Furthermore: Where the Headlines Take You

Street Art 101

I am a wannabe artist and I love art of all kinds: dance, music, theater, and the visual arts.  I've been to the Louvre and seen da Vinci's Mona Lisa and I am lucky enough to own a couple pieces by some very talented Portlanders. But honestly, some of the stuff that has moved me most, I've seen just walking down the street.  I'm talking about what is commonly referred to as graffiti, street art and murals.  Much of it could be described as crude, youthful angst spray painted onto a wall, but some of it is thoughtful, poetic, powerful and even inspiring.  Have you seen some of the beautiful City Repair projects, or the whimsical little horses around town, or just what some extremely talented individual has done in the dead of night with some spray paint and a vision! As part of their Pictures of the Day series, the Christian Science Monitor pulled together 14 images of graffiti from around the world.  

The library has many books on graffiti and street art and murals but I want to point out one in particular, the bible of graffiti if you will, The Faith of Graffiti with photos by Mervyn Kurlansky and Jon Naar. This work was originally published in 1974 and is often referred to as the "classic text" on the birth of urban street art, focusing specifically on the emergence of graffiti on New York City subway trains.  It is an oversized book with pages and pages of amazing images, with the 2009 edition including some additional photos that Naar has taken through the years. And both editions have a mind-blowing essay on street art by Norman Mailer. Here is a taste:

...the unheard echo of graffiti, the vibration of that profound discomfort it arouses, as if the unheard music of its proclamation and/or its mess, the rapt intent seething of its foliage, is the herald of some oncoming apocalypse less and less far away. Graffiti lingers on our subway door as a memento of what it may well have been, our first art of karma, as if indeed all the lives ever lived are sounding now like bugles of gathering armies across the unseen bridge.

If, like me, it's the images you are interested in, take a look at the zine Scrawl.  In this zine, author Amy Adoyzie includes photographs of graffiti she took while in Asia.  In her introduction she says "it's a sample of art from kids in developing nations...taking back space with their own aesthetics."  You'll note that even though the languages (and the alphabets, for lack of a better term) are different, the graffiti looks reassuringly similar to right here at home.  It's well laid-out with vibrant pictures.

If your inspired to create your own street art now (though you should know that "unlawfully applying graffiti" is a Class A violation in Oregon) the library has a book for you!  Check out Graff by Scape Martinez.  Martinez is a veteran artist from San Jose, California, who goes into step-by-step detail on how to take an idea from paper to wall. Plus, it's fun for learning some of the lingo around this art form, and thankfully a glossary is included. Speaking of which, if you need some help deciphering our own local world of graffiti, Portland's Office of Neighborhood Involvement has created a guide on how to read graffiti!

The last book I want to share has nothing to do with spray paint or markers on walls, but it does, in the most wonderful way possible, capture the beauty that is street art.  Slinkachu is a street art/installation artist who takes hand-painted figures, or "little people", and photographs them in the big city (mostly London and Manchester).  This is difficult for me to describe in words, but I ask that you take a look!  The book is titled Little People in the City and it is a wonderful, whimsical collection of photographs.  As The Times so perfectly put it, "even when you know they are just hand-painted figurines, you can't help but feel that their plights convey something of our own fears about being lost and vulnerable in a big, bad city."  This is definitely my favorite book right now.