NOV 02: TRAINS!
A celebration of graffiti on freight cars. ONE DAY ONLY: you don’t wanna miss this one.
WHAT: TINY GIANTS 20 Year Anniversary Show
WHEN: November 2nd, noon-10pm
WHERE: Lucky Cat DTLA - 620 S. Main St, Los Angeles 90014
BRING: Cash for the bar, and that one friend who really likes trains
BACKGROUND.
The usual stereotype of a ‘train collector’ might be a post-midlife-crisis guy who’s turned his basement into a 1:87 scale model of an American town, complete with happy trees and churches and white-collar businessmen walking the tiny streets. Alex, aka alongthetrackz (#216 at the gallery) is in a different subculture where the Venn Diagram of “people who like model trains” and “people who like graffiti” overlap. For many years, he’s been collecting HO scale train cars painted by graffiti artists to look like the full-size ones traveling the tracks all over the world. His collection numbers close to 500 now; some of them are likely worth a lot of money. But there’s one thing Alex will never do: he will never sell a train. He loves them too much!
Instead, he’s on a mission to create and offer model pieces for creating urban environments for these “bombed” trains — distressed boxcars, old warehouse façades, billboards, and figures in hoodies and sneakers — something more representative of the city we live in. Anyone who’s visited the gallery has likely seen his model city and gotten to experience his radiant joy of trains; it’s one of the coolest things in our building, and, in my humble opinion, one of the best hidden gems in LA.
“Graffiti is a language,” explains Kurtis, the proprietor of Tiny Giants, and the OG collector of these painted model trains. “Either you know how to speak it, or you don’t know how to speak it, or you’re learning to speak it. This is how we talk to each other.” Painting trains is different than painting buildings. When you’re in a small town, this is the only surface you get to express yourself on; a canvas that comes in, and then travels for miles for other trainspotters to enjoy. “Even if you’ve never met an artist in person, it feels like you know them,” Kurtis grins.
Painting on boxcars is challenging because you’re working on an irregular surface, and paint sticks differently to metal depending on how hot or cold it is. But the tradeoff is that you get to take your time on a train. When you’re not looking over your shoulder, you have time to practice; get detailed; and push font and shading and color technique forward, keeping the art alive and constantly evolving in this endless, wordless conversation.
THE EVENT.
THIS SATURDAY, we are so thrilled and honored to be hosting the 20 Year Anniversary show of Tiny Giants. This will be the BIGGEST collection of painted HO scale trains in one place ever seen: well over a thousand, from just as many artists (aka “writers”) from all over the country. A world record!!
Our gallery walls have been going through a transformation befitting the celebration — drywall replaced with steel, clean white splashed with color and rust. It is, by far, the biggest show we’ve thrown here yet — and honestly, it’s going to be hard to top. It’s here for ONE NIGHT ONLY — trust me, you do not wanna miss this one.
Then again, you might catch the bug and start sounding like these guys…
