Thursday, September 5, 2019

Found Art




A few years ago a friend of mine was visiting Australia and took this photo thing I might enjoy seeing some graffiti from down under.


Zooming in I see something I recognize, a graffiti character I created a long time ago. I've never been to Australia, so I figure someone's been appropriating my work. It's an old design, and it's flattering in a way.


My old original work (above) from an old portfolio website. I may have drawn this in college and recreated in Adobe Illustrator shortly after in 2002 or so. Curious about how far this image traveled, I did a reverse image search...


I found out through the reverse image search that this sticker kid in Riverside, California named Sir_Eman (unrelated to the Australia graffiti person) had appropriated the same drawing and made it his own. This guy was selling sweatshirts and tees on bigcartel.com with this image, showing off all his stickers with this image, all of this as if it were his own. One thing I know from hanging out with old school DC graffiti dudes is that you don't bite other people's shit.



Machine printed, not hand-drawn USPO Priority Mail stickers