Post by bunny on Mar 13, 2007 12:52:23 GMT
FREIGHT TRAIN GRAFFITI An Interview with Roger Gastman, Editor of SWINDLE
Roger Gastman is the editor of FREIGHT TRAIN GRAFFITI published by Thames and Hudson, I asked him a few questions about the book for Blowback magazine...
Can you let me know how you got exposed to Freight Train Graffiti ?
I was 14 or 15 years old running around DC writing graffiti. A lot of my
friends were older than me. One night we ended up in a freight yard. It
wasn't the planned mission but we had left to early to get the spot we
wanted to. So the freights were the warm up. What I painted that night was
not pretty. A few years later as I began to travel more and got more
involved in the graffiti culture I started to notice the impact that the
freights had. Slowly my attention started to go towards them.
Do you think the BIG BUFF that happened to the subways in New York
unconsciously created Freight Train Graffiti ? Did people make the
switch to it because of the relative freedom ? If graffiti acts like a
virus then it seems like they tried to eradicate the disease at the
source in New York, but they were unable to isolate it and it spread
nationwide...
Freights were bound to happen with or without the buff. The buff helped
greatly, but writers were going to start to pop up all around the country no
matter what. While they could travel to NY to paint a train that would have
to find something else to fill the void.
Early freight writers in NY were also still hitting the last of the trains,
and continuing to hit clean trains on the NYC subway system, and some still
do to this day. Freights were just another medium to help spread the
message.
In the book you discuss the first practitioners of graffiti , people
like Cornbread and StayHigh149 ...Why NY ? Why Philly ? When I first
arrived in NY in the 80's I felt like an ant...Was it that kind of
feeling people had that make them want to make a stand, to make a mark
ON society, not IN society?
The freight trains writers are a community spread across a nation ,
there has to be 1,000000's of freight cars crisscrossing the states
right now. It must be daunting to think what percentage of them are have
pieces and throw ups on them... do you have any rough guesses how many?
I can not give you a solid f trains with graffiti on them. But it is safe
to say that as graffiti spreads more and more writers go to the train yards
and lay ups. It is rare to see a train go by that does not have graffiti on
a large amount of its cars. Its not nessisarly good graffiti, but its
graffiti.
If we could travel back in time and meet the hobo artists who started
writing on freight trains and show them what the new school artists are
doing on trains what do you think their reaction would be ?
How do you think people like Bozo Texino ( J.H.McKinley) would react to
seeing a whole car by ZEPHYR ? Would he freak ?
Its funny how train spotters have this really dorky image and bad dress
sense in the UK, and now there is a whole culture of people who are
graffiti train spotters who obsessively document art on trains. Do you
consider yourself a train spotter?
In years past I have watched/benched the trains. These days I am sorry to
say that I stuck behind a computer making books like these for the masses
and not out watching the trains.
'The freedom of painting a moving wall is incredible...." since 9/11
there has been a real clampdown on peoples freedom, has access to the
yards got a lot tighter?
Access to everything has gotten tighter. But graffiti artists are creative.
There are always new places to paint, and new ways into yards. It also helps
separate the dedicated writers from the wanna bes.
I noticed that most of the freight train graffiti is about names and
letters rather than characters, why do you think this is , is it
because people just want to get their names out there first and
foremost?
The name is important. This is a question I don't think I am as qualified 2
answer. Might I suggest that I put you in touch with some people in the
book, or one of my co-authors?
In the book it says "the map is nationwide" Do you know what the
culture is like in other countries , I know it has spread to Canada and
Mexico from the USA but I'm wondering about further afield in other
continents..
It has spread to Canada, and the Canadian and US train system over lap.
South of the border it is slowly growing. But Canada has made a very
positive contribution to the trains.
"on the freights it really all happens where the paint meets the metal"
Why do people do it ? Why all the effort and cost ? When society is
pushing so hard to stamp it out then what is the urge that drives
people to carry on?
Graffiti is an addiction, you can never have enough. Having your name more
and places Id the goal.
Do you think the first writers to start painting trains were aware of
the hobo art tradition that they seemed to pick up from?
The first train writers might have noticed monikers, but it was not the
monikers that were driving them to paint the trains.
If graffiti really a big "f**k YOU" to society then how do you feel
about corporations buying in to the culture to sell their nuts?
I could go on forever about this. That's whole different story. But bottom
line, if you are approached with an opportunity to do something for mass for
the correct budget, and you don't want to take it, someone else is, or an
art director is just going to rip you off.
"Its only a matter of time 'til they plug up the little holes in the
Dam where waters leaking through. They did it with the subways; it'll
happen again" ZEPHYR
Buffing seems to me to be a war on art... if the government appointed
an anti graffiti Czar and they went mental and buffed all the freight
trains where would graffiti go next?
"stay in the city but get up EVERYWHERE" Do a lot of freight train
writers travel to different yards in different cities or do they stick
to the places they know ?
Both. A majority of writers travel all around, and hook up with other
artists in other cities or seek out different yards and layouts across the
US.
Is the internet a good thing for graffiti?
The internet is a great thing and a horrible thing for graffiti. It spreads
styles, contacts, and every other little aspect of the culture worldwide.
While this helps tremendosly in the the growth of the culture, it also
helped cities loose their stylist identity.
If you have anything else you'd like to say about the project?
This book was a challenge to put together for myself and my 2 co-authors. .
We could still be working on it for years to come. I hope with its release
that more and more history of the freights will come out of the woodwork,
and that FREIGHT TRAIN GRAFFITI can serve as an example of books yet to
come.
thanks a lot for making this book happen, its a landmark book in
graffiti....
best wishes, PURE EVIL
Roger Gastman
Editor-in-Chief
SWINDLE
www.swindlequarterly.com
www.infamythemovie.com
Roger Gastman is the editor of FREIGHT TRAIN GRAFFITI published by Thames and Hudson, I asked him a few questions about the book for Blowback magazine...
