More from up by Daken
BNE--San Francisco's Most Wanted
Banksy Opening in LA
Street Art Finds a Home
Fresh Stencils in Taichung
- That's the first Oscar Wilde quote that jumped out at me. It's awesome to see him recreated in graffiti. New subjects keep popping up. I thought at first that the person doing the stencils might be in 4Crew, but I was wrong. Hello Stencil Person/People. You Rock.
Mural Behind the Station
It's quite impressive, and not just to me, either. After I'd finished. An older woman that I'd noticed walking her dog came over and asked me if I could read what had been written, she wasn't sure if it was English or Chinese. I told her that it said "BOBO" because that was the fella's name that painted the wall.
She was very impressed, she told me. There were a few guys in their 20's and they came out on three different nights. She told me over and over again how fast they did it. I asked her if she liked it, and she said "Oh yes, the colors are very pretty, and they did it so fast."
She said the cops had come out one night and told them not to "Sloppy Paint" is the Chinese. Models come to have their pictures taken in front of the wall now. When she asked the guys how much it cost to do a wall like that, and the price quoted was about 3000NT, she said that's a pretty good deal. Sounds like she'd like to have her garage done.
I know that I must have misunderstood the woman. At least once, maybe twice. She pointed at the two guys below and ... I should have recorded the conversation so I could double check. The night these were going up, she complained that with one guy across the tracks looking at her house, she felt like there was a prowler, so they added another one, and it was ok? She's pleased with the results.
Back to Taiping
Q&A With FAST
fast: 12 years, but the first few years were mostly just putting up tags, i guess i started pieceing about 8 years ago. mostly consistently but there have been a couple breaks in that time for a half year or year.
TT:What did you draw when you were younger? What do you think about the art classes you took in school?
fast: i didnt really draw anything seriously except graffiti. the art classes i took in school were mostly for the credits. i didnt find art class in school really made me interested or motivated me to do art.
TT:When you first started tagging, what gave you the push to start putting your work on the walls for everyone to see?
fast: i was just drawn to it. cant really explain it but when i started noticing tags around my neighbourhood it just felt natural to add my name to it.
TT:How did you meet the other members of 4Crew?
fast: i met sam first. it was actually on my second day in taiwan i just saw him painting under a bridge and walked down there and talked to him. a few months later we hooked up to paint and been painting together ever since. since taichung has a relatively small scene we hooked up with bobo and then omen after that.
TT:Where in Taiwan, besides in Taichung, can your work be seen?
fast: ive done a tiny bit of bombing in taipei but most of my stuff is in taichung area. sam and bobo go to taipei quite often and they kill it up there. omen too. ive painted in toronto, vancouver, montreal, new york, amsterdam, and obvilously taichung. in taichung we basically have the city pretty much to ourselves. i havent been down to kaoshiung yet but bobo has. he has some friends from down there.
TT: where are some of the more difficult-to-reach places that you've painted?
fast: im not much of a crazy bomber...when i was younger i was addicted to the insides of subways. i still like to go out and do fillins every once in a while, but i guess the only "difficult-to-reach" locations ive done are passenger and subway trains. i like to do freight trains as well but in taiwan you dont have much oppourtunities for those. i dont do as much trains as i would like to though. ive been in subway tunnels a couple times but didnt paint anything worth talking about.
TT: What kind of paint do you use?
fast: in taiwan i use the brand called PP Spray. its cheap, has a decent selection of colors. covers pretty well. i know there are a lot of better paints out there but you cant beat 55NT a can. i think graffiti fading at different rates have more to do with the surface of the wall and how watered down the primer is. i usually buy a bucket of primer and thin it out by adding water. so the first half of the bucket is more paint and the second half becomes really watery.
TT: What are the hazards of this kind of artwork? Police? Gangs? Drunks? Injury?
fast: the most problems ive had with graffiti have been police. dont get caught for graffiti in canada its a lot of hassle. taiwan is much better in that regard. ive done some stuff when i was younger that i wouldnt do now because of risk to personal injury. but as for gangs and drunks ive had pretty good luck so far.
Taichung 4Crew In Person
Banksy at Disney
He was also quite naughty at some record stores across England. Here's a link to the Flickr stream showing what he did to Paris Hilton.
Omen in the East
Taichung East Side
Reverse Graffiti
Listen to the NPR story here. There's more at Moose's website here.
And there's actual moose graffiti at this site from Sweden. Believe it.
Plenty of dirt in Taiwan.
Daken Graffiti Wall
Apart from a lot of the paint being horribly weather-worn, it looks like some good stuff is going on out there. From the road, it looks as if Omen has been at work up here. Not so. I think it's called "homage."
The names I saw up here were DABU, FREE, and LGSD. I've seen DABU in Taipei, and I now recognize Free and LGSD's tags from around town here and there. I see that the Taichung graffiti scene is not limited to just 4Crew.
I'm not sure what the significance of the A is. Every Surface Counts. I dig that. Right on, TST, I'll keep an eye peeled for ya.
Oh, here's another leftover from Ximending.