This is part two of my Art Train series.  If you read part one you recall that I took a number of photos of a train parked in my home town.  In this post I would like to focus on the work of two Minneapolis based artists.  Known and Shock and Silk these two are each amazing in their own right however they have teamed up to do projects as the United Crushers.  If you look closely you can see their fantastic and daring work all over town. read more…

Last weekend I discovered a treasure.  There is a cereal plant in my home town and parked behind it is a string of box cars a quarter of a mile long.  I assume that these train cars are being used to store supplies used in the plant but they remain here for long periods of time without moving.  This provides ample opportunity for artists to mark them up.  I walked the tracks this week taking photos of just few of the cars. read more…

I am not sure what this means but I would love to know.  What makes graffitti so interesting to me is how cryptic it is.  We have all had occasion to be part of something secret or to share an inside joke with friends.  There is something about the knowledge that you are part of something nobody else understands that is both mysterious and empowering.  These artist, and their peers, understand the messages in these paintings, but the rest of us are simply left to guess.  Maybe it’s the “not knowing” that forces exploration and interpretation.

This painting is extraordinary.  I see a lot of tags and taggers titles painted on these trains but every once in a while I see something more.  This is not just a “Killroy was here” kind of signature.  In this case, the artist was trying to say something specific.  I am not sure what, but I hope by documenting some these pieces I may be able to figure some of them out.