This summer while traveling in the Pacific Northwest I brought my family to a vibrant and sleepy little spot on the Olympic Peninsula just west of Seattle called Port Townsend. There we happened upon an old brick storefront with a advert from yesteryear scribed across the side for Owl Cigars. I joked with my wife that when we returned to New Orleans I would take up tagging and use “Owl” as my moniker. She didn’t laugh; but I did. And so a marriage goes. Opposites often attract.
In Post Katrina New Orleans in any given neighborhood you can find some of the most amazing tags, some times in quantity. Some with international acclaim (read: Banksy), others not so much. I suppose the largely depopulated landscape was ripe for opportunity for the faceless tagging masses to convey their message to returnees and newcomers alike. I understand my affection for this artform is not shared by all. In fact, just this week a little debate ignited on my Facebook page over a newer set of tags I discovered on my walk to work. Simply and purposefully were two tags next to one another. One, a signature gray box by The Gray Ghost more commonly known as Fred Radtke, and the other, a black stencil on white background by artist(s) unknown stating in a musical scale “READ BETWEEN THE LINES.”
To me the image says it all. When I posted it, the mixed response left me quizzical. In the recent past a young man had been caught on video in the wee hours in the same neighborhood hand scrawling tags. The video was featured on the evening news along with who? Fred Radtke. Stating how the neighborhood (read: Freret) was going places and for something like this to take place is unwelcome. I don’t disagree with Fred. My issue is this is only a small portion of the story as Fred’s tags were not even mentioned.
So I often wonder, what if the tagging dried up tomorrow? Would Fred still go around willy nilly mapping out gray boxes? I’d like to think so. He now openly takes credit for his work in neighborhood meetings but to my knowledge no one has yet to put it back on him that his work is arguably as much a tag as any stencil or scrawl that may appear. After all it takes just as much effort to paint gray over a tag as it does to attempt a color match, does it not?
For certain tagging will not dry up any time soon, and Fred may easily get out of bed each day knowing there is a canvas out there for him too. ~ OWL
