Graffiti Book

This is the beginning of my book on graffiti. I need to add an introduction page, but its in the works. I was satisfied with the Cover page and thought it flowed well. The title is Graffiti 2008. I don't think anyone has developed a guide to spray paint nozzle tips , so I thought I would put together a tip guide. Next I will be working on putting together a graffiti language dictionary. Basically, a dictionary of slang terms used in graffiti culture. I feel like I'm creating the graffiti bible.

Let there be art!

Tom Scott was an interesting artist. His style of photography reminded me of Vincent Van Ghogh's style of painting. His photographs look dreamy and depict a mellow mood. The photos of the beach actually reminded me of Stary Night in a way because of the use of line in his technique. I guess the reason he reminds me of Van Gogh is because I actually traveled to Amsterdam where the Van Gogh museum is. Van Gogh's style of depressed emotion can be seen in scott's work.
I also liked the fact that he was photographing different subjects. He transformed a beach scene into a emotion filled piece of art. His photography almost looks like a charcoal drawins in a way. The monocromatic effect works well and maybe there is some light tyo be shed in combining the two mediums.
The other artist Arturo Herera was also interesting because of the technique he used to create his photographs. He said he uses the "Lens as a blade" that cuts at a camera frame. So basically he takes photographs of his drawings and puts them in water during the film process and lets the water emulse the film to get a desired effect. After that he takes all kinds of different abstracted photos and places them together to make a masterpiece. In doing so he feels that "Life is about connecting things." These images are not ment to go together, but somehow coexist together. The idea of forcing abstracted images together to make a large scale masterpiece.
Reza Abedini and Saed Meshki had similar styles. The use of text is very important in their work. They both use pharsi in their work which converts the images into a calligrafy state of mind. To tell you the truth it kinda reminds me of tattoo art because of the calligraphy style of art. Also I think it relates to graffiti in the fact that the strokes in Pharsi are similar to graffiti. The way a fat Magnum44 marker acts the same as a calligraphy pen. In graffiti there is actually a special spray nozzle(tip) that sprays in caligraphy. I like the way they also used images in their work to blend or flow with the Pharsi text. These artists showed me that negative space can be a great thing when developing a book. I never knew so much unused space can look so filled.
Oliver Herring was an experimental photographer. He had a man spit on his face with paint. Then he took a photograph of the emotion in the subject. He said he wanted the viewer to feel like the photograph was a stranger. Although he used photography he also plays with paint. I think its very important for artists to develope innovative styles of art by fusing different mediums together. If artists arn't trying new things then the art world will never advance.

My book will be a detailed description of graffiti in my explanation and breakdown. It will include insights on origin, styles, materials, artists, and culture. The goal of this book will be to educate others interested in changing the negative mentality of aerosol art. I plan to change the perception of aerosol art by educating readers about the culture. In the book it will look at "aeroart" as modern art.

Stefan Sagmeister was an interesting designer. He talked about how people perceive text. I particularly was interested in the portion of the video where he displayed a man with tattoos all over his body. Tattoo art is seldom recognized and was made popular by soldiers who went to war or prisoners. I think that is vital that we look at the type of fonts that are used for tattooing. In the picture of the tattooed man we can see words that are written that are to show emotion. I think his work was particularly interesting because of his use of the body. Hi use of text and body components give a feeling of our external bodies morphing with the text.

As I was examining different types of fonts I started to think about how letters in general have been manipulated since they were created. I was interested in how artists change lettering to suit their style. The appearence of a font lies in the viewers perception of the lettering. With Graffiti lettering sometimes lettering is manipulated or morphed so much that viewers become uninterested because it is unlegible. On the other hand some people enjoy the puzzling together or figuring out these complex letters which graffiti artists call "Wild Style" lettering.

Davis Carson was quiet a complicated artist. He was not traditionally taught the history of art. He simply jumped into typography without researching first. He wanted to come up with a new style of page layout in where text becomes experimental and abstracted. I find this very interesting because text is not researched enough in artwork. Artist have been trying to change the way viewers interpret text for many years and until now they have only scratched the surface. If we compare the changing of text to graffiti then we can see throughout history graffiti letters have been changing and morphing into abstracted forms of the original text. I feel Carson is doing the same thing the way he innovated text by changing the different fonts and placing them in irregular positions. Also in a way he reminded me of Burroughs in the fact that he was interested in the way that text was placed "cut up" and then used over again repeatedly.