Foundry Vineyards and Anderson Foundation for the Arts is pleased to announce their next exhibition “Graffiti Writers,” which will open August 5, 2016 and feature works by several legendary American graffiti artists. The opening reception will be held August 5th, 2016 from 5pm- 8:30pm, with an outdoor screening of the pivotal 1987 documentary “Style Wars” beginning at 8:45pm. Food from Why Not Pizza will be available to purchase prior to the
start of the film. The gallery will have on view several large paintings from notorious street artists: Taki 183, Tracy 168, Snake 1, Clyde, Cope2, Ghost, MinOne, Stay High 149, Claw, King 157, Apexer, and Ichabod. This exhibition seeks to reference the colorful history and numerous styles of American graffiti. Many of the exhibited artists are based out of New York City and were leading influencers of modern mass transit art. Modern graffiti began in the late 1960s in Philadelphia, with its most prominent writer being CornBread, though the phenomenon emerged with enthusiasm in New York City during the 1970s on the outside and inside of subway cars. Urban youth would scratch, write, and paint their names all over the city using magic markers and spray paint. The reasons for creating these tags are as numerous as the writing styles. Some use graffiti as an activity, which helped steer them away from neighborhood gang life, while others compete with their friends to see how much they could get up. The danger and adrenaline of tagging large moving canvases while evading the authorities was most certainly a draw, but the most basic and universal reason for creating graffiti is as a means of self expression.