Artwork Description
Railroad Spike Track Teeth Blue Object Art by RD-357 Real Deal Original Tag Designer Collectible Pop Artist Artwork.
2021 Original Spray Paint RD Tag on Reclaimed Metal Railroad Spike Art Object Size 6x1 Artwork.
Railroad Spike Track Teeth Blue by RD-357 – Original Object Art in Street Pop Art & Graffiti Artwork
Railroad Spike Track Teeth Blue is a 2021 original artwork by RD-357, also known as Real Deal, a graffiti artist and designer known for integrating traditional tagging culture with found-object experimentation. This unique piece features RD’s iconic handstyle tag executed in bright blue spray paint across the surface of a reclaimed railroad spike, measuring 6 x 1 inches. A powerful collision of industrial form and street symbolism, the object retains the weight and texture of its original function while transforming into a three-dimensional graffiti artifact. The signature arrow, a common motif in graffiti letterforms, extends from the letter D, pointing forward with intentional motion—signaling movement, defiance, and direction. As a tagged artifact, this spike not only references the rail systems central to graffiti’s early distribution but becomes a piece of urban archaeology infused with authorship and attitude.
Tag Culture and Object as Canvas
In graffiti, the tag is the most distilled form of artistic identity. It is name, logo, and signal. RD-357’s application of his tag on a metal spike recontextualizes this signature within the aesthetics of artifact and utility. By placing a clean, fluid handstyle on a corroded and heavy object, the artist plays with contrasts—impermanence marked on permanence, fluid gesture on solid form, gesture on function. The use of blue against the spike’s blackened surface brings a vibrancy and clarity that stands out even on this miniature scale. It becomes a physical message, less about the space it occupies and more about what it carries—a name rooted in street history etched onto a tool once used to anchor systems of transit and division. The object is no longer a spike; it is a signed sculpture, a mobile tag, a symbol of permanence in a culture built on motion.
Railroads, Movement, and the Foundation of Style
Railroads are more than infrastructure in the graffiti narrative—they are symbols of distribution, escape, and style travel. Writers from the 1970s forward used trains to extend the visibility of their names across boroughs and regions. RD-357 honors that history not with a painting of a train, but with the spike that once fastened steel to wood, that once anchored a system which graffiti artists hijacked to spread messages. This spike is a poetic repurposing. It holds the weight of transit and turns it into voice. It turns the ghost of industrial decay into the object of modern subcultural celebration. The use of an authentic railroad component makes this piece not just art, but a relic transformed—a utilitarian object made iconic by graffiti’s mark of authorship.
Street Pop Art & Graffiti Artwork as Object-Based Language
Railroad Spike Track Teeth Blue is a rare example of graffiti object art where the artist refuses to be confined to wall, canvas, or digital format. RD-357 embraces the object as both message and material, infusing his tag with dimension, tactility, and context. This approach bridges graffiti’s traditional emphasis on repetition and surface with the collectible logic of pop and conceptual art. It is a handstyle made sculptural, an industrial artifact made personal, and a name that resists being forgotten. In Street Pop Art & Graffiti Artwork, such pieces remind us that graffiti lives not only on surfaces we walk past, but also in the objects we carry, the materials we recover, and the symbols we choose to elevate. This work is not merely seen—it is held, it is felt, it is signed in steel.