Can you let me know how you got exposed to Freight Train Graffiti ?
I was 14 or 15 years old running around DC writing graffiti. A lot of my
friends were older than me. One night we ended up in a freight yard. It
wasn't the planned mission but we had left to early to get the spot we
wanted to. So the freights were the warm up. What I painted that night was
not pretty. A few years later as I began to travel more and got more
involved in the graffiti culture I started to notice the impact that the
freights had. Slowly my attention started to go towards them.
Do you think the BIG BUFF that happened to the subways in New York
unconsciously created Freight Train Graffiti ? Did people make the
switch to it because of the relative freedom ? If graffiti acts like a
virus then it seems like they tried to eradicate the disease at the
source in New York, but they were unable to isolate it and it spread
nationwide...
Freights were bound to happen with or without the buff. The buff helped
greatly, but writers were going to start to pop up all around the country no
matter what. While they could travel to NY to paint a train that would have
to find something else to fill the void.
Early freight writers in NY were also still hitting the last of the trains,
and continuing to hit clean trains on the NYC subway system, and some still
do to this day. Freights were just another medium to help spread the
message.
In the book you discuss the first practitioners of graffiti , people
like Cornbread and StayHigh149 ...Why NY ? Why Philly ? When I first
arrived in NY in the 80's I felt like an ant...Was it that kind of
feeling people had that make them want to make a stand, to make a mark
ON society, not IN society?
The freight trains writers are a community spread across a nation ,
there has to be 1,000000's of freight cars crisscrossing the states
right now. It must be daunting to think what percentage of them are have
pieces and throw ups on them... do you have any rough guesses how many?
I can not give you a solid f trains with graffiti on them. But it is safe
to say that as graffiti spreads more and more writers go to the train yards
and lay ups. It is rare to see a train go by that does not have graffiti on
a large amount of its cars. Its not nessisarly good graffiti, but its
graffiti.
If we could travel back in time and meet the hobo artists who started
writing on freight trains and show them what the new school artists are
doing on trains what do you think their reaction would be ?
How do you think people like Bozo Texino ( J.H.McKinley) would react to
seeing a whole car by ZEPHYR ? Would he freak ?
Its funny how train spotters have this really dorky image and bad dress
sense in the UK, and now there is a whole culture of people who are
graffiti train spotters who obsessively document art on trains. Do you
consider yourself a train spotter?
In years past I have watched/benched the trains. These days I am sorry to
say that I stuck behind a computer making books like these for the masses
and not out watching the trains.
'The freedom of painting a moving wall is incredible...." since 9/11
there has been a real clampdown on peoples freedom, has access to the
yards got a lot tighter?
Access to everything has gotten tighter. But graffiti artists are creative.
There are always new places to paint, and new ways into yards. It also helps
separate the dedicated writers from the wanna bes.
I noticed that most of the freight train graffiti is about names and
letters rather than characters, why do you think this is , is it
because people just want to get their names out there first and
foremost?
The name is important. This is a question I don't think I am as qualified 2
answer. Might I suggest that I put you in touch with some people in the
book, or one of my co-authors?
In the book it says "the map is nationwide" Do you know what the
culture is like in other countries , I know it has spread to Canada and
Mexico from the USA but I'm wondering about further afield in other
continents..
It has spread to Canada, and the Canadian and US train system over lap.
South of the border it is slowly growing. But Canada has made a very
positive contribution to the trains.
"on the freights it really all happens where the paint meets the metal"
Why do people do it ? Why all the effort and cost ? When society is
pushing so hard to stamp it out then what is the urge that drives
people to carry on?
Graffiti is an addiction, you can never have enough. Having your name more
and places Id the goal.
Do you think the first writers to start painting trains were aware of
the hobo art tradition that they seemed to pick up from?
The first train writers might have noticed monikers, but it was not the
monikers that were driving them to paint the trains.
If graffiti really a big "f**k YOU" to society then how do you feel
about corporations buying in to the culture to sell their nuts?
I could go on forever about this. That's whole different story. But bottom
line, if you are approached with an opportunity to do something for mass for
the correct budget, and you don't want to take it, someone else is, or an
art director is just going to rip you off.
"Its only a matter of time 'til they plug up the little holes in the
Dam where waters leaking through. They did it with the subways; it'll
happen again" ZEPHYR
Buffing seems to me to be a war on art... if the government appointed
an anti graffiti Czar and they went mental and buffed all the freight
trains where would graffiti go next?
"stay in the city but get up EVERYWHERE" Do a lot of freight train
writers travel to different yards in different cities or do they stick
to the places they know ?
Both. A majority of writers travel all around, and hook up with other
artists in other cities or seek out different yards and layouts across the
US.
Is the internet a good thing for graffiti?
The internet is a great thing and a horrible thing for graffiti. It spreads
styles, contacts, and every other little aspect of the culture worldwide.
While this helps tremendosly in the the growth of the culture, it also
helped cities loose their stylist identity.
If you have anything else you'd like to say about the project?
This book was a challenge to put together for myself and my 2 co-authors. .
We could still be working on it for years to come. I hope with its release
that more and more history of the freights will come out of the woodwork,
and that FREIGHT TRAIN GRAFFITI can serve as an example of books yet to
come.
thanks a lot for making this book happen, its a landmark book in
graffiti....
best wishes, PURE EVIL
Roger Gastman
Editor-in-Chief
SWINDLE
www.swindlequarterly.com
www.infamythemovie.com