GRAFFITI LA

I had a chance to grab a coffee and hang with Tackz AM7 this last Monday. He goes back to the first generation of graffsters in L.A. and had interesting things to say about Back Then. For example, he apprenticed under the legendary Hex TGO and Skill UTI, and talked about when he was with Hex, he was only allowed to watch for some period of time, and only eventually was he allowed to actually pick up a can and help fill in. That discipline of having to watch and take the learning step at a time is one of the things that has been relatively lost. Kids these days (classic old fart beginning of a rant…) too often don’t take the time to understand basic design and strong letterforms and try to jump right to the technical stuff and miss the base. Too much sizzle and not enough steak as the saying goes. Tackz also talked about an irreplaceable blackbook with Hex and Geo pieces in it that got lost when his car was jacked. The moral of that story is back up all photos somehow and scan blackbooks when they get filled. You’ll be glad you did.

I think this is elsewhere on this site but it bares repeating. In my original manuscript, I gave credit to AM7 and Krenz (now Yem) in particular of starting the “corporates” trend. That is, not just bombing the fronts of billboards, but integrating the pieces with the existing imagery. Tackz was very much part of that and props are due. Unfortunately, when one of the Saturday Night Slaughters of my writing came back from the editor/satan, that was missing and I didn’t notice soon enough to get it back in.

Link or Bookmark to:

I did an interview with Sum-In-One for Vlaze.com, and they split it into nine parts, so if you need to waste some time, go to Vlaze and search for Steve Grody and my stuff will be on the second page. Thanks to S-I-O for putting it together.

Link or Bookmark to:

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…

Link or Bookmark to:

Last year when talking with Eddie Donaldson of Guerilla One, he generously suggested that I do little Q/A about my book. If you go to guerillaone.com you’ll be able to see a host of other interesting videos as well, but here’s mine…

Link or Bookmark to:

This last Saturday, 1-19-08, I did a little graff tour down the Melrose alley for a group of people on behalf of the UCLA Fowler Museum. Nice group of people and no haters thank you. I hadn’t planned it to be so smooth, but that section of alleys has the broad scope; stickers and slap-tags, tags, throw-ups, pieces (wack to dope), productions, beef cross-outs, rooftops, legals/illegals, so they got a nice cross section of representation of what happens out there. I think they were a little disappointed when I told them I was just joking that I was going to hand out markers at the end of the tour and see what they’d learned.

Link or Bookmark to:

Well Woo Hoo!, what nice surprises to find out this week that this month’s issue of New York Magazine considered my book on of the Top Ten books of the year and one of the two best “counter culture coffee table books” along with “Banksy: Wall and Piece” (what good company I keep!). See it on-line at http://nymag.com/arts/cultureawards/2007/41801/ and go to the second page (I’m sending you to the first page so you can see they put my book next to Picasso, don’t ya know). What a nice one-line rave: “This was a breakout (or sellout) year for graffiti—that system of urban hieroglyphics for which Grody’s monumental Graffiti L.A. is a Rosetta stone.”

As if that wasn’t cool enough, Publishers Weekly has me on their list of Best Book of 2007 (Non-fiction). To see their original starred review, see my Press section.
“A 17-year effort, this stunning, definitive examination of Los Angeles street art details all aspects of the still-illegal form with 900 gorgeous photographs, testimony from a double-handful of artists and additional material on an included CD-ROM.”

Link or Bookmark to:

After talking for several months to the folks at the top graphics professionals site, aiga.org, I finally had my article posted this last Tuesday (12-11-07). It’s right there at the top of the page where you can’t miss it. I particularly like having shots of Eklips, Atlas, Revok, Relm and Kofie on such an upscale site. Thanks to Marshall Arisman (terrific artist and teacher at N.Y. School of Visual Art) for connecting me with graphics guru Steven Heller, and thanks to Steven Heller for being interested in my perspective, and to Sue Apfelbaum at AIGA for making it happen.

Link or Bookmark to:

I head from Vox that he, Gabe and Sram (one of my favorite CBS/WAI guys going up these days) went up at the Graff Lab, so I headed down there and was sorry to see it was already gone. Seems like the “Venice Syndrome” is happening too much there: new jacks need to study the better writers and let them run. Happily, I ran into a bunch of other heads, including Fear, painting and then holding a DCV meeting, and Drez, who reminded me he drove around with me one day in the ’90s to show me some spots. I saw Esk31 (Yard Rats) was freshly up and he’s someone that’s had a dope different approach since the early ’90s and hasn’t gotten proper credit for it. So I was glad to finally meet him and have a chance to talk about history and whatnot. Then Deal showed up with Akua, and OG Pale. I’ve known Deal since back in the day, and met Akua recently, but for all the years of getting shots of Pale I hadn’t met him, so that was a treat. He thanked me for having him in my book (double page spread of the “Payel Tolse” silver out in the Valley), but I thanked him back because if it wasn’t for all the L.A. talent like him, there wouldn’t be a book.

Also, a few days ago, Pryer was in the neighborhood and we had a chance to hang at Ground Works on Traction. He had interesting things to say about Then and Now.

Link or Bookmark to:

This last Thursday, Crewest had a slew of folks doing pieces on panels for competition/promotion of the new Will Smith Movie “I Am Legend.” Sonek predicted correctly that the guy that did a realistic image of Smith’s face would will since the movie people had some judges as part of the deal. I’m glad that Siner LTS also won some dough. Asylm, Sacred and Mandoe were also among the L.A. heavyweights that did panels. It was nice to see many of the usual suspects, and had a chance to meet Astek, Owen, Wram (hanging with Mandoe) and a few others of Visions Crew and MAK whose work I shoot regularly.

Link or Bookmark to:

I rolled around with some folks from LXTV.com and here it is below. It was set up by Brian Stemmler and the on-camera host with me was Shira Lazar. I spent three or four hours showing them some sites, the easy-to-get-to places like Downtown, Highland Park and Melrose. I gave as many props out as I could, but it was edited down to TWO MINUTES AND FOURTY EIGHT SECONDS!… so a lot was left out, but they did their best under the limits and at least you can see some good work. Check it out.

Link or Bookmark to: