Welcome to “Your Weekly Short,” a LakeFrontRow.com feature that showcases one short from a Wisconsin filmmaker each week, every week. Brace thy face.
“The scum of the city already looks like shit,” according to graffiti artist David Bramson. “I don’t see what’s wrong with throwing some color on there.” Bramson is the subject of Christian Wilson’s documentary short, “Spray,” a veritable cinematic dumping ground for the tagger’s thoughts on graffiti art, and as his quote belies, its relationship to urban decay.
Shot in gorgeous high-definition, “Spray” makes for a visually rich six minutes. Bramson’s style comes off as a blend of pop culture cool and improvisatory whims. Setting up “shop” in an undisclosed backyard, the artist’s workshop is more “open space” than office, and rather than atop a desk, his spray can brush strokes kiss large sheets of plywood. Bramson also makes stencils, seen here with a bobblehead-styled depiction of James Brown, with a name tag cheekily designating Bramson’s moniker, “Flowgasm.” The stencil’s final image is an apt encapsulation of tagging’s anonymous auteurism.
Wilson, a UW-Madison student according to the video description, broadens “Spray’s” more indulgent conversational moments with overhead time lapses, as close to an exhibitionist lens as he allows. A later sequence implies Bramson and a nameless accomplice are to engage in some nighttime artistry, but that’s never shown. Instead, Wilson foregoes graffiti’s illicit aspects in favor of using his subject’s passion as an emotional through line. Like the intricately detailed sleeve tattoo that runs up Gramson’s arm, that thread is both visually complex and simplistically illustrative.