Throw Up Has a Different Meaning

We signed up for a tour of the Bushwick Art Collective. I was very interested until I learned about the topic: street art and graffiti. Growing up, graffiti was seen as simple vandalism and destruction of property. There was a criminal aspect to graffiti, so I was already determined not to like the tour. Plus it was 95 degrees. 

It was great! Each artist has a particular style and there is some overlap, but to the experienced eye, there is a difference. Some letters are “bubble” like and others are more angular and sharp. They certainly don’t look like Times New Roman, but that is part of the uniqueness. 

In addition to the letters, there is a message in most of the art, just like there is in most of the great works of more classical painting. However, with street art and graffiti, there is a code. But once you learn it, you look at the work differently. 

And seeing an artist on a scaffold up thirty feet meticulously spray painting the details on a face gives you the obvious understanding that this is commissioned work and not petty vandalism. So, what does the picture have to do with the title? The artist has her work all over the area and they are very similar. There’s the eye in the middle and her writing, in the buble style says, “know” which putting them together is pretty obvious. But here’s the other thing. The picture was not commissioned and had to be done in secret. Our guide said it would take her less than fifteen minutes to do the “throw up.” And there’s the different meaning.