The World is our Canvas

Don't you hate it when you're duped by a crazy internet rumor?  It was just about a year ago that one of those got me particularly badly - another iteration of the identification and arrest of the well known graffiti artist Banksy.  My reaction at the time was visceral, for two reasons I think.  First, because Banksy's work is brilliant - do a google search and enrich your life today.  But more significantly, I think I was really disturbed at the idea that what Banksy had been doing was a crime.

from Key West, FL.  trefpool.com

Graffiti, public art, makes us and our communities better in every way.

Graffiti is the ultimate expression of the backlash against cookie-cutter mass production capitalism.  It is art for the home brewer, the musician, the creator.  It resists the tremendous gravity of uniformity and helps express and even define the personality of local communities.

From Vancouver, Canada.  trefpool.com

Graffiti is inherently both democratic and evolutionary.  The expression of free speech in the public commons is a cornerstone of the American Constitution and the proper functioning of our democracy.  Graffiti is the visual manifestation of speech, an enduring documentation of ideas and dreams that accept and amalgamate contributions from all who wish to participate.  Like the digital twitterverse, the palette of local graffiti expresses the dominant zeitgeist.  If money is speech, why can't art be speech?

And finally, graffiti stirs the imagination.  It challenges the rigid frameworks that structure most of our interactions.  These public works of art create dissonance, sometimes beautiful sometimes jarring, that can stir moments of creativity and inspiration.