This concrete bridge is a haven to graffiti artists. It's isolated, out of sight, and has a hell of a lot of concrete surface area. For years this has been one of the city's hot spots for writers and has featured our who's who of artists from the DOS Crew to elk to EXPERT.
This underpass is also a home for many of Richmond's homeless populace and is riddled with cardboard boxes, old mattresses, and dirty pillows. Also I'm a little pissed that someone went over that Sunk piece for a throwie, though I hear there was good reason behind it.
On a more positive note, this EXPERT piece has managed to stick around for some time now. I first saw it four years ago, making it at least that old, but judging by the chipping of the layers, it could've been around for a lot longer than that. For those that don't know, EXPERT is one of the more famous writers of Richmond. He's known for having done one of the largest blockbusters in graffiti history. It was easily legible from a jet plane, if that gives you any kind of perspective.
These two pieces, by Aest and Sigh, respectively, were done side by side. To give you some background, both Aest and Sigh were member of the now-disbanded Dirty Ol' South Crew (DOS), probably Richmond's last truly great graffiti crew. As you might have noticed, both of these were done in very similar styles, which was a practice used by writers of the same crew doing a co-op together in the same place. This technique both shows uniformity as a crew and strength in the individual artist's ability to adapt their works to different styles.
Another invaluable aspect of graffiti, in my opinion, is its potential to truly be 'art' in the emphatic, emotional sense. This piece features an elderly, Native American woman under a starry sky. If looking at this doesn't do anything for you, you can stop reading my blog. You're not part of the audience I'm writing for.I'll probably get up some more graf pics as I find the time to hit up the hot spots in Richmond.
