I had noticed the spray painted signs on buildings throughout the area, and recognized "ALZA" here, and there, but after reading the article, and looking around the neighborhood, I realized EVERY-SINGLE-SPRAY-PAINTED-SIGN was his!

So now I walk the streets annoyed with every sighting of his aerosol-canned commercialism: spray painting signs on the sides of buildings up and down Figueroa, York, Monte Vista, Cypress, Broadway, Griffin, Daly. On places like car repair shops, dental offices, pet stores, liquor stores, floral shops, Duarte Market, and even our beloved Chico's

Annoyed as I may be, he always tries to place a positive message in his work like, "Uphold Family," "Family Unity," "Learn 2 Love," "Realize Art." And you have to be impressed by this man's sheer tenacity, convincing so many merchants to pay him money to write their business names on walls, and allowing him to include his own name and message. A naturally-born salesman. A naturally-born artist, not so much.

So my annoyance had been that, just annoyance. Until today. This afternoon, I stopped by La Estrella and shot a flick of the tagger-battered mural Mexico-Tenochtitlan "The Wall That Talks," on the side of Susie's Deals at Figueroa & Avenue 61. What I found instead of little tagger toys cluttering the empty space between the images, was a big phat sloppy "CARE" over the collarbone of this daughter of Tenochtitlan. Just below that to the left was a modestly placed "ALZA" in fat red and green letters. WTF?

ALZA reminds us here to "Act like U care", and "ALZA is 4 All," he even includes his moniker, "Playboy Eddie" in the "e" of "care." Wow. Thanks ALZA. Now what was just a little touch up, is now a full-fledged repair job. Brilliant.

As an aside, here is a story on efforts to restore another great Highland Park mural by Judy Baca. That being said, please visit Baca's SPARC site and save LA's Murals.

Feel free to share, take, steal these images.

Northcote has a lot of good basic stencil art around Separation St. including the ironic/hypocritical: “Say NO To GRAFFITI!” stencil. A number of the stencils gave the impression of being two colour stencils when in reality it was the one stencil with two different colours lightly applied. The Epping line with all the cuttings and suburban houses in Northcote does not have many suitable locations for graffiti but there are a few good pieces where the conditions are suitable.

On the Williamstown line there is more blockbuster style pieces, possibly due to the trackside architecture. There are also more horror images; monsters, zombies with gunshot wounds (but that could just be a trend in graffiti across all Melbourne). Near Spotswood there was a figure made of milk crates climbing a wire mesh fence, this is a remarkable example of street art sculpture.

Along my own, Upfield line it is a case of build a wall and they will graffiti it. There is always new work appearing including two new pieces by Shime featuring his distinctive cartoon green lizard.

On the eastern suburban lines there is plenty of good work around Richmond to South Yarra and in the East Richmond station carpark. But I don’t often travel further east than that. Melbourne’s railway lines radiate out from the CBD without any interconnection. This can make it hard to get between relatively close suburbs unless they happen to be on the same railway line. I haven’t travelled on all Melbourne’s railway lines recently, this is not a comprehensive survey; doubtless there is some quality graffiti along every line. The quantity and quality of the graffiti along the railway lines varies due to the architecture and zoning along the line.

Advertising has appeared at some stations about the about the big fines for carrying spray paint cans. At Hawksburn station this propaganda has been already tagged.

I bought a copy of Illegal Fame magazine, the 1^st Anniversary Edition. Illegal Fame features aerosol street art from all of Australia’s capitol cities. There is not much editorial, just a couple of pages of news and reviews, most of it provided by the major advertiser Ironlak an Australian aerosol paint manufacturer. There is not much advertising either. Mostly it is just pages and pages photographs of the great aerosol street art organised by city. The most interesting article was about the Ghostwriter project where pairs of artists paint a piece based on a sketch by the other artists. There is Rakas vs Phibs, Okies vs Meks, Vans vs Sirums, and Aeons vs Misterys. Illegal Fame is not the kind of magazine that you will read and throw away, it belongs on the bookcase bound in leather.

Foto © 2007 Paolo Serra

Opera di Christian Blef (2006), in piazza Faralli

Nel 1995 era nata "Coloriamo", l'iniziativa che ha visto negli anni alcune scuole genovesi impegnate a decorare sottopassaggi e muri della città come quello di piazza Corvetto, ad esempio, dedicato ai poeti. Oggi, invece, dalle 9 alle 18 si tiene in via di Francia (a ponente, sul limite di Sampierdarena) un meeting di artisti e studenti che utilizzano la tecnica dell'aerosol art, una delle prime espressioni artistiche accostate al Graffiti-Writing. La voce di Wikipedia può aiutarci a capire nella giungla di definizioni:

Si tratta dell'utilizzo della bomboletta spray con applicazioni pittoriche aerografiche simili alle produzioni aerografiche convenzionali. L'Aerosol-Art dapprima ha arricchito di significato le scritte Graffiti connotandole e rendendole appetibili al grande pubblico, e successivamente, ha trovato una propria indipendenza e dignità artistica. Molti Aerosol-Artists sono anche Graffiti-Writers ma sempre più emergono figure che fanno dell'Aerosol-Art sia un punto di partenza che di arrivo.

La "murata" di via di Francia, intitolata Rules, avrà un tema comune per tutti i writers (re, regina e regno) ed è organizzata da Christian Blef e dai negozi Ghetto Blaster (piazza della Meridiana e via Milano) in collaborazione con il Comune di Genova.

E non pensiamo al vandalismo (anche perché in molti non hanno l'età per certe cose; Blef, ad esempio, ha passato i trenta). Se è vero che molti writers usano come supporto mezzi pubblici o edifici storici e d'arte, i più vicini alla ricerca artistica non approverebbero questa condotta, scegliendo invece il proprio supporto con attenzione e seguendo una sorta di "codice di comportamento".

E cercano, andrebbe aggiunto, un qualche dialogo con l'amministrazione della città in cui operano, essendo la street art necessariamente un'arte di strada: se l'arte parla alla strada, la città deve parlare con gli artisti. [Guarda le immagini]

Parteciperanno alla convention:
christian blef (genova) canesio (treviso) neo (bassano del grappa) mer (genova) shen 2 (genova) cowboy (la spezia) mr. pollo (savona) sbam (savona) droga (genova) sir (vercelli) wany (brindisi) seil (monza) steyn (monza) spra (monza) imen (monza) zoe (la spezia) yomo (casale monferrato) dower (genova) blah (genova) mind (milano) luce (milano) 0 zeta (genova) nem (genova) love 2 (genova) amuse (vicenza) denser (san teodoro) ober (san teodoro) kube (jesi) korone (jesi) arko (genova) knz clan (torino)