graffitisf - The Blog
Wednesday, January 18, 2017
Monday, March 10, 2014
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Thursday, August 1, 2013
If Parking Lot Walls Could Talk
Some
parking lot walls in San Francisco get paint job after paint job after paint
job, and it doesn’t seem to stop.
Since
this is a public facing wall, the owners have to respond to the tagging before
The Letter Of The Law is taped to the doorway and a simple cover-up paint job
incurs the additional hassles of proving legal compliance.
If
only this wall could talk… the stories of late-night art-ops it could tell… of
graffiti aficionados cruising at the vampire hour armed only with stolen cans
of spray paint… lovers leaving an homage to the lost art of subversive
expression, bankers and insurance-company bureaucrats in disguise… angry about their
own success and resentful that creators of beauty and awareness are so
undervalued… ambitious artists hoping a
little notoriety will translate into lucrative sales to new celebrity art
collectors and museums bored with their bourgeois collections…
Some
of these visuals just might accompany some of those stories.
We
already know the reasons for erasing graffiti… but we remain in the dark about
the inspiration of those who create it.
These
photos show the same parking lot wall over a period of about 2 years.
The top 3 images were taken over a 3 day period last month.
The top 3 images were taken over a 3 day period last month.
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Monday, July 22, 2013
For San Francisco Street Artists Only
Dear SF Street Artists:
graffitisf.com now features over 1,000 images of murals and other
forms of street art in San Francisco, so it’s likely that your contributions
are represented here, and if they’re not yet, they eventually will be.
If your street-art-work appears in one of the photos included on
the site, you’re welcome to that photo for your personal or promotional use.
You can use that photo in your own site or in any publication about you. You
can put it on your business card, make a T-shirt or whatever you want…
If you ask, I will give you a copy of the original files
(usually a RAW or .jpg) and the processed files (usually a .tiff or .psd,
sometimes a .png). Let me know of any
specific file preference or requirements.
You’re welcome to link directly from your web site to the file
at graffitisf.com (but if you do this let me know so I won’t move the photo
from that location) or you can place a copy of that file in your own server (my
preference). Remember that the files used on the website have been optimized
for the Internet and are much smaller than the original and the processed files.
The only thing I ask is that you credit the photo appropriately
(Photo by Jerry A. Sierra/graffitisf.com)
when you use it.
This offer applies to creators of murals, wall paintings, sidewalk
stencils and anything else that decorates our public spaces with meaning or
noise… and it applies equally to visiting and local artists whose works appear
in photographs on the site;
If your work appeared on a public space in San Francisco, and I
took a picture of it, and that picture is on the site, you can have a copy of
that picture. In some cases it may be that I have other photos of your work at other
locations that have not made it as far as the web site yet, and you can also have
those.
Graffiti
providers should keep in mind that I do not wish my images or emails used
to identify your work in court and send you to jail, so if you write me, don’t
admit to an art “crime” in an email that could be read by garden-variety spooks
and who knows who else.
For the record (and not that this would ever come up) photos
which show defaced murals will not be made available to those who vandalized
them, only to the creators of the vandalized work, should they want them.
It has always been my intention that these photos exist to
illuminate, not to prosecute… to help enlighten art lovers and promote street
artists and showcase the unique beauty and turmoil of our times as reflected across
the public space.
-
Some say that photographers are like hunters with “the killing
instinct,” but not the “desire” to kill… Instead of death we deliver “eternity…”
or the illusion of eternity.
It is this illusion that drives me to photograph street art locations,
and I hope this serves as a proper thank you to the many street artists that
make this such a unique and wonderful place in which to “hunt.”
- Jerry
Saturday, July 6, 2013
Mural Saves Corner (from Boredom)
The
Northwest corner of 14th Street at Valencia is coming alive with a
new mural… this had been a visually dead corner with nothing but the cycle of
graffiti and paint-overs and the occasional letter from the law…
Before
the mural appeared a couple of months ago this wall was crying out in Klingon-blood-orange
(the shade of some Klingon desserts) sometimes blessed and cursed with meaningless
graffiti.
The
new building on the Northeast corner, across the street from Carlin’s Café, didn’t
help the intersection, adding a non-nondescript “West LA/Santa Monica” vibe that could
be best described as “massive hallucination prior to interstellar invasion,” and
perhaps the reason why (as of today) Google Maps still shows this corner as an
empty lot.
Across the street from Carlin's Cafe. |
Only
the coffee at Carlin’s Café made strolling by worthwhile.
One
day in May the Klingon-blood-orange changed to a dark Earth-ocean-blue, and the
outlines of the mural appeared like character lines on a leathery face…
But
like everything worth doing slowly and meticulously, the mural is taking its
time during the act of creation… and there have been the surprising evolutions
and devolutions and unexpected “plot twists” that have kept strollers guessing and those
stuck in traffic entertained.
I’m
guessing that the mural will continue to grow around the corner on Valencia,
and if that’s the case I can’t wait to see it.
The
mural is a reward to the many pedestrians who had no choice but to pass by the
wall with the least interesting graffiti imaginable. Some still remember the
fence across the street during construction.
This
mural saves the landscape with a reminder that this is still San Francisco, a
beautiful city to walk (or be stuck in traffic) in.
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