In late high school and early college I did a few stencil runs with friends. Our collection of hand-cut stencils included a swine flu pig, tentacled robots, Pope J.P. with a sniper rifle, an intricate zebra, and maybe an anatomical heart or two. I also used to make mail-art spray paint collages that are now up in a lot of my friend's rooms. Recently, I've been thinking of getting out my collection of spray paint again and learning free-hand technique. 

    "Urban art" has been manically in for a while now. I own several street art books, including Banksy's Wall Piece, and I saw the controversial Art in the Streets exhibit at the MOCA. I do enjoy a good witty comment or visual popping off a wall, but I've never thought it was something I seriously wanted to be a part. It wasn't until recently that I started to care about the overt yet cryptic nature of tagging. I want to say (sorry if this sounds demeaning, I really don't mean it that way) that its like dogs competing to mark a tree or fire hydrant in the most fashionable way possible. I like this, because when you look at it that way, it seems like a profound expression of the existential question.

   I've been mulling this over and looking into a bunch of taggers who have made some cross over into fine and other arts worlds. I've tried my hand at a few designs. Unfortunately, they look more like Braque and Picasso converging on failed matrices of semantic intent than actual tags. I'll post some stuff if/when I make something I'm happy with. In the meantime, here are some things I like:

 

MIKE GIANT  : I heard about this tattoist and tagger from my cousin, a video artist. He recently traded a video for the original mural it documents the creation of. He also made this video in which you can watch the artist at work.

 

 

OPTIMIST :  Read about this tagger on the Daily Cal website of all places. Apparently their arts writer is very into urban stuff. Plus points for the paper. Cool symmetry and some pac man inspired tags.

 

APEX : One of the guardian writers covered his show at the 941 Gallery. I love how this one works with the green stuff growing in the crack between the wall and the ground.

REKN : From Endless Canvas a great source of graffiti news in the bay area.

OURS : Also endless canvas. I love the name.

NEWII : This Australian graffiti artist has a show opening next week at White Walls Gallery. The work present will all be paper cutouts of probably pretty interesting compositions.