Awareness 9: Project Boxcar

In this project, Troy Duff and Robert Hendrick cut graffiti writing from boxcars that are becoming scrap metal. Some graffiti artists, whose work is being incorporated into the project, have mixed feelings about their work being saved by being detached from the boxcars. They claim that when removed from the context, their work is not as powerful. Graffiti artists usually create their biggest works on cars that go across the country, so as to not be easily caught and also so as to have their work displayed on a larger scale. Graffiti is traditionally condemned in society, and in the past, there were efforts by police and local governments to remove or paint over all graffiti in certain areas. However, these efforts have been dialed down nowadays due to excessive costs and nonstop creations by graffiti writers. Instead, now most graffiti writers/artists avoid cars with holes in them and avoid covering important identification markings, to the point where officials do not care too much about removing the works. Under the Project Boxcar, the artists try to preserve the physical graffiti rather than simply using photography. Troy Duff is a graffiti artist himself, who displays his more contemporary (not boxcar) pieces along the other salvaged art, and Robert Hendrick refers to himself as a 'railroader'.
The second link below has a large collection of pictures of graffitied railroad cars from around the world, which I found while searching for a topic for this post. For the most part, I have been focusing on street graffiti for my head and heart project, but forgot about the pieces I see on my way to Richmond. The Project Boxcar also ties into my head and heart project, as it consists of graffitied train parts.

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Link to an article on the Project:
https://nashvillearts.com/2017/08/tagsthrowies-and-pieces/
Link to a b i g collection of boxcars:
https://www.graffiti.org/trains/index.trains.html