists as well as special artist signings during the month.
Erick Scarecrow
Jesse Hernandez
Marka27
Mad
Biz20
ninerevolutions
Lichiban
Blokhedz
Problak
ManOne
Edgar Hoill
Axis
OG Abel
Gregg Stone
Asylm
Victor Sepulveda
Spencer - booty babes
Eriberto Oriol
J. Brewer
Fearo
Show Dates:
AUGUST 14TH
THURSDAY
During the DOWNTOWN ARTWALK
Music and Live Body Painting
6 - 9 PM
AUGUST 16TH
SATURDAY
Artist Reception
7 - 10 PM
AUG 30TH
SATURDAY
Closing Reception
and Live Body Painting
by Girls Gone Graff Crew
6 - 9 PM
Street artists are increasingly turning to non-destructive, paint-free forms of graffiti to make a point without permanently defacing property. Their urban pranks and social protests engage mobile gadgets, open-source software, and online social networking. They blend aesthetics from the hip-hop, punk, and do-it-yourself arts and crafts movements to convey messages from the silly to the politically provocative. Free speech, environmentalism, and anti-war messages are common themes.
Artists with the Graffiti Research Lab play laser tag by scribbling with light beams onto buildings. Targets have included the Roman Coliseum (shown here) and Brooklyn Bridge. For the projects, they use a camera, a laptop with open-source software, a projector, and a green laser. Equipment for the mobile, interactive laser shows can be mounted in a camper or car, or on a bicycle.
The summer tour of Graffiti Research Lab, an offshoot of the nonprofit Eyebeam arts center, is working on a new laser tag technology dubbed Green Lantern that can project images on the scale of Batman's bat signal.
Credit: Graffiti Research Lab
 The building that has housed Self-Help Graphics, the renowned community art center in East LA, was sold earlier this week. The future of Self-Help, which has worked with many of the most prominent and progressive Chicana/o and activist artists in LA, is in question.
Stop Gentrification! Support Self-Help Graphics!
KABC television coverage of the sale
Self Help Website
source:visualresistance.org
Reproduce and Revolt! is a graphic toolbox for political activists all over the world. The book contains 300+ exciting high quality illustrations and graphics about social justice and political activism for use on flyers, posters, t-shirts, brochures, stencils, and any other graphic aspects of political campaigns. All the graphics are bold, easy to reproduce, and are available to reproduce without permission. The book offers clear instructions on how to best utilize the images to improve the graphic qualities of political campaigns. It also contains a short history of political graphics, an archive of political flyers and posters throughout history, and a bibliography of further reading for all of the social justice issues the art covers.
A long-standing complaint regarding political campaigns is the lack of creativity employed in messaging and tired old graphics that have been used for decades. Reproduce and Revolt! is specifically designed to fill this gap and bring new meaning and vibrancy to campaigns. The book includes a huge range of art that can be used for any number of issues, including:
** Anti-Authoritarianism (including anarchism, hierarchy, direct action, mutual aid and more)
** Anti-Racism & Third World/POC Unity (institutional racism, racial equality, unity among peoples of color throughout the world, national movements, attacks on youth of color, white privilege and more)
**Arts & Culture as Tools of Resistance (including images that represent practices of music, art, graffiti, breakdance, hip hop, punk, singing, djing, capoeira, as forms of resistance)
** Counter-Globalization (including corporate control, IMF, World Bank, WTO, capitalism, austerity, world debt, alternative economies and more)
** Education (including privatization, self-education, free schools, liberatory pedagogy, urban inequalities, military recruitment and more)
** Environment (including environmental justice, environmental racism, endangered species, animal rights, earth liberation, deforestation, strip mining, water rights, bio-tech, organics, community gardens and more)
**Feminism (including women's struggles, wages for housework, equal pay for equal work, equal rights, gender discrimination, women's liberation movement, sexual assault, men against sexism, fat lib. and more)
** Food (including food justice, anti-fast-food, meat industry, right to whole foods, people's farms, vegeterianism/veganism, GMO's)
**Government & Police Brutality (including bureaucracy, taxes, anti-cop, police brutality, elections, voter fraud, voter disenfranchisement, voting rights, and more)
** Health Care (including disability, mental health, AIDS, access, abortion, aging and more)
**Housing (including public housing, gentrification, private ownership, abandonment, homelessness and more)
** International Solidarity (including connections with movements around the world, borders, mutual aid,
** Immigration & Border Issues (including US/Mexico border wall, refugees, deportation, detention, English-only laws, immigrant rights, immigrant-bashing, denouncing term "illegal")
** Land Struggles (including Palestine, Native land theft, right to nationhood and land, anti-privatization land laws)
** Labor (including unions, work slowdowns/stoppages/sabotage, strikes, bosses, anti-work, economics, campesinos, farm workers, maquiladoras, sweatshops, sex work and more)
**Media (including media control, media justice, media consolidation, independent media, pirate radio and more)
**Prisons (including prison reform, prison abolition, racism in the criminal justice system, the death penalty, political prisoners, stopping the construction of prisons, torture, sentencing discrepancies and more)
** Protest (including marches, protests, direct action, pickets, plowshares, armed actions and more)
** Queer Liberation (including gay, lesbian, trans, intersex, and bisexual struggle, gender binaries, queer bashing, sexual liberation and more)
** War (including anti-war, imperialism, militarism, state terrorism, war tax resistance, nuclear weapons, "collateral damage" and more)
** Youth Power (including youth organizing, youth voices, children's rights)
LINKS:
http://www.favianna.com/
http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-933368-25-X
 Welcome to the 9th official Bombing Science sketch battle. This battle will be judged by the San Diego writer, Brisk One. And of course, this battle is made possible by Tribal!
