Is Your Child a Tagger?

wYs ^^ my thoughts exactly.

writers write on stuff. I just cant stand the 'aerosol artists' who have worked out how to piece, but their handstyle looks like my nans.

I guess I think they're messy. And aggressive. And they make where I live messy and aggressive. Just an opinion mind.

whats a proper graffiti writer in your opinion?

Ummmmmm

Top Cat

I had never heard of him, but a quick google and a link to art crimes gives me this..

It is said that tagging first started in Philadelphia with the emergence of the legendary "Cornbread" and "Top Cat."

Yep. I was trying to be funny, yet knowledgeable.

Seriously i know I had a reactionary point. But I still think those mums you mentioned have a point.

I suspect there's only a very small minority of the population who actually like the look of grafitti - makes a place look "urban" I guess. But I'd far rather the little scrotes who tagged my garage door (after we got the neighbour's tag off) hadn't. It looks shit now and depresses me when I look at it.

And for the record, I don't like Banksy either - I think his stuff is purile and his "political" work is not exactly incisive.

I know people hate it, and i know why they hate it. I just hate the fact they will never understand why i love it and love doing it.

:P

seriously, if you keep painting over it, they will give up.

what conan is saying is right, there is no difference between a well done tag and a real nice piece, the way to think about it is that it is all art, but just because it is art doesn't mean you have to like every single tag just because it is art. just think of it like modern art, i dont like a lot of what emin does, but i accept that it is an art form.

wYs I know people hate it, and i know why they hate it. I just hate the fact they will never understand why i love it and love doing it.

:P

I can understand you on that. I imagine a bit like trying to explain to people (best not bother) why it is your bike has 'no gears' and you can't stop pedalling. Or explaining to people who get the bus to work every day that cycling/skateboarding/walking is actually nicer than the bus in every possible way, even when its raining.

wys why did you say that banksy isnt a graffer? are you a purist or somthing? he pisses me off and has instigated a whole torrent of bullshit but really him selling his stuff isnt much different to the dondi canvases back in the 1980s.

i like to think of the whole legal wall/ street grafiti thing kinda like the whole skatepark/ street thing with skating. You could skate some stairs in a skatepark and do whatever down it as it has a perfect run up, landing etc and no cars shooting past nearby. But then try do the same thing in the street with a run up of cracked slabs, gravel on the landing and leading out to a main road and itd be a whole different story. Id take the second one everytime.

in fact i like to compare everything in life to skateboarding in some way or another!

because i say name a graffer to anyone. First thing they think of is banksy.

He paints decent stencils. Anyone can do that. Not everyone can do decent graffiti, that comes with a lot more time and effort than it takes to cut a decent stencil.

imo.

true, but sometimes its nice to be in an space with loads of other skaters around who will back you up if some idiot takes offence to skateboarding, (this happens every now and then in brixton bowls, but its usually with rudeboys and fireworks.)

wys i see what your saying about handstyle and stuff, but when you look at a throwup or even a tag your looking for handstyle and technique, whereas with stencils you look for detail, technique within the stencil and above all its relevance to its surroundings. thats why banksy gets so much praise (along with the fact that he would quite gladly sell you his used tins, sorry i forgot d* face already does something like that [not that hes a bad graffer])

they had a legal wall at some bow art festival thing last summer, while the kids were sprayin some coppers where taking pictures from their van with a zoom lens, then a couple others where picking the kids out who had done pieces that looked like tags in the area

the term 'graffer' is equally as painfull as 'fixie'

who creates these nasty shortened words?

god/lpg

slow_bot the term 'graffer' is equally as painfull as 'fixie'

who creates these nasty shortened words?

what should graffers be called? graff heads, graffiti artists, taggers... its a self used label if anything.

chris crash they had a legal wall at some bow art festival thing last summer, while the kids were sprayin some coppers where taking pictures from their van with a zoom lens, then a couple others where picking the kids out who had done pieces that looked like tags in the area

who did they think was going to use the legal wall? those who wanted to get into graff but didnt want to do it illegally?

it was all a set up the pigs in la did it al the time till the kids got wise

a bit like that massive train hit that was set up by the cops in the US to locate graffers by selling t shirts with pictures of the train through the mail, was that made u look or somthing?

When I was at art school a guy on the course got nicked after the final show because his final major project was about pieces he'd done with his crew down the Cambridge train yards, which would then come to London the next day, a london crew would 'bomb' them (is that the right phrase?) and then they'd come back to Cambridge. And so on and so on.

Coppers came to the show, saw the work, dude was nicked for it. I found it quite funny at the time.