Alaska Airlines in-flight entertainment to feature graffiti art collection
AMGRAF, home to the world’s largest preserved collection of American graffiti and urban art on canvas, is celebrating a major milestone: its feature episode from the Seattle Channel’s award-winning series Art Zone with Nancy Guppy will begin airing on all Alaska Airlines flights starting December 1, and will run for the next two years.
In the segment, John Carswell recounts how he spent more than 20 years building relationships with graffiti pioneers and collecting various works—often tracking them down in subway tunnels, alleys, train yards, or underground art spaces—and inviting them to recreate works that were at risk of being erased forever. Those efforts ultimately formed The Dogtown Collection, which now spans thousands of works across five decades featuring pioneers like Cornbread as well as pieces tied to cult films such as The Warriors and Escape from New York.
“We never set out to end up on airplanes,” Carswell said. “We just wanted to save art that was rapidly disappearing. For this story to be shared on every Alaska flight—reaching millions of travelers a year—it’s incredibly meaningful in a way that goes far beyond us. It honors the artists who are a part of this collection.”
Among Dogtown’s most significant pieces is Prophets, Teachers & Kings (PTK), a sub-collection of more than 100 original works anchored by Opus of Influence—a 105-foot mural painted by nearly 50 members of Los Angeles’s famed Under The Influence crew, one of graffiti’s rarest and most ambitious achievements. The creation of the mural is chronicled in the international award-winning documentary Prophets, Teachers & Kings (not yet publicly released), which captures the crew’s collaborative process and the stories behind the work.
Today, Dogtown lives inside the AMGRAF gallery and is curated by Carswell’s daughter, Gloryanne “Baby G” Carswell, who also works with John to help run youth programs and local partnerships, engaging at-risk youth, developing anti-gang programs, reframing graffiti as art and legacy rather than delinquency.
The feature offers national and international travelers a rare window into American graffiti—from New York to Los Angeles to the Pacific Northwest—and the grassroots preservation efforts happening just 30 minutes north of Seattle, in Everett.
Watch the full episode here.
About AMGRAF
Located in the APEX Everett building in downtown historic Everett, Washington – the American Graffiti & Urban Art Conservation Project (AMGRAF) is a 501c3 organization dedicated to safeguarding the extraordinary legacy of The DogTown Collection, the world’s largest collection of graffiti and urban art on canvas. It is also committed to telling the stories and sharing the history of the writers who risked life, limb and freedom to find their voices and be seen.
The AMGRAF team is passionate about preserving the history of this subculture and groundbreaking art form while fostering a profound appreciation for its cultural significance. Our canvases are historically relevant, capturing the birth and potentially short life of this uniquely American art form.
