Graffiti Part I - Lessons in Life Through Art
I imagine if I were an accountant, my priorities as a parent would look fairly different. Maybe my dining room would be meticulous and clutter free with plenty of room to navigate around all the furniture; not bombarded with art carts spilling out with makers and colored pencils in every Prismacolor hue imaginable. Perhaps there would be 1 or 2 high scoring math tests neatly displayed at eye level on the refrigerator instead of multiple laundry lines of sketches, drawings, and collages haphazardly hung on every available wall space.
But the fact is, I am not an accountant. I am an artist. So art has a big presence in our family. Art can be found on every square inch of wall space in our home, in the piles of filled sketchbooks and journals. It’s scrawled on all the margins and boarders of the girls math workbooks. It takes over all the shelves and counters in the form of sculptures made of every recyclable material. And while balancing a checkbook and money management is an essential life skill (especially for artists!), I will say I am a parent that says yes to ALL the art!
It was a no brainer when fellow homeschool mom and artist Stacey from Rebel Traveler approached me about taking our girls for a graffiti street art adventure in NYC.
What do you get when 2 photog moms take their artist kids to see art and create art? A LOT of photos!
I am always looking for opportunities to learn from people who are masters in their field—artists, engineers, writers, anyone who’s a big time nerd about their passion. You often don’t have to look very far, or for extra letters at the end of a name, to find them in your community. These people speak simply so that even young children can understand the most complex concepts, while evoking curiosity and wonder from the most aged dreamers.
Audrey explains the characteristics of the Brazilian style graffiti behind her.
With Audrey, our guide from Graff Tours, the streets of Bushwick, Brooklyn turned into an exquisite living galleries. A veteran homeschool mom herself, Audrey was a wealth of knowledge of all things art history and had a way of engaging audiences young and old. We learned about the history of the neighborhood, of it’s people, it’s buildings, and what they are today. Viola got a kick out of standing outside the factory building of Twin Marquis, the supplier of all the noodles for all the Panda Expresses in the US.
The appeal of making ones mark on something considered off limits seems almost an innate part of humanity. Graffiti has been around for millennia, from early cave drawings, to etched vandalism protesting authority figures in ancient Egypt and Greece. I remember numerous times as a child drawing on the walls knowing full well I was balking my parents authority. While the modern day graffiti we know of today finds it’s roots from hip hop culture, its message at its core has remained the same. “I am here.”
Today it just comes in forms of pigeon kings and vibrant propagating leaves.
Audrey showed us the difference between tags, throw-ups, fills, and burners—about the respect and understood hierarchy between artists of how work is only build up and added to a wall in that order, never backwards. It can take years of practice with a spray paint can, whether in art school or on a highway overpass, to create a unique and identifiable burner. We learned that unless you have written permission by the property owner, all graffiti is illegal in NYC and punishable by jail, fine, or community service, and often arbitrarily doled out based on ones walk of life. She pointed out works by wheat-paste graffiti artists and we discovered how one small repeatable graphic can start a movement to create social change.
The girls walk past several burners along Meserole St.
The boundary between art and vandalism is a not so easily defined, especially in the street art world. Perhaps that boundary is only an illusion made up from our own social constructs. Who decides what is art? Who does the art belong to? What makes art “good” or “bad” and for that matter is there such a thing? A blank wall is just a wall, but the relationship between artist, building owner, and public perception is complex—something that artists and authoritarians (and the public) have duking out for centuries. Don’t believe me? Go read The Agony and the Ecstasy. What a love about modern day graffiti and street art is seeing this battle play out in real time in neighborhoods, the constant fight for a blank canvas, of who owns what, the subversive acts permission and submission, real or perceived, the never ending power struggle of who has more influence over the final product.
As an artist myself, I have the upmost respect for those graffiti artists not only daring to create work, but to risk arrest to practice and hone their skills takes a whole other level of dedication. While I am not one to condone defacing property, especially nature, I can certainly appreciate the fact that if you do something enough you’re bound to get good at it. At some point your illegal vandalism becomes “good enough", accepted, sometimes even commissioned into street art by a patron. The question is, are you tenacious enough to do it?
Want to see what the girls created from their hands on graffiti workshop? Check out their spray painting skills in part 2 of this graffiti blog post.