Visitors GuideA downtown St.John's shopkeeper is concerned about some young people who are going around defacing buildings with graffiti - and he plans on trying to rally other business people. Gord O'Brien of O'Brien's Music Store on Water Street says whoever is doing it is even leaving their trademark, and sometimes working in broad daylight. He confronted two people recently when they marked up his building in the middle of the afternoon. Police arrested one teenager this week in connection with graffiti markings.
For more information on graffiti and how you can help fight it go to www.graffitihurts.org Acts of graffiti, when not permitted by the property owner, are acts of vandalism which should be reported to local authorities or call Crime Stoppers at 1 800 363 8477.
It should be noted that the law has never had an effect on graffiti artists from in the history of modern graffiti. Graffiti artists are rearly concerned with possible legal trouble. If the shopkeepers wish to have their buildings free of unsightly graffiti they should hire/donate a portion of a wall to local artists. Modern graffiti consists of 3 things; tags (the basic signature of a graffiti artist), throw ups or bombs (these are larger and generally consist of one or two colors), and pieces/murals (multi-coloured paintings which highlight the artists talent, usually not done on store fronts because they can take up to 3 hours to finish). The rule's of graffiti are as followed, a throw up can be painted over a tag and a piece or mural can be painted over a throw up. If a business was to provide space for local artist to do murals it would eliminate the senseless vandalism because it would be considered disrespectful for another artist to go over someones piece/mural. Graffiti artists generally respect and do not paint over "traditional" murals such as the retaining wall along duckworth st. I would suggest rather then taking a negative approach to this mounting graffiti problem, shopkeepers should work with them because most graffiti artists are more then willing to do murals for free. Also people who do graffiti are generally not "punks" who just want to vandalize, they consider themselves artists and are very easy to talk to when aproaced with a positive attitude.
I hope this helped. if anyone wants anymore information on the subject feel free to contact me.
Posted by: James at April 6, 2007 09:48 PMas a side note that graffitihurts website takes a very uninformed and negative approach to fixing graffiti problems which generally dont work.
the following link is a better example of what to do.
http://archived.ccc.govt.nz/ourenvironment/2000Charleston/CreativeApproachToGraffitiVandalism.asp
