Graffiti and the dog days of summer

My longtime friend Lukasz came down from Gatineau this weekend to spend time in Montreal. After a few beers, and tons of catching up, I met up with him again on Sunday in St Henri where he was doing a guest graffiti piece with the Crazy Apes Crew. The CA Crew are probably one of the best in Montreal, and they were voted #3 in 2009 by the Mirror. So I guess Lukasz (who's known as Credka or Credk when he paints) was pretty humbled by their offer to participate in one of their productions. The day gave us spectacular weather so I biked down beneath the overpass and snapped some pictures. There, a giant wall stretches alongside the abandoned Babcock & Wilcox factory under the vaulted cover of Highway 20. The wall serves as a ever-changing canvas for some of the best graffiti art in the city and has likely doubled in thickness from all the layers of paint caked together since its construction. Watching these guys work you might have thought that they were born with Krylon cans in their hands. Armed with a variety of shades and colours, they spent the whole day marking their own little piece of concrete in an otherwise huge city. This got me thinking... These guys spend copious amounts of money and effort to buy specialized paint and they spend entire days in the hot sun in order to do something marginally illegal. Since most pieces have a shelf life of around 4-5 weeks (depending on how good the location is, and how talented and well respected your crew is - a newbie piece will be the first to go) the art is somewhat ephemeral. The only remaining records of the world's great graffiti can be found in photographs spread across magazines and web sites. By the standards of say, an Ansel Adams photograph, or a Monet, graffiti art is temporary, fleeting almost, and it follows very naturally the evolution and changing cultures of a city. It appears when buildings and tunnels are built, and disappears when there's no room for new art. In short, it was a pleasure to watch these guys work and I'll be looking forward to their new pieces. The Crazy Apes Crew have done some pretty impressive damage over the past few years. Go check out their website or their Flickr. Also, check out Lukasz's Deviant Art profile. A must see. Here's the CA piece: And here's a cool piece Credka did in an NDG tunnel. He plugged my blog. That deserves some props and a 'lol'.