Most of the graffiti I find stays around a long time because it’s painted directly on walls. Unless somebody comes and paints over it—and it seems like there’s a certain amount of respect among taggers; if something gets painted over it’s usually erasure rather than replacement—most of it lasts as long as the paint does. So I can document it in photos but it’s not like I can take it home and frame it and hang it on a wall. It would take some pretty heavy equipment to do that. And a heavy wall.
So this collection was a surprise. You can’t really see it because it’s a photo but each of these painted rectangles is a standard 8.5 X 11 sheet of paper glued to the wall. I was able to partly peel one away and they’re on heavy card stock rather than standard printer paper, but still they weren’t painted directly on the concrete. They could, if someone wanted to, be taken away, even framed and hung on a wall. I was even tempted to do that. I like the one on the top left corner a lot, but it was glued so well I was afraid I couldn’t remove it without damaging it. Also it just didn’t seem like it would be right to break up the set.
This tag was added nearby:
I don’t know if this was the group responsible for the individual pictures, although the yellow has been there for at least six months, and “Creekside Social v3” was added just a few weeks ago, never mind what I said about there being a certain amount of respect among taggers. At least they didn’t cover it up. Anyway I’m not even sure if the pictures were done by a group or a single person, but they’re so different from each other I like to think there were nine different artists—or, heck, maybe even just three, who created individual works and left them there.
The paint and heavy paper mean they’ll hold up for a while but, unlike the brick, or even paint applied directly to brick, they won’t last as long as some of the other graffiti. Of course nothing lasts forever.
Happy Twelfth Night.
They’re all so interesting–I love top right!
The top right one is really cool too. I’m glad I took pictures because I don’t know how long they’ll last and I really wanted to take all of them. But I’m also glad that they’re left there for others to discover. The funny thing is they’re in a place that’s hard to get to, so it feels like they reward the effort.
It’s amazing all the art a single person posts on this blog, Chris, and it all lasts.
Time catches up to us all but I’m glad our friendship has lasted.