Here's the breakdown of the prizes:
1st Place:
- $100 of Tribal Clothing
- $50 Bombing Science gift certificate
- 5 Montana Hardcore cans
2nd Place:
- $60 of Tribal Clothing
- $25 Bombing Science gift certificate
3rd Place:
- $40 of Tribal Clothing
And now, the rules of the battle:
- Deadline: July 14th 2008
- Word to sketch: RANKS
- Colors: Any colors
- Medium: Pencils, Pen, Markers
- Backgrounds and characters are accepted, but not necessary.
Sketches will be judged on lettering structure, colors and cleanliness.
Send your sketch at the address below before the deadline:
flixs@bombingscience.com
Important: rename the image file with your artist name (example: yourname.jpg)
The judge of this battle will announce the winners a few days after the deadline. All the sketches that will be submitted to us will also be posted online.
Good luck!
www.bombingscience.com
A Graffiti artists uses spray paint outside of Alphabeta Shop in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn. Alphabeta sells graffiti culture merchandise such as spray paint, masks, retro boom boxes, etc. Local elected officials have expressed strong concerns about any support towards graffiti related activities. Shot on July 1, 2008 and published in amNewYork on July 2, 2008.
The spray paint is barely dry on Brooklyn’s new graffiti-art supply store, but street artists — and a fiercely critical councilman — are already clashing.
The store, Alphabeta in Greenpoint, proudly embraces graffiti culture and even offers artists a space for their work. But any mention of graffiti among some New Yorkers conjures searing images of a city in economic and social despair. A store that glorifies graffiti, says Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., (D- Astoria), is the equivalent of creating a criminal supply shop.
“I am determining what if any steps to take against it,” said the councilman, who has spent his career drafting some of the toughest vandalism laws in the nation. “Maybe I should work to get a police camera outside [the store].”
Of course, Alphabeta is not the only shop that sells spray paint and other items associated with graffiti, but none appears as proud of the culture.Leif McIlwaine, 24, a Utah native who owns Alphabeta, said his store is “a professional graffiti arts supply store and gallery.”
Like any new business, McIlwaine needs attention, but knows not all of it will be positive. The association of spray paint with vandalism isn’t lost on him: “It’s controversial.”
The store already has the attention of the city’s graffiti artists, including Raymond Cross, a partner at Ad Hoc Art, a studio and gallery space in Williamsburg.
Cross, 32 a master of fine arts from Pratt Institute, is originally from Virginia and has a more romantic view of graffiti’s past.
“If you look at that time, the late-’70s and the ’80s,” Cross said. “It was a cultural explosion.”
Vallone is a world removed from the graffiti culture flourishing in Brooklyn today, with the growth of galleries and studios that promote the street art. His anti-graffiti stance dates to growing up in the 1970s, a time everyone remembers as the height of graffiti and crime.
But Alphabeta is a legitimate store, according to McIlwaine, who with no prior business experience navigated the city’s permitting process and financed the startup with about $100,000 in inheritance money.
The store is about 800 square feet with a 5,000-square-foot, indoor-outdoor gallery, which will be used for shows and as a space for graffiti artists to paint. The store also sells graffiti-culture accessories: boom boxes and throwback sneakers.
McIlwaine said he will be careful not to sell spray paint to minors. He is trying to build a clientele of professional graffiti artists, not vandals.
