BRAHMA AND SHIVA

Creation or Destruction?  

Shiva the Destroyer

The number 23...sprayed too close to the wall, the paint drips down...ugly...into a heart.  A sword pierces the heart, and the red, and the blood and the drips and the beauty.

Then there is a snake, a shadow in the darkness, the silhouette of a man.  I follow the snake, away from the man.  

The snake is changing from grey to acid green and purple grape.  Colors shoot out of his tail, yellow, orange, making arrows and geometric shapes.  

The snake is turning the darkness into color; like a sunrise; like a painting. Like the sun coming through my window into my eyes and opening my heart.

Brahma the Creator

When the dream ends there, with the snake and the sunrise, I know all of the beauty of the world. Time slows and I see into the eyes of those I pass. I feel connected and I feel at peace.

But when the dream ends with the dripping red numbers I know it is an omen and I am afraid.

Some days it rips me apart: art or vandalism? creation or destruction? beauty or chaos?

Art born of Vandalism. Creation out of Destruction. Beauty out of Chaos.

EMBRACING THE BUFF

"The Buff": the act of removing graffiti by painting over, symbolizing the contradictory nature of graffiti as both art and vandalism.

"The Buff"

 

The City of Los Angeles spends $7 million a year to buy paint and staff and materials to support "the buff".  

"The buff" removes over 30 million square feet of Los Angeles graffiti a year.

How much did Graffiti Artists in LA spend on the work before "the buff"?  Somewhere between $2million and $8million (cans range from $1.00 to $10.00 and pieces can use from 5 to 30 cans per piece).

Are municipal efforts to erase graffiti

Artist: Mark Rothko

giving birth to a new movement in modern art stemming from the repressed artistic desires of city workers?  Director Mark McCormick produced an award winning experimental documentary called The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal.

The theme of the video, according to blogger and illustrator Ward Jenkins, “makes the observation that the process of destroying one art form unwittingly creates another”.  The video compares the result of "the Buff" to the work of famous contemporary artist "Mark Rothko" (right).

Sidenote:

Blogger and Illustrator Ward Jenkins is also rumored to be a Graffiti artist himself.

Artist: Canon

His work (painted on walls around Atlanta) under the pseudonym "Canon" (left) is reminiscent of Picasso in his blue period.  

As a fan of Guernica and Portaits of Sylvette, Ward/Canon's art holds appeal.  

Sadly, most have been painted over (the downside of "the buff") but are recorded in his photo journal.