Dust-up at The Pit?

Pieces go up and down regularly at the Pit - the Lower Water Street Parking Lot, which is a "Legal" Graffiti Wall. It has not been clear to me what the rules/etiquette around covering up someones work are (other than, as the Gentleman in 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' said, right before he recieved a kick in the jewels "Rules?! - NO RULES!")

Clearly when a piece starts to flake off the wall, its days are numbered, as they are when one is defaced. But what does it mean to paint on a piece just days after it went up?

This past weekend ADICT scraped the wall and put up three pieces One over a defaced ADICT piece, two ovwer older ADICT pieces), which by Thursday had been defaced. The APER piece to their right, shed some paint (?was scraped) recently. In (?)response, the ADICT pieces now have APER tagged on them, along with "pussy", "no respect" and of course "fuck you". One piece had a small "throw-up" over it.

Next? - Who knows, but I expect that the defaced pieces are now fair game to be replaced.

New ADICT Triptych at the Pit

Replacing the Easter Triptych by ADICT that had been gone over in the past few weeks - three new pieces went up Sunday at the Lower Water Street Parking Lot.

Three New Pieces in the Pit

ADICT/SENSAY's new piece at the pit was short lived (less than a month), covered up last week by a pile of maple leaves, along with two other new pieces, all just painted over the old without a new base coat.





However ADICT was busy in the pit again this weekend. More on that soon...

Every Picture Tells A Story (Don't It?)

As Rod Stewart says - every picture tells a story - and the story I see here is on about drips. ZOMBIE did his throw-up in black and white, but with alot of drips (which I have seen called 'the mark of the toy' elsewhere) - some of which may have been deliberate, some of which (the blurred borders between black and white) are perhaps sloppy. Someone (DOPE3 to judge by the shade of orange used) felt the need to give ZOMBIE some constructive feedback about the quality of his technical skills.

Is this the only possible story - Of course not, but it's the one I like best, unless the whole piece was ZOMBIE's post-modern deconstruction of drips and their role in Graffiti.

HUE/Hué/Hue

When I first saw HUE, I just thought of Hué - the city in Vietnam. My first memory of war, was on the evening news watching an American tank retaking Hué, which presumably means that this was during the Tet offensive of 1968 (see the movie Full Metal Jacket by Stanley Kubrick if you want to see more of Hué/Tet). I didn't even think of 'hue' as in colour, which would seem to make more sense in a graffiti/graphical way.



HUE (with SHUK and SOUTH) seems to be one of Spring/Summer 2007 more prolific taggers so far. His style seem to be evolving - with some of the older tags (back of a building on Quinpool) looking more primitive, then a more graphical style with a looy 'E', and more recently a more angular look. HUE has also put some red hued throw-ups up here and there as well as tags (mainly at the rail overpass at the Bedford Basin and Joseph Howe Drive).

A Masterpiece at BC Silver?!

I once read that one way to appreciate an old masterpiece was to look at the perspective in the picture with both eyes open, then close your non-dominant eye. Paintings by the true Masters, pop off the painting into three dimensions. This certainly has been true for Rembrandt and Vermeer, compared to many of the paintings by their peers that I have seen.

What does this have to do with graffiti you ask? At BC Silver school there was a new piece up today, which between the high and rather flat light today at 1 pm, jumped off the wall into three dimensions. Amazingly this illusion held, not just with one eye open, but both. It gave a vary strange sensation, as my hand reached out to the wall, expecting to touch a letter that seemed raised by a centimetre or so, to touch the dead flat wall. Both my son and I experienced this illusion (much to the puzzlemant of a couple of city workers watching).

You may be able to get an impression of this, by viewing the
full size enlargement with one eye closed.

TASTY!

While walking on the tracks I met 'TASTY' as he was putting up a piece with a friend. He was kind enough to let me watch, and take some pictures of the piece - "AROW" which was going up under the Coburg Road Bridge. Another TASTY piece (AROW again) is to be found at present, under the Jubilee bridge.

BOS in the Pit

Despite a somewhat grim Saturday in Halifax - BOS put up a new piece at the Water Street Parking lot, aka 'The Pit'. On a background of graphic bricks the pieces are bold and colourful - and as my daughter said - her favourite to date.

