![]() Graffiti Richmond has become popular enough that artists submit photos of their work directly to Laures. Among others, there's "Rebar," "Omega3" and "El Camino," who sent Laures a video of himself painting an intricate, multicolored piece. But there are some whose "names" appear often enough on her blog. "Richmond is a smaller city, but relatively, there are a lot of great artists here," she says. Now she's become the doyenne of graffiti photographers.Īsked how rich the street art is, Laures says it's difficult to be certain. While working on her own art, she began noticing the abundance of graffiti on her walks to and from her job. She left school before completing her degree, bouncing around Northern Virginia before finally settling in Richmond in 2008. Jean-Michel Basquiat, the man who brought graffiti to the attention of the mainstream art world, became one of her heroes. ![]() Laures first caught the graffiti bug as a college freshman in Macon, Ga. To make the blog, a piece need not be new, Laures says: "It just needs to exist." "Pieces," short for masterpieces, are more elaborate, involve more use of color and take hours to complete. The train cars are a collage of tags, throw-ups and the more elaborate pieces.įor the uninitiated, a "tag" is the modern-day version of "Kilroy Was Here," a hastily drawn script of the artist's pseudonym. In the train yard, there are literally miles of canvas for the graffiti artists. "Maybe that's a little too romantic of a way to think about it." "I guess I'm just intrigued by people creating these alter-egos and then not taking credit for their work," she says. It's the secretive nature of the culture, however, that drew Laures in. She acknowledges that there are particular areas of the city that are widely known as fertile ground for graffiti art. Doing this work means being careful not to identify where her photos are taken, Laures says. Style Weekly promised not to identify which one. The search begins on a recent sunny afternoon at one of Richmond's train yards. ![]() "It's like if you're a record collector digging through stacks at a record store and you find something really rare." "It's exciting," Laures says while ambling through the small path between two parallel lines of stationary, rust-colored freight cars. Many of those places are on private property, meaning that both the artists and those who document their work - in this case, Laures - trespass each time they do what their mission entails. These are the out-of-the-way, somewhat secret spots where people armed with spray paint can take their time and there aren't many people around to alert the police. "And then I started a blog and things just exploded."Īt least twice a week she makes the trek on her bike to those places in and around the city known to be popular with Richmond's graffiti artists. "It started out as a personal collection," Laures says. ![]() A year in, the Graffiti Richmond blog has more than 800 followers. Her tools are an aging Minolta camera she received back in high school, a cell phone and a Tumblr blog. Laures is one of a handful of people in Richmond documenting what's loosely termed "street art" - graffiti, stencils, yarn bombing. ![]() You don't know her, but you may have seen her work. The mastermind behind Graffiti Richmond is a 23-year-old barista named Keeley Laures. Keeley Laures explores the city’s train tracks and alleyways for her photoblog, Graffiti Richmond. ![]()
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