Catching Up
February 24th, 2008 by steveWP
I got back from the snowy mid-west last week and have caught up with at least some shooting (as in photography) of local graff. I ran across a CBS/WAI production going up on a new Melrose wall and had a chance to meet Haste, who is influenced by many styles of graphics thinking outside of graff, Reds (who has been a WAI fave of mine for some time), Werk (with his cool spidery style). Also going up were Sram (super strong letter style) and Mers (probably the bombingest of all the 3D writers out there). There’s some great new production work going on in the East L.A./Commerce area: the COI wall has a new collaboration with UTI and MSK (Vyal, Werc, Kofie, Retna) which is a great new combination of talents. A little east was work from Heavy Artilery (including Wrench and Aero) from the U.K. along with MSKs Rime and Revok. Do I really need to say the work was top notch? The same group went up along the tracks near the Sear’s yard (which some refer to as the “Soto yard”) where there’s usually something worth catching. Saw Ruets/Bonks and ? piece-bombs on a site I climbed up to, but I’ll have to try and get by when it’s closed so the roll down door that the Ruets is on can be seen (if it’s still there). Went by Highland Park on the way to visit Chaz who was taking an interesting guy, Francois Chastenet from Fance, around to document Cholo placas. Francois has a new book out on Sao Paulo graff and it’s a unique style, so it’s definitely a book worth having and there’s some deep writing to read as well (check Amazon).
Kofie gave me shout about a nice little colab he did with Asylm in Echo Park, so I went over and was glad to run into Asylm getting his own shots. He kindly turned me onto some things worth checking out in ELA.
Over in Hollywood there’s a demolition going on, always a favorite place to hit because who can really complain? Anyway, Zes is there and it’s hard to imagine him doing anything not worth shooting. He had the company of Augor and the very weird Ween (and by weird, I mean good) although I don’t know if Ween was there at the same time.
For history hounds I promise that within the next week I’ll post some archive shots from ’91/’92 in my gallery.
Thanks to those giving me the tips on what’s up.
Over the past week I’ve shot three rolls of 36, so I’m sure I’m forgetting to mention something, but that’s at least some high points. Now if the rain would just stop…