LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, meet Wane COD. One of New York’s graffiti godfathers at Write4Gold West Europe 2008!
Well ,he is just Wane. The COD part he shares. Like a surname it announces that he has a genealogy, a family, a group of people connected to him in some intimate and irrefutable way. COD or Children of Destruction is a group of New York graffiti writers that formed around the unified bombing or ‘piecing’ of New York City train lines number 2 and number 5 in the 1980s. Wane, MICHELOB, WEN, LATIN, FACE and WIPS - the 2 and 5 line kings.
Whilst the 1980s may seem like a long time ago now, COD’s appearance on the subway scene actually marks the end of an era; by the late 1980s the trains were ‘clean’; i.e the powers that be had got wise to the writers game and devised ways to paint and prep the trains so they weren’t such appealing and accommodating canvas.
It was during the 1970s that graffiti thrived; when legendary writers LEE, PISTOL 1, FLINT 707 and PHASE 2 emerged; when 3-D top to bottom pieces first graced whole sides of trains and when New York art dealers started to think about how they could go about capturing the rawness of graffiti in a gallery space.
The first ‘tags’ or ‘hits’ however started to appear on the inside of trains in 1970; they had progressed to the outside one year latter and by 1972 trains that were ‘clean’ by day would chug off to work early the next morning freshly bombed inside and out. This is also where becoming ‘king of a line’ started; the idea being that at night you would creep into your local train yard and make your mark on the trains that serviced your neighborhood; your line.
In the late 1970s, as the fame of the graffiti writer grew, some writers jumped at the chance to turn their passion into green folding and Hugo Martinez was the first to set up a professional graffiti collective. Called United Graffiti Artists it was the umbrella that graffiti leaders PHASE 2, STAYHIGH 149, RIFF 170, C.A.T 87 and COCO 144 worked under.
More than this though, during the 1970s it actually seemed that New York as a city as a people were right behind the writers; during the baseball playoffs some well worked trains were lined up outside Yankee stadium to provide the games with a bright carnivalesque background; in the opening sequence of the primetime show ‘Welcome Back Kotter’ there was a fixed shot of well worked trains traveling by; the names DIABLO and PNUT 2 blazing out to the viewers at home. Adding to this new type of visibility, New York Magazine published a comprehensive essay written by staff writer Richard Goldstein which featured The United Graffiti Artists and launched a whole new wave of junior writers; leading to the production of the now infamous documentary style film Style Wars.
The aesthetic value of the pieces is also curious; the style of the 1970s and the 1980s is raw, simple and artistically naive. Some artists have chosen to stay true to this style Wane and the COD crew for example.
Which brings us back to Wane COD.
Wane’s style is sharp, clean and graphically ‘wowing’ persuasion. Wane and the COD family have created ‘Writers Bench’; a clothing company that celebrates the talent and culture of graffiti. Currently only catering to the bigger sizes they are about to launch their woman’s range called ‘Bunny Kitty’
Wane has been in Münster years ago painting at the Skaters Palace with Can2 and a few other german artists. He is back for Write4Gold and we are glad to invite such an legendary new york graffii Writer.
See more of Wane (COD): @ 12oz Prophet
See more of Wane (COD): @ Writersbench.com
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