A few pieces of street art found around Asheville. photos by Jonathan Welch
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I want that Man With No Name stencil.
There is some fantastic artwork on the streets of this town. There is also some really crappy stuff that makes the town look crummier on a daily basis. If it’s done on someone else’s wall, newspaper box, street sign or side of a truck– and the artist doesn’t have permission– they are guilty of criminal defacing of property.
I really like some of this art. Especially the work by Ishmael, who’s stencil style that *appears* to be. (Is that Clint Eastwood?) That dog stencil looks like something the famous “Banksy” would do.
The street artist who tags as “Old Crow” is super prolific in this town. If you google that tag, you’ll see he’s also marked up Oakland, CA. Old Crow has literally hundreds of tags in downtown Asheville, especially on re-purposed stickers with a paint pen and all over the newspaper boxes. Some of his grotesque cartoon faces are quite good. But they are all over places they shouldn’t be and it’s a major pain to get rid of his blight.
APD’s Graffiti Task Force caught up with Old Crow on March 15. He’s Logan Mason, white male, age 30.
I love the street art … nice job. I do not see this as a crime.
I love Old Crow’s work. Most of his stuff that I’ve seen is on old abandoned dilapidated buildings down by the river. There seem to be some places that may as well be sanctioned by the city as paintable spots….places that I’ve seen people painting in the middle of the day. In fact on of them was just demolished.
Generally I have no problem with well-placed and artistic graffiti. However, alot of the stuff in Asheville (downtown especially) is nothing more than tags (alot of gang tags). This rubberstamp approach is idiotic, not artistic. Moms has tags all over the freakin place and it’s really annoying. Show some artistic sense if you’re going to muck up the scenery, ok?
yeah, cuz a bit of art is so much more offensive to the eye than a blank wall.
stencils are probably the weakest form of so called “street art” out, no style involved, the man with no name stencil was made by someone i know and it is the first and only stencil made by this person who is not an artist. Saying you like graffiti and then immediately mentioning banksy is the lamest thing anyone could say period, but hey the more ignorant the people the more graff writers get over.