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| Sore, San Diego CA, July 2013 |
SORE's tag was the first graffiti work that I found for
this assignment. Several things peaked my attention about this tag. What first
caught my attention is that SORE's tag includes a character. That set this tag
apart from the hundreds of other tags that I came across. Tags are
the foundation of graffiti; a way for writers to establish themselves in
"the game". The main characteristics of tags are the writer's pseudo
name, the meaning of the word, the meaning of the spelling, and the style of
characters. Tags generally don't include characters. Hence this needs to be considered
in this analysis. Why would this tag include
character? According to Waclawek characters didn't appear until the development
of throwies and pieces (Waclawek pages16-18). The function of the tag is to get the writers
name up as much as possible, they are executed quickly and generally placed in
high visibility. This tag however is not in most visible of places and its
location reveals a little more about the character in this tag.
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| Sore, San Diego CA, July 2013 |
Why is it located where it's located? While driving north bound
on the 5 freeway just passing the 8 freeway, I saw a few tags on the side of a warehouse. I exited and drove toward direction of the graffiti,
but before finding those tags, I ran into SORE's tag. Its located right by the
Wild Life Preserve (view on map), a location not visible from the freeway. It is
located near the trolley but not visible from trolley which makes less valuable
of spot. However, SORE also tagged on a wall directly across from this one,
but on that instance he/she only wrote his/her name (photo below). Both are illegal spots for sure and placing them near the trolley indicates that its for the purpose of exposure. Having multiple tags like this in the same location make paints the picture that SORE was "bombing" this place, "trying to get up as much as
possible" which would seem to indicate that SORE is more concerned with
"getting up" than he is with style development (Waclawek page 14). However, I can't say that with
certainty since I haven't seen all of his of his/her work.
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| Sore, Sour, San Diego CA, July 2013 |
What can we tell about the tag by its letters? Waclawek's
book doesn't go far into describing the evolution of different types of
letters as from discussing the beginning of Wild Style. What we learned is that signature graffiti (individuals writing the
names or pseudonyms) developed into tagging from which evolved the concept of
stylizing tag. According to Waclawek "Stylistic and formal innovation -
restructuring the traditional appearance of letters, and in a way, rewriting
the alphabet - is a writer's primary goal" (Waclawek page 13). Clearly this wasn't the
case for all writers.. some where more concerned about being seen and getting up rather innovating new styles. Speaking of which, SORE's tag doesn't
seem to have any particular innovation of his letters. I've seen tags which are so stylized that they are practically illegible. This is not meant as a negative
criticism of SORE's tag. It simply appears that in this particular instance this writer's primary concern is
getting up, not necessarily innovation. With that said, I have to say that his spray technique seems really solid. There are no drips and the exclamation point has a cool looking flare to it. Coincidently, a week later, I was
driving on Friars road heading to mall and by pure chance came across another
SORE tag, this time on green utility box (view pic below). This confirms to me that these tags are about visibility.
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| Sore, Friars Rd. San Diego CA, July 2013 |
What meanings can we derive from the pseudo name and its
spelling? Lets start with the definition: Adjective:(of a part of one's body)
Painful or aching. Noun: A raw or painful place on the body. Adverb: Extremely;
severely: "they were sore afraid".
Its seems strait forward enough and the spelling of the word is correct. The
writer could be making a statement about the way graffiti is perceived by
mainstream society: that society sees it as a sore and he's taken the word and repurposed it to empower rather accept this criticism. It could also be a reflection
on his ability to get up, as is the meaning of the word as an adverb. Doing some research on the web, I found a substantial
amount of photographs that have SORE's tag. I am assuming that they are same
writer, but I'm not 100% sure. Some of them are definitely his.
To conclude, the character on SORE's piece seems like a
half step toward a throwie. Its not a throwie in that its monochromatic, the letters are small and not hollowed out. However SORE is adding some style depth to the tag with his character. The character is executing nicely, in one pass. Upon further research on the web, I found SORE to be quite the prolific writer in terms of number of tags and throw ups that can be found online. I did not discover any pieces but definitely same incredibly strong throw ups.
The following links are to images of SORE's work that I found on the we:
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