danielmartelock: Street art, I love you.

danielmartelock: Street art, I love you.: "I love street art, LOVE it. What I don't like are the random scribbles on every flat surface in the city that people call 'tags'. Any per..."

Street art, I love you.

I love street art, LOVE it. What I don't like are the random scribbles on every flat surface in the city that people call "tags". Any person can scribble a "tag" on anything, hell, I've seen children do it on their parents coffee tables, but for one to physically take the time and effort to write their name on something in a "graffiti" style for whatever reason is beyond me. Majority of the time people cant even decipher what the person has written, so to me this process of trying to be famous, or "getting their tag noticed" is a large waste of time. Why would you ruin a good thing? By this I am talking about how graffiti artists are getting a bad rap due to this nonsense "tagging" that non-artists are throwing up all over the place. If you have the creative inclination to do something, then perhaps you should take a few minutes more and create something that people will enjoy seeing, or maybe something that actually has some form of meaning or visual interest?

I am one that has never had the need to spray or marker my "tag" on anything as I have never understood why one would deface something with something worse. I have seen some really creative stuff around town, since the recent popularity of Banksky and his wonderful use of stencils I have noticed that some artists out there have taken a page out of his book and make something worth looking at. I really like a lot of the "sticker bombs" that I have seen around town, and again this is proof that people are getting creative and applying that to ways of "getting their art out there" for people to see. I am not saying its right to do so, I am stating my opinion as to what I find more visually appealing in comparison to "tagging". Besides, stickers are a hell of a lot easier to remove for the city, and I have seen people actually try to remove sticker bombs for their own personal use.

So if your one of those folks out there who enjoy "tagging" your name or alias all over the newspaper boxes, sides of peoples homes, signs, etc. Please step back before doing so and think about this first, "what can I do instead of a scribble that people might want to see and maybe even keep posted for a while?", curse words are never good for such things, sure you may think its funny and get a kick out of it, but unfortunately for you the people in this town are highly educated and need more than a for sale sign with "bitches" written underneath it. Capture your audience by using a larger vocabulary, it takes nothing to write profanity and cure words, children do this for giggles, but it takes creativity and thought to produce something that will captivate your main audience, the people who walk by and see it daily.

Please take what I said as an educational tool for the future of all graffiti artists, because if this nonsense "tagging" continues, the laws will change and future artists may not get the opportunity to have the freedom of expression that some are continuously taking advantage of.

Live Life, Love Life, just don't piss people off in the wake of your doing so.

Thank you.

Exciting stuff for sure

Well here I am trying this blog thing out again, I know some of you out there have an instant update thing for my site, so I am going to try and keep up with you all and give you something worth reading, or looking at anyways (o:

This particular blog posting is in regards to something I have recently had one of my art pieces accepted into. I had submitted the piece added here to a local non-profit organization event called Timeraiser and what they do is they raise volunteer time to local organizations that really need the help. So as opposed to a typical fundraiser which I often donate work to, this particular group auctions off artwork which their select jury has chosen and instead of auctioning for money, they auction the artwork for volunteer hours, at the end of the said winners volunteer time has been fully spent at the organization which they have donated to, that person gets to keep the artwork they literally "worked" for. I am very impressed with this idea and love this concept a lot. This year is my first time working with Timeraiser and I am very pleased to be doing so. At first when I found out where the event will be taking place I could not think of anything else but to post it on facebook right away, and in doing so I had not given the proper acknowledgement to Timeraiser as I should have. The event is being held at The National Art Gallery Here in Ottawa, which is a big thing to have work in by any Canadian artist, even if it is for one event which will probably last only one evening, and this is how I had advertised my acceptance on facebook, by stating that my work will be in the National Art Gallery of Canada. This is a true statement as I will have artwork there, but the point of my writing this is to give full respect, support and promotion to TIMERAISER and their select jury for choosing my artwork and honoring me with such a great opportunity to help local non profit organizations and to be a part of this really great event.

Mind you, as an artist, I will still flaunt with the idea that my artwork Will in fact be in The National Gallery Of Canada, even if just for a day and I only have TIMERAISER to thank for this, So thank you again for such a wonderful opportunity Timeraiser, I look forward to this event and I will post all of the information for all of you out there once I receive it. It will be an event you wont want to miss.

DM