new layers: cavern/westB

Shown here: cavern/westB layer 49 of 54. Piece at left by SILENCER.

Just brought cavern/westB up to date with 15 new layers (one of them courtesy of Flickr user Luba Roniss) featuring new work by SILENCER, SAGER, RYZ, KEAP, MESR, AURA and many others. The buff patrol also made a cameo appearance (20 January 2008), but it took no time at all for the wall to bounce up to new heights, with a CMM blockbuster and some stunning new burners. Enjoy!

We got bombed again…

Sorry for the change in appearance here at Graffiti Archaeology News– our old blogging software got hacked by phishers, and we had to port everything from Movable Type to WordPress, leaving some templates and stuff behind.

Things may be a little squirrely around here for a little while. Stay tuned for updates.

new layers: bluxome

Top: bluxome/eastA layer 9, November 10, 2007, featuring TENFOLD, LANGO, SLOKE, and JIBS. Bottom: bluxome/eastB layer 20, December 9, 2007, featuring RIME, DRSEX, EWOK, LANGO, and STEEL.

Happy 2008! One of my favorite alleys just got a fresh coat of paint. I’ve added two new layers on the first two segments of the eastern wall of Bluxome, bringing that wall completely up to date. Enjoy!

new layers: harveys

harveys/north layer 8, November 10, 2007. Piece by Vulcan.

Just added two new layers to the wall at Harvey’s, featuring new work by Vulcan, both as a work in progress, and as a finished piece. This is one of the things I like about graffiti, murals and street art: their public placement often means you get to see them as they’re being created. Enjoy!

new city: Olympia, Washington!

Shown here: olympia/capitol layer 29, August 11, 2007. Photos by Jason Taellious. Stencil artist unknown.

I’m happy to announce a brand new addition to the site: the Capitol Theater Free Wall in Olympia, Washington. This wall’s evolution is radically different from the walls I usually shoot in San Francisco. The most notable difference is the rate of change: because it is truly a free wall, there’s something new to be found almost every day. Just as remarkable is the tireless effort of photographer Jason Taellious, who has been visiting this spot every day for several months to document it.

What’s up at the moment is just 29 of nearly a hundred layers I’m in the process of cobbling together from the photos of Jason and other local photographers. But this should be enough to give a good idea of the wall’s unique character. There’s quite a lot of graffiti in the New York tradition, done at various levels of skill. There are some pretty sophisticated stencils, and the occasional wheatpaste poster. High on the wall there are roller tags, and even one made with a modified fire extinguisher. And then there are random messages scrawled, it seems, by passersby who aren’t part of any street art subculture at all. All in all, it’s quite a unique mix. And how it churns. Nothing, not even a masterpiece, seems to last more than a few days, which does prompt the occasional complaint.

If you’re looking for more information about the Capitol Theater Free Wall, the wall has its own Flickr group. Also worth seeing is this chronological slideshow.

new layers: cavern/westB

Shown here: cavern/westB layer 39, October 14, 2007. Pieces by PHAZE, SAGER, AWOL, AVOID, PIERS, BREAK and KEEP.

Added five new layers to cavern/westB, bringing that wall up to date at 39 layers, and the entire site up to a total of 389 layers. This is still only a thin slice of all the photos we’ve gathered for the project. I’m in the process of building montages for several new locations in other cities. Stay tuned for lots of new stuff!

new layers: cavern

Shown here: cavern/westB layer 34, August 26, 2007. Pieces by SILENCER, NOVAK, DRSK, WARF, SESTOR, BEATS, and STEEL.

Added ten new layers to various walls at the Cavern, bringing a few parts of it all the way up to date. Check out westB, north, and outside for the latest stuff. This spot has had some interesting action in the past year: it became a bit of a battleground for a few months, with lots of people dissing each other. That phase came to an abrupt end when the walls got buffed in April. Now, after a few months of tentative tags, it has started attracting full-on pieces of the highest quality. Will the trend continue? Only time will tell…

New layers: 22nd/west

22nd:west layer 13. Pieces by DRAMA, STEEL and JAPAN; throwie by ESMA.

Despite the untimely destruction of the Tire Beach free wall, or perhaps because of it, other spots in SF have continued to get a lot of aerosol love. This latest update completes the death-rebirth cycle on one of the very first walls we’ve covered here, with four new layers progressing from tags and throwies up to some outstanding burners. Enjoy.

new layers: 19th and Mission wall

Shown here: 19th/north 10, June 10, 2007. Pieces by CUBA, KING157, JELOE, π, JASE, TWICK, YOUTH, NATE, BUTER, PEZ and VOGUE.

For a while there I thought the legal wall on 19th and Mission was gone for good. Someone, new owners maybe, had buffed the outstanding BA Crew production with the Chor Boogie characters from 2005, and the blank green wall became a target for tags and throwies. But now it’s recovered some of its former glory with a who’s who of local greats, and even a Dream dedication by King157. Check it out!

new layers and the power of scripting

Shown here: cove/eastZ 61, February 3, 2007. Piece by OPTIMIST, throwies by TWICK.

Great news on the production line: I’ve learned how to use javascript to control Photoshop, so I can finally automate some of the really repetitive parts of the grafarc process. What this means in the short term is faster, easier updates to the site! Today: 13 new layers on cove/eastZ, and 15 new layers on ghost/house.

As for the long term: I’ve also started using javascript to do some new and different things with the source material. I don’t want to say too much about it just yet, but it’s going to be very cool. More info as things develop…

Meanwhile, the increasing number of layers on certain walls (especially cove/eastZ with 61 of them) is continuing to call attention to new flaws in our Flash interface. This time, the bottleneck is the fact that before you see a single image, your browser has to download a set of outlines and solid shapes, one pair for each layer. It was never a problem initially, because the files are all very small– but it’s a problem now, because there are so many of them! We’ll need to change a few things to get around that, but I’m pretty sure of how to do it. Stay tuned.