The sexy doll-like characters Sand One paints have been popping up all over the Eastside with attitude and fresh charisma. This girl knows what she wants and is doing it by painting her Sand Chicks wherever she can. I caught up with Sand One at Primera Taza in Boyle Heights to see what this native Eastsider was all about.
Read the rest after the jump………
photo from "Cholo Writing"
“Cholo Writing: Latino Gang Graffiti in Los Angeles”
by Francois Chastanet with forward by Chaz Bojorquez.
This book gives Mexican-American ‘cholo’ writing its proper recognition and respect as “the oldest form of name graffiti of the 20th century.” Focusing on L.A. ‘cholo” writing styles from an aesthetic point of view, evident long before the explosion of tags and pieces of the early 1970’s.
Cover of "Cholo Writing"
Cholo writing is the oldest form of graffiti in the 20th century, evident in Los Angeles long before the appearance of tags and pieces in the early 1970s New York. It is a Mexican American phenomenom with a unique aesthetic based on blackletter typography, used for street bombing by the latino gangs. In the 1970s, Californian citizen Howard Gribble photographed examples of Latino gang graffiti over a wide geographic area in order to encompass a larger variety of styles, with the simultaneous idea of portraying Los Angeles. More than 30 years later, French typographer Francois Chastanet travelled to the same neighborhoods to photograph the inscriptions of today. (English text in this edition, also available in Swedish)
go to www.dokument.org for more info and to order
On my daily commute to work I spotted this on N. Broadway. Now this side of town is not without plenty of graffiti/bombs/tags but this meanders into other territory. It’s not just a ‘tag’ but in a way someone trying to engage us and express his “boredom” with an act of creativity! Of course bored is spelled as borred, which makes one wonder as to whether this was intentional or not. And even the last “D” looks like a “b,” further changing an interpretation of this piece.
But frankly, on a purely visceral level I love this. Reminds me of all those million punk songs that sing about being young and bored. Even Søren Kierkegaard, Dutch 19th century existentialist, wrote about the nature of Boredom. For example he said in Either/Or,
Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings.
And also:
Boredom rests upon the nothingness that winds its way through existence
So, whoever did this is in good company in being bored…but as the Internationale Situationiste also said:
Boredom is counterrevolutionary.
OH! Who would’ve thought being bored had such existential implications!
This wall is always changing. The drab, creme-white is always there but the placas ever-changing. Now, that flux is (temporarily) gone.