"Everyone has to scratch on walls somewhere or they go crazy."
-- Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion
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| Graffiti 9-10-14 |
"Some people become cops because
they want to make the world a better place.
Some people become vandals because
they want to make the world a better looking place."
-- Banksy, Wall and Piece
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| Graffiti 9-10-14 |
"If it takes more than 5 minutes, it's not graffiti."
-- Mint Serf
When I was very small we lived for a while in a house near a train underpass.
That underpass was like a magic tunnel, its walls completely covered in a confetti spray of layered and peeling colors, words and pictures.
To me it was beautiful. I anticipated passing through and tried to see as much as I could in the split seconds it took to get to the other side.
Probably its a good thing I couldn't read yet, because I'm sure there was some not-so-beautiful stuff written there. But small details aside, the overall impact of a graffiti-covered wall still gets me.
I've been a fan of street art ever since.
I like it on walls, on buildings, on trains. I like it done excellently by talented artists, but I even appreciate it done shittily by rank amateurs. Sometimes if it's too good it takes away the immediacy and the urgency of the art form.
I have even dabbled in graffiti myself. A-la Banksy, I won't reveal when or where. But I've done it late at night under the cover of darkness. I might even do it again if I need to.
There's a train underpass near where I live now where people write graffiti now and then. But the city keeps power-washing it off, and covering it with flat, gray paint. So the walls, now, are a patchwork of big gray blobs.
But graffiti writers gotta write. And they keep trying, using the renewing gray walls as their blank canvas.
To me, saying that a graffiti artist can't use their spray cans on public surfaces is like saying a sculptor can't use chisels on stone, or a potter can't use their hands on clay, or a painter can't use brushes on canvas, or a singer can't sing the notes with their voice, or a writer can't use words on paper.
Your art is your art. And you don't always have a choice in what your art is. I won't be cliche and say "your art chooses you." But it kind of does. Mostly, I think it's just there, in you somewhere, until it ultimately burbles up from your personal ooze and demands expression.
You either let it speak, or let it die.
A paint-covered wall is a small price to pay for saving an artistic life.
I'd like to see what would happen if the city used its resources and manpower (and paint) elsewhere and left the underpass walls alone and let them bloom into an explosion of color and expression and art and opinion and emotion and secret messages and voices and feelings.
Some, I'm sure, would call it vandalism and brand the graffiti-writers criminals.
But not me.
I think it would look good.
Maybe even magical.