Vallone doesn’t buy it: “How naïve does he think we are? There is not enough of any legal graffiti to support a store.”
Cross said he’d be shopping at the store, and he won’t be involved in any illegal activity.
“I’m too old to jump off buildings and run from police,” he said. “I just want to do my art inside.”
A canvas of the neighborhood didn’t draw much outrage yesterday.
“So long as it is a retail business, I’m OK,” said Christine Onorati, owner of Word Books on Franklin Street. “It’s a pretty artistic neighborhood.”
Simone Herbin contributed to this report.
[Via:AmNews]
A native Capetonian, Faith47 uses her talents to educate, uplift and inspire the people of South AfricaWorking in both the community and commercial fields, Faith47 is undoubtedly one of the most talented artists on the global graffiti scene, giving a uniquely feminine touch to this distinctly urban style.
Working in diverse mediums such as aerosol, photography, digital illustration and canvas, she is strongly involved in the South African social and political scene, also forming part of the Red Bull StreetStyle crew that visited local schools in 2005.
"As an artist, Africa's culture and people inspire me - her cities, towns and her politics. My roots are in Africa and my inspiration and passion comes from here" she says.
Faith has also worked extensively in the commercial field, designing campaigns and illustration work for Nike, X-Box, National Geographic and Dickies to name a few.
She has recently opened a design studio with Mike Saal, called Mattblack which showcases talented design and illustration artists from the Cape Town area.
South African based artist faith47 released this video as part of her the restless debt of third world beauty project. It was directed by Rowan Pybus with music by Fletcher. "Poignant, beautiful, and inspiring, this short film delves straight into the heart of South Africa and the artistry that beautifies its streets, cities, and slums."
-Juxtapoz.com
"The law should recognise the positive side of graffiti and encourage this element. Legal walls should be allocated for younger writers to be able to practise on and progress their own style"
-Faith 47
My deepest apologies for not having posted this sooner.
**R.I.P. Solve**
Brendan Scanlon, 24, used city objects as canvas
By Robert Mitchum |Tribune reporter
10:28 PM CDT, June 15, 2008
For the last two years, Brendan Scanlon's art would appear in the most unusual places across Chicago: on the backs of stop signs, on the glass of newspaper boxes and, on one famous occasion, stenciled on a TV secretly installed on a CTA train.
Using the alias "SOLVE," Scanlon was well-known in the secretive Chicago street-art scene. But on Sunday, members of that scene mourned his death, expressing their sorrow by building an impromptu memorial installation at Grand and Milwaukee Avenues.
Scanlon, 24, was found dead early Saturday of a stab wound to the heart in the 3000 block of West Palmer Boulevard, Chicago police said. On Sunday, Kirk Tobolski, 24, of the 2600 block of West Iowa Street in Chicago, was charged with first-degree murder in Scanlon's slaying.
"Brendan was a beautiful, energetic, intensely creative young man who we all loved deeply," said his father, Bill. "He was just coming into his own, as a deeply imaginative and bold artist, and we are immeasurably proud of him."
Scanlon drew attention—and commuter confusion—in February, when he placed a television set on a Blue Line "L" train stenciled with the message "We are experiencing legal difficulties."
Scanlon's parents said he grew up in Madison, Wis., attended the Illinois Institute of Art and was working for a Chicago graphic design and advertising firm.
On Sunday afternoon, Tobolski was ordered held on $500,000 bail by Cook County Judge Israel Desierto. Assistant State's Atty. Nicole Kodjayan said four witnesses identified Tobolski as the offender, and he made a statement to police admitting that he had had a knife and had "slashed" Scanlon.
rmitchum@tribune.com
Witnesses say he fell onto the interstate near the Main Street off-ramp with a can of spray paint in his hands. A man apparently spray painting graffiti on an overpass fell Saturday night onto the 5 Freeway in East Los Angeles, authorities said. Several motorists told authorities that the man had possibly broken his back at about 9:45 p.m. and had a can of spray paint clutched in his hands as he lay on the freeway near the Main Street off-ramp, said California Highway Patrol spokesman David Porter. Porter said the man was taken to a nearby hospital where he was being treated.
The accident comes about three weeks after prolific tagger Cyrus Yazdani — who goes by the moniker “Buket” — was arrested for causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage.
Yazdani is perhaps most recognized for a YouTube video that shows him climbing and spray painting behind the Hollywood Freeway sign near Melrose Avenue as traffic speeds below.
[Via:Latimes]
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