Reposted from a Letter to the Editor in 2009 Express News in Nelson B.C.
Beauty is obviously in the eye of the beholder, but graffiti is obviously only beautiful when it’s commissioned.
When I read the article about the Rotary clubs “Idea” to do murals in Nelsons alleys to combat graffiti, something really bothered me.
Then I recalled there was some Graffiti outside of my alley facing office off Baker St. which I really liked. It was a slender black spray painting of an elongated figure. This piece added to my day, my view, and I looked at it often. One day I looked out the window and either the building owner or the Rotary club came and wiped that piece of artwork from the wall.
This led me to think this really isn’t about whether a mural should be there or not, its about whether an artist is given permission, consent, or ingratiated with an owner or committees power to allow art to be public. I mostly agree with a properties owners rights, but when a back of the alley building is featureless because it doesn’t earn Baker street frontage attention and an anonymous artist places a piece of artwork their for appreciation or enhancement then maybe just maybe we should consider the merit of the piece and its intent before indulging hurt feeling about private property.
Graffiti is not the issue, control is. Take the idea to have murals done in Nelson, the premise is not that graffiti is bad, especially considering the murals noted in the Express are totally in graffiti lettering style. The real issue is that the city, the private owners, or the community don’t want artists to do public art without their approval even if it is on a featureless alley way, but then again when has REAL art ever been about Approval or Consent.
I miss the “vandalism” that expressed a very gentle melancholy outside my office window, but its gone now, and I wasn’t asked my permission for a committee to vandalize that wall I look at everyday with the sterile white paint of their disapproval.