Host unlimited photos at slide.com for FREE!

As graffiti has gained credibility in the mainstream (click here for more on that), I have enjoyed thinking of the time when my interest in graffiti marked me as somehow dark and deviant among the more conservative of my beloveds, who challenged me often and much about the nature of this art. Their challenges made me think hard and long about what I liked and why. I have loved graffiti all my life for many reasons even if it is obnoxious and unacceptable by definition. It is as beautiful as it is gritty and raw--which features are also beautiful to me. The other day I had the opportunity to spend some time with a friend who was willing to have a look at this stuff that I love. Our time together got me thinking again about some of the reasons I love graffiti:

1. The writing on the wall--the lines, colors, shapes, and textures--is an urban calligraphy that I find exciting and beautiful.

2. The other day I found myself talking with some old friends and a new one about graffiti. This person I had never met before mapped his town by its graffiti sites. Graffiti created a connection through conversation. I love that.

3. On my own and with others, I have set out looking for graffiti. We wander and
look and see things in completely new ways.


4. When we find it, we stand back and enjoy the color. The wall stops being the wall; it becomes the world of another story.

5. Often, I visit legal walls where the writers have the permission of the owners to write. This work is painstakingly beautiful.

6. Despite its being legal--a no-no for many writers who argue legal graffiti is not graffiti at all--it is a challenge to the grey people.

7. Graffiti is an artistic idiom that challenges my ideas about order, creativity, harmony, honesty.


8. Always, I come to the conclusion that there is no finer way to be challenged than through art; graffiti counts.


9. Graffiti and its pseudonyms and spontaneity, strength and personality, reminds me that we are alone and anonymous


10. but no less beautiful because of these curious conditions.


11. By recognizing these things for what they are, we find a way out of them. In those places where civic-minded mural projects have grown up in response to graffiti, we can see a creative dialogue writ large on the walls. That's my kind of struggle.


12. We connect--under bridges, on the sides of buildings, on mailboxes, in the street--


13. because we want to be here and we want you to know it and to love us for the magic and creativity that defines us heart and soul.


It's all good.


More Thursday Thirteen