Like many people, I’m of multiple minds about graffiti.
Mind #1: I don’t like it: if it’s not your property, you shouldn’t alter it. If it’s public property, it’s even LESS cool to lay your mark. (Do unto others: I’m almost 100% sure the average graffiti artist would frown the frown to end all frowns if, heading into his/her bathroom in the morning to brush his/her teeth, discovered a pink hippo riding a tricycle spray-painted on the shower door.)
Mind #2: Show me a book on graffiti art world-round, and I’ll spend at least half an hour flipping through. I won’t deny that there’s something intrinsically attractive about in-your-face art. And sometimes the graffiti is truly beautiful; the skill of the artist enviable.
Mind #3: Place and context: is the graffiti just tagging (hi! I’m here! Lookatme! Lookatme!) or is it social commentary? Was it skillfully applied or slap-dash? Is it marring the side window of some little neighborhood coffee shop (you know the owner’s going to have to go out there with gray paint), or interrupting the monotony of a train ride down the Northeast Corridor?
I think it was last year that the Southwest Corridor multi-use path was repaved, making many cyclists, runners, rollerbladers, and rowdy high school students happy to enjoy smoother travel. Not long after, someone trailed red paint in a erratic line from one end to the other, inciting in me a surprisingly possessive and self-righteous sort of anger (you kids! get out of my back yard!) Not long after that, somebody else stenciled the word Bold between Green Street and Stonybrook Stations. Recently, the erratic line and Bold have been joined by a cyclist wearing a hat.
My first thought: does this mean the bike path has been claimed by hipsters? How connected is the man in a hat to the JP Music Fest mascot, or perhaps walk signs in East Germany?
My second thought was more a resigned sigh.
What do you think?
Phoebe Sinclair Writes 
my thoughts on graffitti are similar. i have a love/hate relationship with it. on a recent train ride, i saw some brilliant tags, but what do they mean to me? not many of them say anything worthwhile to the casual observer, even if they look cool.
then there is this overpass that i pass under on an almost daily basis where someone has scrawled in black spray paint “WAKE UP WE ARE LIED TO” and then there’s a little doodle of a cat, done as one job because i noticed it the first morning it appeared. so really it says “WAKE UP WE ARE LIED TO KITTY CAT”
it makes me smile almost every day because it’s so inscrutable! does it mean we are being lied to by cats? or are cats the ones we are to look to for the truth? and what lies must we wake up to and why are cats the mascot? cats are always sleeping! is the artist just trying to make me laugh every day? if so, they win. 🙂
Love that story! I laughed out loud to read “WAKE UP . . . KITTY CAT.”
I love it when the street art transforms the way you see something, or gives you a litte in to the artist’s world. I had a private commune with a long gone grafittiist when I noticed the words “you are too observant” painted on a wall up very high, maybe three stories. I felt strangely complimented.
Thanks for visiting and for your comment, littlebikeblog!
I agree that it’s so satisfying to notice something written for too-observant eyes to catch. I tend to see those things, too.
Also, in the same vein, a friend told me a story about discovering beneath her desk at college, an entire child’s tea set that had been glued to the underside, completely out of sight.
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