clipped from www.yarracity.vic.gov.au

‘..to me, Collingwood will always be the potholes in Gipps St, boot factories and grimy terraces, dancing at the Town Hall, the cable trams, John Wren, Jock McHale and the great players’ reminisced former Collingwood footballer, Lou Richards quoted in In those days. And it is because of those memories of John Wren held by many in Collingwood that 148 Johnston Street, Collingwood gains its significance.

The first building recorded on this site was owned by James Henry Foster in 1874. According to the 1875 rate-books a shop had been added to the cottage, and by 1879 another house was built on a vacant block alongside. This pair of brick shops remained in the ownership of Foster, who died in 1888 when they passed to the ownership of Eliza Foster. During that period the resident for over a decade was a George Hampton. From 1893 to 1906, the Sands & McDougall Directories indicate that the shop, a tobacconist and tea merchant, was variously in the name of John Wren and William Cullen. The shop was a front for gambling which took place in the yard behind. The shops were renumbered about 1908 and it rebuilt about 1914 and have had a variety of uses, being at various stages watchmaker, butcher, Chinese laundry and printer. In 2006 the shops and factory in the yard are used for an iron foundry and sculpture workshop.

That is the bare bones of the history of the building, but the main interest lies in the period 1893 to 1907 when John Wren ran his totalisator there for fourteen years. The story of John Wren is unfortunately clouded by hagiography and innuendo and it is hard to separate fact from fiction. This is particularly so because of the publication of Frank Hardy’s fictional account of Wren, Power without glory, in 1950 and the notorious court case which was brought against Hardy by Wren’s children.

clipped from melbourneartcritic.wordpress.com

My career advisor in high school was useless, but this entry isn’t about that. It is about careers from street art and professional street artists, the economic bottom line and the art world.

In Street Art Uncut by Matthew Lunn (p.15) there is a map of the career of street artists with images by Ghostpatrol. The professional career ends listed are: professional piecer, cartoonist, street art professional, graphic designer and conventional artist. Being a professional piecer of other street art professional may be the dream for some, for others it is exhibiting in galleries and others just want to make a living. The map doesn’t show that most professional artists will end up with two, three or more ways of earning. Or, that most will have work a dull, ordinary job to make ends meet.

These careers in street art make it possible for others to have careers: photographers, gallery directors, dealers, tour group leaders, critics (like myself) and other writers. And probably a few more that I haven’t though of. The point that I am trying to make with these examples is that the street art world has a larger population than just artists. Although earning a living is a feature of all of these directions, they are also creating an environment, an art world. An artistic environment that is, hopefully, a sustainable creative socio-system.

clipped from www.yarraranges.vic.gov.au

What are the Different Types of Graffiti?

Different types of graffiti fall into different categories and have their own names. Each of which are recognised in cities all over the world. They include; Hip Hop Graffiti
Hip hop graffitists create 'pieces'. Pieces are large and colourful work created by aerosol spray paints, usually including either a complex mix of letters or a cartoon-style picture. This type of graffiti often takes an extended period of time and much thought and planning has gone into the design.

Opportunistic Graffiti
Opportunistic graffitists select the location for their graffiti impulsively, on the basis of low risk and low natural surveillance. Opportunistic graffitists use "tags" or "scrawling" to mark their territory.

Gang Taggers
Gang taggers use "tags" or "scrawling" to mark territory, create notoriety or show off their defiance of the law and society. Gangs use this form of graffiti as a mode of marking their presence. Gang taggers may plan their graffiti or do it impulsively.

Political & Social Graffiti
Some graffiti is racially or politically motivated. This is not widely regarded as part of the graffiti subculture, but still causes damage to property.

Commercial Graffiti

Commercial graffiti is an emerging civic problem. Commercial graffiti occurs where private organisations pay graffitists to spray advertising logos onto walkways and buildings, in order to promote their product. Commercial graffiti is an illegal form of advertising that circumvents normal planning laws.

clipped from www.neatorama.com

Soap Not Spray Can: Reverse Graffiti Art.

Paul Curtis aka Moose is no regular graffiti artist. In fact, he’s the reverse-graffiti artist. He created his street art by *cleaning* the dirt and grime off of surfaces!

Authorities are baffled: is selective cleaning a crime?

The tools are simple: A shoe brush, water and elbow grease, he says.

British authorities aren’t sure what to make of the artist who is creating graffiti by cleaning the grime of urban life. The Leeds City Council has been considering what to do with Moose. "I’m waiting for the kind of Monty Python court case where exhibit A is a pot of cleaning fluid and exhibit B is a pair of my old socks," he jokes.

clipped from www.brooklynmuseum.org

An exhibition of twenty large-scale graffiti paintings from such influential artists as Michael Tracy ("Tracy 168"), Melvin Samuels, Jr. ("NOC 167"), Sandra Fabara ("Lady Pink"), Chris Ellis ("Daze"), and John Matos ("Crash"), Graffiti explores how a genre that began as a form of subversive public communication has become legitimate—moving away from the street and into private collections and galleries. Forms of graffiti have been discovered on ancient Roman and Mayan architecture and like today were both illegal and a form of communication. Modern graffiti, which is associated with hip-hop culture and spans all racial and economic groups, began in the mid- to late 1960s; it made its way to New York City and quickly became a phenomenon. Urban youth used the sides of subway trains and buildings as their canvases, reclaiming sections of their neighborhoods by "tagging" them with stylized renditions of their names or the names of the groups they formed. The self-taught graffiti artists turned the walls of public (and sometimes private) buildings into giant panoramas and subway cars into moving murals. Later, graffiti artists began to paint on canvas or large sheets of paper, attracting the attention of art dealers and collectors. One of the first dealers to collect graffiti was Sidney Janis. His heirs Carroll and Conrad Janis donated almost fifty works from his estate to the Brooklyn Museum in 1999. Graffiti is drawn primarily from this gift and supplemented by material the Museum's Libraries and Archives.