Posted on: Tuesday, January 15, 2002

BYTE MARKS
Street art lives, mostly on the Web

By Burt Lum

A buddy of mine recently shot me a link that brought me back almost 20 years. The site is called Buffmonster (buffmonster.com), and it specializes in street art.

Back around the mid-1980s, there was an upsurge of street art and graffiti in Hawai'i. This was part of a trend that started a decade earlier in many urban areas, particularly the subways of New York City, and Buffmonster reminded me of this.

The trend has subsided considerably. Many of the original writers or taggers have added 20 years to their lives and are probably now preoccupied with other pursuits, such as making a living. We've all seen the "tags" while driving on the freeway. These are stylized names written on freeway signs and neighborhood walls. These expressions are like markers, either individual or gang related; they tell people that the taggers were there. Juvenile in nature, these had much less artistic quality than the elaborate graffiti wall writings that really captured my interest.

For the ultimate archive of street art, go to graffiti.org. These works of art, IMHO, are at the apex of the visual street art pyramid. The outlaw element always exists, as these works are accomplished by trespassing on public or private property. Yet at the same time the detail and visual impact rank these high on the list of pop culture art. The combination is undeniably captivating. Hawai'i has its own representation at lava.net/~asylum.

Street art can take many forms. Posters and stencils may not be as daring as the multi-colored graffiti wall art, but they still satisfy the pop artist's desire for rebellious self-expression. A fine example of stencil and sticker street art is at the Acamonchi site (acamonchi.com), where in Tijuana, Mexico, the trashy border dynamics add to the appeal.

Whether elaborate wall art or strategically placed stickers, street art is not dead. Pushed into the underground, street art is alive and thrives on many of our well-worn urban streets. ;-)

Reach Burt Lum at burt@brouhaha.net.