Wandering around Alexandria, Virginia’s Clermont Natural Park, a bit away from the playgrounds and baseball fields, you’ll stumble on a singular underpass. As you walk through, you notice the west wall is a spectacle of brick, rust, concrete, and an ongoing conversation between graffiti and graffiti removal known as “buff.” (For some beautiful collections of buff, see Mattie Kannard and Matt McCormick and an article mentioning both here.)
Pausing for a moment, you might think the scene resembles a large-scale painting, and you might call it a “found painting.” (An internet search brings up a wonderful series by Alexandra Hedison.) Unlike a more traditional painting, though, this creation is constantly becoming a new piece. Or you could say the piece itself is actually time-based, and that a photograph of it just captures the performance at a particular moment. It is a lovely collaboration between trains rolling along overhead, graffiti artists, graffiti buffers, and nature attending to it all. The 102.7, then, we will call a catalog number or a timestamp, existing to commemorate this particular moment of Gestalt.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: CORWIN LEVI
Corwin is a visual artist working in design, illustration, bookmaking, curating, and writing. As an artist, he has attended over twenty artist residencies. He has also have lived in eighteen cities across twelve states. Along with Michelle Aldredge, he co-created Mirror Mirrored: An Artists’ Edition of 25 Grimms’ Tales. He is currently remixing vintage game boards and making a book from illustrations of Alice in Wonderland.
