Want Unlimited Practice With Tagging? Then Check This Out

Paint is expensive, misdemeanors even more so.  I recently found a site which solves those problems by letting you tag an online wall over and over again.  Although it's not a perfect recreation (how could it be), it is the closest that I've seen and it represents some cool ideas. So hit up the link below and check it out.

Graffiti Playdo

Evan Harper is the writer and editor of 12 Oz Writer and a freshman at Austin College.  His current interests involve riding around in his friend's trunks and going out to the pawn shops around Sherman.

Vandals Threaten Gov Jerry Brown

This past weekend police in Santa Ana discovered "graffiti" on walls throughout the city threatening to kill Gov. Jerry Brown on Valentine's Day.  According to the article, the California Highway Patrol (better known as CHiP) have been assigned to the investigation. The reason that I say "graffiti" is because I don't consider these things to be graffiti in anything beyond the most technical definition.

To me, real graffiti is something which has some meaning to the person who made it and is something which they can take pride in.  Graffiti is, in every sense of the word, art.  What these people (or person as it may be) have done is nothing more than vandalism.  It's crude and there is no style or meaning behind it except for the obvious shock value of the pieces. Honestly, I have more respect for the gang pieces which at least employ a kind of style (simple as it may be) in their messages although that is tempered by the fact that those messages have been kill orders amongst other things.

Regardless of that though, these tags (and it grates to even call them that) seem like the work of middle school kids who just want to piss people off.  This is strengthened by the fact that there are several chronic misspellings.  I can understand the reaction of California Law Enforcement (especially in light of the recent Tuscon massacre) but I also would not be inclined to worry about this.  But smarter people than I have been wrong before and come February 14th we'll see just how serious these people are.

Evan Harper is the writer and editor of 12 Oz Writer and a freshman at Austin College.  His current interests involve riding around in his friend's trunks and going out to the pawn shops around Sherman.

Why Graffiti Matters

For as I long as I can remember I have sucked at drawing things and have had it beaten into me that my art work looked like shit.  After all of the classes and the lessons in drawing and painting I never got any better at it. So I gave up.  But then I found graffiti.  Here was something that I could understand because at the end of the day you're just writing letters on a damn wall.  It's simple, unpretentious, and open.

That's why it matters to me.  Because unlike all of the other arts that I have tried over the years, there isn't any bullshit in graffiti.  It's an art form which requires honesty and skill from artists who will likely get nothing in return.  In many ways, graffiti is one of the main voices of the underground culture as its an outlet for the pain and anger that pervade our culture.  And that's what this is all about really.  It's about getting people to listen to what graffiti and hip hop are trying to tell us.
  
Because the fact is that graffiti is here to stay.  I don't care that some "concerned citizens" or even the police may say otherwise because the truth is that it's too big to stop at this point.  And I wouldn't want it to be any other way.


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Evan Harper is the writer and editor of 12 Oz Writer and a freshman at Austin College.  His current interests involve riding around in his friend's trunks and going out to the pawn shops around Sherman.