Dynamic Street Art

by S. M.

I chose to study the Campbell Club because of the eclectic mix of authorship. The artwork contained in the Campbell Club has been developed over its existing time as a cooperative, since 1935. Over this time, much of the art has been masked in a way that is impossible to retrieve. The building is composed of four floors, an attic, and a roof. Art covers every wall on each floor from song lyrics to intricate murals: from messages of peace to radical political protests. The images are primarily abstract as they are contained in a house confusing in structure as it is, so the art naturally reflects both the minds of the residents as well as the nature of the house itself. An onlooker would view the space as a convergence culture, as liminal space, however, it is a community in which I live, and which I am exposed to frequently every week. I feel that although it is changing throughout time, it is a space in which people are comfortable in an alternative situation. It is a way of living just the same as everyone else in our culture.

… continue reading this entry.

by Troy

The Lorax Manner is a student co-operative house located at 1648 Alder Street in Eugene, Oregon. The Lorax is one of three houses which make up the Student Cooperative Association in Eugene, along with the Campbell Club, which is just next door, and the Janet Smith, which is at the corner of 18th and Alder. With all three houses at maximum capacity, there are around 75 members of the Students’ Cooperative Association. While the Janet Smith is made up of mostly graduate students, the Lorax and the Campbell Club are inhabited by students of higher education in Eugene who seek an alternative living style more geared toward communal consciousness. Co-operative living has many benefits: economic, social, and environmental. Part of rent goes into a food budget spent at locally owned stores and farms. A strong community is developed around the houses, which the students own themselves: no higher authority to answer to other than your own housemates. Cooperative living is a much more environmentally friendly way to live, as the SCA website points out: “To prepare our dinners, we make two trips to the grocery store per week and use two ovens – something that would take 60 trips to the store and 60 ovens if we each lived alone.”

… continue reading this entry.

by Kai Davis

The degree to which a message is acknowledge by a community depends in part upon the availability of the message and the degree of customization that the medium and message lend to the artist. We can see in standard street art such as tags, throw ups, and stencils is the appropriation of stylistic elements within the larger context of customization of a message. Elements of style seen within the unique style of one tagger can easily be appropriated by the community at large and eventually become the defining aspect of a style rather than an individual. The same can be said for throw ups and tagging. Individual elements of style can be appropriated by the community at large similar to motifs or messages becoming part of a cultural heritage with integration into many different designs.

However, within the domain of bumper stickers it I have been hard pressed to find similar evidence of cultural appropriation into the form. While stencils, tagging and throw ups lend the artist a degree of freedom in the application of the tools of cultural appropriation in the execution of street art, the limited degree to which the artist or end user is able to alter the form of bumper stickers potentially hampers the execution of the message stemming from the application of the bumper sticker to the target distributive medium.

… continue reading this entry.

By L. H.

Typically, when I think of street art I imagine tags and stencils covering the streets that I walk through. Yet the more I understand the dynamics of street art, the more I think bumper stickers deserve recognition in the world of non-sanctioned art. Although they aren’t as extravagant as a beautiful bomb on a train or as stylistic as a quick write on a trashcan, bumper stickers can re-colonize the areas where the appropriator decides to adhere them. Whether the sticker is political, witty, humorous, memorable, or satirical, manufactured stickers can create a DYI creation that speaks for it’s appropriated space to an audience.

… continue reading this entry.

by G.H.

One day I was driving down Shelton McMurphey Blvd. when suddenly my attention was directed to the side of the road. I pulled over and saw a series of plywood boards, clearly positioned together as a group, filled with graffiti. I was amazed by what I saw. The boards, aligned as billboards along the side of a highway, were popping with color and depth. As I got out of my car to take a closer look, I began to see the multiple layers of spray paint covering the wood surface. After a moment, I started to realize that this area was designed by the city of Eugene as a safe place for street art to be done. This is what makes this place special and worthy of documentation.

… continue reading this entry.