Graffiti Hall of Fame - 2012 Edition

The birthplace of the style writing graffiti is New York City. This is the place where young writers first began to transform letters from simple tags on a wall to elaborate masterpieces of colorful and camoflauged letters embellished with characters that depicted friends and heroes alike.

By the 1980s the artwork was quickly destroyed by authorities and the artists seeking to preserve some of their works took hold of schoolyards around the city to paint grander works. It was a no-nonsense approach to save their art form and spread their fame to the local kids. The most famous of these schoolyards is located in East Harlem on 106th street and Park Avenue and it became known as the Hall of Fame.

At first the Hall of Fame was established to bring together the best artists in the city and have them paint in the same schoolyard supplanting the number 5 train as the showcase place for the best graffiti art in New York. Over the years as the word spread artists from around the city would sneak in and leave their work at night in this unsanctioned museum.

From Skeme, Dez, and Daze in the early 1980s to Vulcan, Jon One, and Dome in the late 1980s to Part, Ezo, and TDS rejuvenating the schoolyard with style in the 1990s to TC5 (West, Dash, Psycho, Wane, Cope2, etc.), TDS (Flite, Part, Noc167, Serve, T-Kid170), TATS (Bio, BG183, Nicer, How, Nosm, Sen2) crews tight productions in the 2000s to the writers that travel to New York to paint there today this book documents the exciting art work that was created in a small obscure school in Harlem that became known as the legendary Hall of Fame. Join us on this artistic retrospective of the famous and important New York landmark.