El Segundo Museum of Art hosts "Scratch"
So, how do some of LA's most recognized graffiti artists get down with ESMoA, the nonprofit, experimental art hub and the Getty? It's not just some hip, flash in the pan. There were two main players: the ideas man, Ed Sweeney, and the institutional supporter, David Branfman.
According to this great article from the Westsider Blog, sometime back in 2011-12 Sweeney, a prolific graffiti art collector, hatched a plan to donate a black book of LA graffiti writers' work to Getty's permanent collection. That resulted Ed and Brandy Sweeney donating the "LA Liber Amicorum" to the Getty Research Institute.
The Latin name means "book of friends" and was inspired by the a rare, 400-year-old manuscript in the Getty Research Institute's collections. The modern day version contains 143 works on paper from more than 150 of Los Angeles's leading graffiti and tattoo artists. (Scroll to the bottom to see a video of the works.)
"Sign of the Times" crew led by CRE8 (sixth from left) |
Brafman saw a connection between the black books every self-respecting graffiti artist possesses to sketch ideas and get contributions from other artists and the ancient black books. Back in those days the leather-bound book would have been filled with sketches of coats of arms, watercolors, poetry, and calligraphy.
SCRATCH is at ESMoA until Sept. 21, 2014 and features 16th- and 17th-century rare books from the Getty Research Institute's special collections. The gallery is painted top to bottom by the six graffiti crews led by Axis, CRE8, Defer, Eyeone, Fishe and Miner.
SCRATCH graffiti walls |
Axis crew |
Tempt tribute, Eyeone crew (left;) |
"Sign of the Times," CRE8 crew |
Resources
- Read more about the book from Man One, one of the contributing artists.
- Here is a video of every page in the "LA Liber Amicorum"
- Here is a video interview with Eyeone onsite at ESMoA
Labels: Axis, CRE8, David Brafman, Defer, El Segundo, ESMoA, Eyeone, Fishe, Getty Research Institute, Graffiti, Hip Hop, Los Angeles, Man One, Miner, Scratch