Mumford Road Overpass

The overpass at Mumford Road was covered with new tags recently. They reflect what seems to be going on (at least on the peninsula) this summer with SHUK, SOUTH and FOE5 all getting up here, as they are elsewhere. SAME is still showing up, but seems to have been overtaken by SHUK in terms of sheer numbers. SHUK looks like he could use a new cap on his Hunter Orange paint though, judging by the drips

Help Me Thursday #5

Does anyone know where these pictures were taken? (all from Graffiti site Lounge 37, all in the Halifax area apparently. If you know, either post the location in the comments or email me tagbagger@hotmail.com.

Just Let Me Put Some Lipstick On...

Putting a splash of red lipstick on a black and white piece at the pit (Water Street parking lot) - perhaps a good graphical idea.



Doing such a lame-ass, looking like a well fed sloppy vampire, massive drips, job of it - definitely not priceless!

Chain Lake Overpass Pillars

The pillars at the Chain Lake Overpass - eight pillars, two sides each as of June 1, 2007 - another site well worth checking out in person.

Return to BC Silver

All the ground level pieces at BC Silver have turned over since I was there 6 weeks ago. Here is the new stuff as of June 2, 2007. Given that most of the pieces have been defaced, I suspect (and hope) they will be replaced with new stuff soon..

Check this place out before it's torn down.

There's even a new acronym for 'ADICT' - A Drug Intoxicated Creative Thinker.

Mumford Wall

It doesn't look like much from Mumford Road, and indeed is barely visible from the tracks, but the back wall of this building is covered with large pieces. It is heavily treed, indeed, as you can see from some of the pictures, the trees go right up to the wall. It is only accessible from the track, as it is fenced off - but as the photos show - well worth the trouble to get to. All in all a pleasure - all the better as it was unexpected.

nastee noper?

Comments re "Go West Young Man" " nastee noper said...

wow im glad i went over that west piece at the pit... "

So is this nastee noper then?

Army of Darkness Invades Water Street

AOD, who basically owned the underpass I had gone to Antigonish to see, put up some new stuff at the Water Street parking lot this week. ZORA, a member of AOD, who also tags around town, has a piece which mentions Rosa and Pax, who were also noted in Antigonish. Perhaps its time for a return trip to the Antigonish tunnel...

Graffiti Gone...NOT!

So the theory is, if you cover over graffiti quickly it discourages the tagger from repeating in that area. Sounds fine in theory, but what if the person who covers it over, carefully paints it out so it is still identifiable, as in these two shots from QEH. They are clearly SAME and HEU5. Several questions arise, such as have these guys been discouraged by this action?, and is the school just running low on beige paint, but reluctant to re-order as red paint will be needed at the new school next year?

POUTINE

Given the late night, post consumption, meals of choice in Halifax - either a Donair or Fries smothered in cheese curd and gravy - how can you not love POUTINE? I don't see it around that much, but when I do, I just have to laugh. Someone emailed me and said that most tagging is done by drunk teenagers, so maybe POUTINE is a craving rather than a tag...

Go WEST Young Man

Taking John Soule's 1851 advice as popularized by Horace Greeley to heart - WEST came to Halifax from Newfoundland this spring and left behind a piece at the Water Street lot, and some tags around the downtown core. Now a couple of months later, they are almost all gone.

Feedback

This piece at BC Silver School has been labelled "Toy" by a critic. One definition of "Toy" would be "An inexperienced or incompetent writer. Someone whose writing is either wack, who uses sucker tips, or whose style is just plain cheesy".

Presumably this is the message that has been left in paint for the writer.

Boing-boing recently offered up a less destructive way to give feedback. Originating in San Francisco, the creator wanted to give feedback to local taggers




According to the creator, Brandon Thomas Baunach - "It’s a project I started a couple of months ago after seeing my neighborhood (The Mission District of San Francisco) receive an amazing amount of ugly, large, and talentless graffiti. I wanted a way to combat the ugly graffiti while at the same time give praise to the talented graffiti writers who I feel make the streets more beautiful. It occurred to me, that many of our local taggers don’t realize how ugly and talentless their graffiti is, so I wanted to give them some feedback."

Find the PDF for the form here.