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.

Recently in San Francisco

 

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

Mural Saves Corner (from Boredom)

The Northwest corner of 14^th 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.