Blog Your Blessings: Graffiti

Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything. (George Lois)

Part of my fascination with graffiti is its anonymous nature. A writer's tag is not his name but his pen name. Graffiti refuses all assumptions about context. You may not deconstruct the work in terms of the creator's life; you can only take it in as a part of your own. In this way, graffiti is pure gift. When you look at a piece, it's all about you--even as it challenges notions of control (some might call it stability) by being big, edgy, and bright, and unsanctioned in a social landscape that defines itself by being clean and gray and dull. It's about you and

My little photo show at a cafe in Cheshire recreates that immediate, enveloping experience of being anonymous and in the art. These pieces are from Connecticut, primarily. They are gifts from the lives of some folks I have the privilege of meetings, but most are the works of strangers. I could tell visitors where they are from, and they could wonder how a lush suburb in Connecticut could sport a graffito of a dead man. Or that Connecticut could host so many abandoned toxic industrial sites (brown fields) that draw people to paint.

It is remarkable to me that artists will risk life and limb and their own health by standing for hours on toxic ground to paint pictures that may not ever be seen by anyone other than themselves. What is so compelling--so utterly unstoppable--about the creative process that being known for one's art, receiving credit for one's work, and perhaps cashing in on one's talent don't even figure into the conversation?

I'm grateful to my friends and family who came out to support me in presenting all that I find beautiful in this art. I am equally grateful to the many in the bunch who over the years have challenged me about my respect for this art that is to many simply a form of vandalism. They have caused me to think hard, to think openly, to entertain opposition, and to love an honest conversation. They are all my teachers. And I'm grateful for the opportunity to meet fellow blogger Digital Flower Pictures. Thanks to Mary, too, for her supportive email, which I received just as I headed out the door. I know some extraordinary, good folks, and I love them all.

If graffiti messes things up, it messes up the way we think things should be and how we identify the ordinary. To my mind, it's a delightful and beautiful mess that points to the extraordinary beauty in each of us.