Legendary boxcar moniker artist Buz Blurr aka Colossus of Roads joins the show to tell us all about his life and the various art projects he's been involved with.  We discuss the hobo culture, graffiti and mail art.  Then we talk about the mysterious "House of Hades" tiles that are scattered around intersections all over the United States.  (It has been speculated that Buz is the artist responsible for these and we get to the bottom of it!)

 

So what is a boxcar moniker?  It's like old time graffiti drawn on the side of a train car.  They are usually about the size of a basketball or slightly larger and done in one color (usually black or white).  These are not the big sprawling spray paint pieces you see on train cars, but they often share space with them.  The moniker artists were/are sometimes hobos riding the rails, sometimes guys who worked in the rail yards and sometimes just graffiti artists who thought trains made a cool canvas.  A person draws their signature drawing or "moniker" on as many cars as possible, then that car travels all over the country over the years allowing their work to be seen by thousands of people in all sorts of places the artist would probably never be able to physically go.  It's kind of an "underground" art network that has been in existence for over 100 years. And yes, it's illegal.

In this particular world of boxcar art, Buz is the top guy around today.  It's estimated that he's drawn his "Colossus of Roads" moniker on 70,000 + train cars.  Chances are, at some point you were sitting in your car waiting for a long train to pass and one of his drawings zipped right past you and you didn't even know it.

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Email Joe Parisi- [email protected]