Get Up: New De-defacing Graffiti Cleans Up City Walls

BY Laura Norkin, November 10, 2009

greenworks

It’s been called vandalism. It’s been accused of defacing public property. Now graffiti gets up in a whole new way with “Moose” (Paul Curtis of Leeds, England) who erases dirt to leave his impermanent art on urban structures. He calls it Reverse Graffiti.

His website says the art form was born in a Leeds subway tunnel where a wayward swipe of a shoulder or child’s hand had exposed the shiny white tile underneath train soot. Imagining what he could do with that coal-like substance, Moose started working with negative space.

Like many street artists, the draw to harness the earning power of his craft was strong, and Curtis has gone on to make commissioned clean graffiti pieces for the likes of Clorox and Xbox’s GreenWorks. Companies are quick to catch on because his public art is totally legal (as Curtis told Fast Company Magazine*, “no one owns the dirt”) and it’s green. He drew a line in the soot, though, when an oil company tried to commission his skills. In the Fast Co interview, he explained it was too ironic “that people would ask me to write their name in the dirt they made.”

http://www.reversegraffitiproject.com/index.html