When graffiti comes to your mind,
depending on which generation you were born in, you might have a different
opinion on this. If I can speak in technical terms, graffiti is a crime. If the
police catch you, you will be arrested and charged with vandalism and defacing
property. Although all of this is true, how is it that the generation of the
present doesn’t view it as a crime?
I caught up
with a personal friend who is a graffiti artist for an interview and while I
can’t reveal his name, he goes by “Blur” in the graffiti world. Blur firsthand
knows how serious the police are about vandalism; being arrested on multiple
occasions. I guess jail wasn’t an eye-opener for him as he still goes on about
his graffiti business. As Blur bluntly puts it, “It’s just a different
lifestyle, man”. As I dwell on his words, I come to realize that he is right.
Take a second and think: When have you
ever actually seen a person commit this heinous crime? Nine times out of ten
you never see them. I like to consider these artists as shadows of the night.
We see graffiti everywhere and the type of graffiti really varies. On one
street corner, you might see a “gang-related” graffiti art and on another, you
might see a mural on a building paying tribute to a fallen brother of the
neighborhood. It’s still graffiti.
Whenever I see graffiti, I always take
a second and appreciate the art. I know the property is defaced but it still
doesn’t take away the beauty of the spray paint on concrete wall. No one ever
wonder how much the equipment costs or how much time the artist takes to
perfect their skill. All the older generation wants to know is how long is it
going to take to remove this painted garbage off their walls.
Moral of
all this is that graffiti or not, they are still artists who respect the craft
of art in a whole. The newer generation can come to appreciate this unorthodox
style of art in great praise.
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