A look into the culture that dominates the city’s streets
By Cerys Davies
Within my lifetime in Los Angeles, I learned early on how to welcome that one perpetually congested section of the 101 freeway. No matter what time of day it is — the traffic is inevitable. Surrounded by honking horns and flashing blinkers, I found that the chaos of switching lanes vanished as I looked to the walls. The walls were covered with the 1984 Olympic murals — on the right, a space scene with ancient relics floating covered the wall and the left side portrayed a series of children playing. But what intrigued me most about these murals is that they are forever changing. Often covered up by different works of graffiti and street art, I looked forward to seeing how LA’s artists wanted to edit these historical installations. There were times when the entire wall, including the mural, was painted over gray, then they would be restored, and the cycle began again. As I paid more and more attention to these works, I found myself looking for this kind of art everywhere I went.
Luckily in LA, street art and graffiti isn’t confined to one area. It’s everywhere and it’s forever changing. Within the context of “Getting Up in LA,” I spoke with four LA-based artists who contribute to this culture. In addition to getting the first-hand perspective of these artists, I also spoke with art curators, directors and art history professors. In an effort to make the letters on the walls more human, here I tell LA’s story of street art and graffiti through the lens of these subjects.
To understand this culture, we must immerse ourselves in it. Here are a few points of context to help guide the digestion of “Getting Up in LA.” First off, street art and graffiti are not the same. Understood differently by each artist, the way to separate these genres is that graffiti is illegal and street art is often permitted. Street art can also be viewed as an umbrella term that encapsulates the different mediums that make up the practice like muralism, stencil making and wheat pasting. The people who do graffiti are called “graf writers” and they work to put up different “pieces” and “tags” that usually consist of a signature type of lettering. When graf writers go out and paint on various surfaces, it’s called “getting up.”
It’s also essential to remember what communities formed this kind of expression. In New York, the founding of hip-hop predominately by black teens helped bring graffiti into the mainstream. While in Los Angeles, the Chicano community is credited with the popularization of the practice on the West Coast. Street art and graffiti would have no platform if it weren’t for these minority groups that put their lives on the line to pave the way for every aspiring street artist.
“Spray paint started everything for me.”
“It’s who I am. It’s my character.”
“I’m just some fucking dude. I’m nothing special.”
“It becomes a very easy thing to fall in love with.”
Finding Street Art and Graffiti
Nothing in this practice is permanent. Illegal works on the sides of freeways get painted over gray, waiting for the next artist to come and leave their mark. Sanctioned public art always runs the risk of being destroyed with changes in ownership and the potential of other painters covering it with their own art. Within the lens of this project, four artists were interviewed — a mere four of the thousands that paint publicly in this city. This map is a current version of where these artists have paintings and open studios. Other subjects who participated in this project such as Jeffrey Deitch have galleries that are also included in this map in addition to some prominent LA street art spots.
