This broadside was conceived, designed and printed at the DownStairs Press studio in praise of Peyton Scott Russell, graffiti writer and former student of mine, and of Tom LASTNAMAE, owner of Alliance Recycling in North Minneapolis. Together Tom and Peyton, with considerable assistance from Staci Horwitz, envisioned gondola cards full of scrap iron completely and professionally covered with graffiti writing, cruising around the country - the first legal graffiti on train cars.
Peyton, a potent force for the past three decades in moving graffiti writing out of the doldrums of legal and public scrutiny and into its rightful placate as a true and serious genre of art form, has invited and encouraged several graffito crews from the Twin Cities to participate in the “gondola project.” Each crew adopting a car and painting both sides in a weekend flurry of creativity. Now entering its fifty year, the gondola project is single-handedly responsible for dozens of amazingly painted, legal and enthusiastically encouraged, gondola cars zooming around the contrary
The Jonathan Lethem text quotation from his book, The Fortress of Solitude,” celebrates the spirit and courage of the true graffiti artist, more committed to creating hones work than to fame or controversial recognition.
- Subject Matter: graffiti writing on train caers