I went for a walk round the golf course last night in the dark…it was so dark… but on this occassion my dog (Cosmo) seemed keen to take a left out and along to the underpass under the dual carraidgeway. I let this happen as I could not see anything and the change might do me good……..WOW.
WOW…….I knew this underpass had graffitti all over it as I been through there on a number of occasions……….but I never been along it at night time before. It was lit up like a sports stadium waiting for the Olympic opening ceremony to start. in the complete darkness in the middle of nowhere……
I was actually blown away and spent 20 minutes looking really closely, trying to read, decipher it and find some way of interpreting it. The whole subway seemed more finished, both sides completely covered no background tiles visable anywhere. New work must have gone up covering years of tags and old stuff. I noticed several pieces dated 2012. I also noticed Eliza might have been doing grafitti in here for as long as ten years, going by tags a dates. I could almost say Eliza was the subject for many of the large lettering pieces. I thought it would be great to meet them, as what I was looking at here was a history of a group of people. History, but only allowed to use letter (ish) forms. Totaly abstract really, but I thought loaded with meaning if you were in the know. I wondered what Eliza and her mates were like at school? Was writing actually something they hated, was art a joke lesson, and if you asked them to keep a personal diary or scrapbook would they laugh and say ‘bcolokls mate’. I wanted to get the yard broom out of my workshop and sweep up all the litter, dust and bundles of leaflets/ papers to make it look good. As it is an intervention or an installation.
Why so austere around the letter idea, religious devotion to it.
I have been doing a lot of letters latley, very text based work, and suddenly I’ve seen letters and connected with it. I liked the similarity between grafitti and cave paintings many years ago, but I never really connected with grafitti even though I walked past it loads of times……and more surprizingly I even did a summer project (grafitti type) with kids living in a deprived area in the summer with spray cans. I was interested, but the funny thing was; even though I enabled them to do grafitti I was frozen out.
So as usuall then I want to explore something really interesting, but have more than I cope with in other areas on different themes. Perhaps thats what being an artist is and by being patient I can explore it and get paid to do it later. One year later, 5 years later who knows. But my next task is an illustration for an interpretation panel. A drawing of the ‘Radfall’ a droveway through Thordenwoods. I’m not even an illustrator! But it is one of the final things to complete for The Wildart Trail which I am responcible for.
see project blog below
http://wildartintheblean.blogspot.co.uk/
