Doorway

Play Lot

East Village

Psychadelic

3rd Avenue, 4th Street, East Village

This one is important. The coloring scheme is magnificent: purple, yellow and black. the poster is purple, with a light blue to orange-pinky sunset background displayed behind the envisioned apartment block. You can even see that the poster has begun to peel in the top right corner, only to reveal another, lighter purple. The apartments are silvery and nicely add another layer for the tags placed over them.

Over this, there's some silver texta work presumably all by the same writer; and some gold texta work running down the right-hand side. The central motif however is the black swirl. It really is quite beautiful, and its confident trippy swirl harmonises the rich and psychedelic colors around it. This black tag serves as central and strong element to bring all the other disparate elements together. And the yellow paint over it just adds morecolor and movement.

The layering of these texts allows us to see the chronology (the time-line or Tag-Line) that these layers emerged. First there was the silver; then the gold (vying for limited space); then the sprayed black tag; and finally the yellow. The actual time that passed between each of them is harder to trace. But together these levels of color and text has a cumulative effect of psychedelic layers, and competitive harmony.

Whizzing past

Cars stream past uptown without looking at the art in their midst. This is a good thing: the spray-painted walls are just a natural part of the decay and regrowth in the urban landscape of the city. The pieces here exude a calm which is unkown to the drivers, but felt by pedestrians. The writers who put these up were more than likely doing them in a calm but manic rush, in a well repeated act of getting the art onto cement walls via preassurised aerosol. You should plan for this (or maybe not) so you be stealthful before security, cops or unfriendly pass-bys bring attnetion to the act. That energy is captured here in these pieces; they are moving dancing letters and primal shapes. But there is also a stillness there. Paint on a flat wall.

Anime

East Village

This striking piece was applied on a perfect backdrop surface. The smooth earthy-red wall is smooth and warm. The throw-up has a really cool use of both curved and spiked letters. It's sort of rolling and menacing at the same time.

Shaaaaaaaaaahz

7th Street, Avenue B

Silvered Black Doorway

3rd Avenue, East Village

Disparate elements unify this black and grated doorway into a singular work. The tags don't overlay each other, with an unusually uncompetitive use of space. While the doodle-like drawings, a dancer and a big eared creature, gyrate up the doorway complimenting the more serious tagging work, as well as modifying the menace suggested by the grated window.

Red Bubbles

3rd Avenue and 4th Street, East Village

Beautiful red clouds of bubble text.

Old School New York Style Tags

This wall was uncovered in the dark recesses of Avenue C. I turned a corner and found before me a wall of colorful naive old school styled New York graffiti. I squeezed the camera through the wire mesh fencing and took some photos. Apparently this old school looking graffiti was dressing for a film that was shot over the summer. It was done by LEE Quinones with some assistance from PAR ONE. Lee and Spar both grew up on the Lower East Side, and reproduced these old school legend's tags.





Special thanks to ERIC aka DEAL CIA for this information. Check out his site: 149st.