Last summer, in Mexico City, the very first tag I saw coming into the city was 10Foot’s. The summer prior, enroute to NYC, 10Foot. My daily on the way to work coffee in London, also 10Foot. This level of international yet comfortingly familiar fame is seldom realised in practice.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
