Taken in July driving North on the 14. Had there been more time, we could have stopped and gotten a lot more shots - and clearer ones too. Alas, these were taken while zipping along at 70 or so.

More after the jump. All photos by Mark Mauer.

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A couple of nice pieces I've been driving past for months now. Frida Kahlo on Venice and Crenshaw.

And Barack Obama on Washington Blvd... a few blocks before the 10 underpass I think.

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For several months now I've wondered around Culver City on lunch breaks looking for graffiti. There's not a lot, though the construction along the 405 and Sepulveda has sprouted an on-going paint/sandblast cycle. But here are a few I've seen.

All photos by Mark Mauer

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At the time I took these, some genius had decided to splash black gunk all over one section of this cool piece painted on a wooden fence in Hollywood. Much of it had been removed though and it still looks good.

Also as many of Lurker's readers are no doubt aware, there is a large-scale crackdown going on against graffiti artists, and some of the cases against the writers are using YouTube clips as evidence. Therefore, unfortunately, we're not going to be using names anymore on Lurker -- not real names, not writer names.

If we're talking about work that is appearing in galleries, we will still use the names, but no longer can we do it for street art, even if it's been commissioned by the owner of the property.

We just don't want to take the chance that something on this blog might actually be used against an artist in court.

As usual, more photos after the jump. All photos by Mark Mauer.

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Near the corner of Temple and Hoover there was a fenced in lot that slowly got demolished over the course of several months earlier this year.

Before it disappeared tags had gone up all over it. Everyone knew it was coming down, so most of this seems like "practice" for lack of another word (and there might very well be other words that are more appropriate, like "creative expression").

Still, there were a few interesting tags, like this wide-lettered "B M" along on the top of a shell.

The whole thing was like watching a film of urban decay playing in fast forward. Every day there were more tags and yet fewer walls.

Now the destruction of the old buildings has been completed, and it's just an ugly, empty lot. Dirt. Across the street sits the weird, new freighter-like public school, dry-docked into the wedge of Temple, Virgil, Silver Lake and Beverly.

No great artistic statements here. But interesting anyway.

More after the jump.
Photos by Mark Mauer

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Photos by Timothy Norris

When Timothy Norris isn't shooting pictures of Gnarls Barkley, or airplanes that go into outer space for LA Weekly and other places, he sometimes comes across cool graffiti in L.A.

(Photos by Timothy Norris)

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I'm predicting a lot of stupid boneheaded moves that are going to destroy a lot of beautiful street art in our city in a misguided effort to "stamp out graffiti." They'll paint over beautiful pieces that have graced neighborhood walls for years, and once those pieces are gone, ugly tags will show up overnight, leading to yet more calls for police to crack down. It'll be a downward spiral of ugliness and self-fulfilling prophecy that has already become the hallmark of this decade.

Oh what's that you say? It's happening already? So it is... This fine piece by Cahce, Makatron and EyeOne on Heliotrope and Melrose was recently painted over. Metroblogging LA has the whole sad, dumb story.

(Photos by Mark Mauer)

Sean Bonner took this picture of what it looks like now:

(Photo by Sean Bonner)

Expect more of this. See more photos from what it looked like six months ago on Lurker here. And be sure to read the comments thread at Metroblogging to catch up on the story.

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This wall was a jumble of tags and terrible stuff until Augor and Nekst got a hold of it.

So hey - it looks like L.A. graffiti is now a national story, and pretty much every commenter on the LA Times website wants every street artist locked up or shot.

Read it here:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/politics/cal/la-me-graffiti31-2008jul31,0,5228059.story

It's ludicrous. But it looks like the comments for the story have been taken down.

Also here:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i_8TdtT-dKmt79vgyJLuWwP4a6hwD929LGMO4

and here:
http://www.mercurynews.com/crime/ci_10073352

SANTA ROSA — Graffiti tends to tick people off, but for John Rose it goes much deeper.

The Aussie bird-dogs it everywhere his eyes land — on soundwalls, traffic signs, the side of a building far across a shopping center parking lot.

"I cannot go anywhere without seeing graffiti. It's an illness. It's incurable," he said. "I hate graffiti with a vengeance. I'll do anything to get rid of this waste of time and blight that's devaluing our properties."

Just substitute the word billboard or advertisement for the word graffiti in the story above, and there I am. How many horrible ads are you exposed to every day? They're selling you crap you don't want and don't need and in many cases the billboards themselves are illegal.

So who's worse? Who would you rather fight?

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It's a tempting target to add some writing to these Batman billboards isn't it?

Augor and Revok got one that we posted not long ago here.

Here's another one reworked by Killers of Giants crew:

This one is visible as your cross over the 101 on Western heading south.

A little help on this one? UPDATE: Thanks to Graffhead for identifying this piece by Thor.

Fyre

Photos by Mark Mauer

And thanks again to Graffhead for the link to this video of the Revok/Augor piece being painted (Video by Logan and Keegan)

Augor x Revok x The Dark Knight (video Logan x Keegan) Meatpost.com from Meat Post on Vimeo.

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One of the best pieces I've seen in ages is the Por Es Suelo Pachamama wall on Virgil that went up earlier this year. You can see posts on it here and here.

In the second link there's some footage of DAME working on his section of the wall (Retna did much of the rest alsong with AWR and Werc).

Here's what it used to look like:

Then someone splashed the piece with red and white paint.

Dame promised that the mural would be redone, and true to his word, there was a note from him over the weekend to that effect. It's not like it was, but true to the art form, it's morphed, evolved, grown into something else entirely.

He's posted a picture on the Known Gallery website, and I've borrowed it here:

Visit that site to see a larger version of the image as well as a lot more footage of the original process of the work (click 05.08).

Another stunner of a DAME piece I saw on their site is this one from South Korea.

Thanks to Dame for alerting us to the retooled wall, and for going back to it in the first place. The above two photos owned by Dame, and www.knowngallery.com.

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Dark Knight Gets REVOKed (And AUGORed) Jul 25, 2008
Jose Roque Body & Paint, Echo Park Jul 18, 2008
MAK Attack Jul 16, 2008
CBS Dragon Jul 16, 2008
Beauty in Detail: the Shogun Writers Jul 14, 2008
Getting Intense with Seventh Letter Jul 14, 2008
Billboard Liberation: MSK and D-30 Jul 14, 2008
Skulls Behind Melrose Jul 12, 2008
George Carlin on Melrose Jul 11, 2008
Birds of Hollywood, ELKPEN, Fountain Ave Market Jul 9, 2008
Space Invader L.A. Jul 7, 2008
Kofie'One in Culver City Jul 1, 2008
Want to Wheatpaste? Jun 30, 2008
Beautiful Silver Lake Mural Defaced Jun 26, 2008
Back at the K-Car lot Jun 24, 2008