Seattle Street Art Volume Three: A Visual Time Capsule Beyond Graffiti (Volume 3)

Description

Volume Three contains photos that I took on the streets of Seattle, Washington, USA in 2012. For this volume, the last page includes a list of locations where you can see a concentration of Street Art in Seattle. Aside from its rain and coffee, Seattle is known for many things subversive, from Grunge music to the activist driven WTO riots. This region of America raised the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Bruce Lee. Today, there is a culture here that is only represented anonymously in the reclaimed public spaces of the city. Images dot the urban landscape in the typical street mediums that are used across the globe: spray paint, stickers, paste-ups, stencils, wheatpasting, posters, video projection, art intervention, guerrilla art, flash mobbing, installations, post-graffiti, mosaic tiling, murals, wood-blocking, LED art, reverse-graffiti a.k.a. green-graffiti, cuprocking and yarn bombing. You will see that these are not commercial enterprises or vandalism graffiti, but individual creative statements... something we can all relate to. Street art as a medium has been popularized internationally by the likes of Shepard Fairey, Banksy, D*Face, Paul Insect, Swoon, Twist, Neck face, Faile, Space Invader and WK Interact. It can take on many purposes and sometimes involves activism, phenomenology, repetition, attention capture, culture jamming, direct action, guerrilla messaging, propaganda, subvertising, decoration and territory claiming. The following is a small window into this temporary world that’s constantly being revised in a flux of new symbols. It’s a snapshot of work on the Seattle streets, a visual capsule in time, not a comprehensive representation of Seattle street art and the people involved over the years. Some of the work only existed for a day before it was written over by other artists or removed by the city... a reminder that nothing is permanent and, control is an illusion in the chaos of a city. Enjoy.