Stencil Graffiti

Sorry, WAM, but I wanted to do stencil graffiti before this class.  Living in a country with an incredible amount of ‘tags’ (Italy) got me really thinking about what I would like to say on a wall.  “It’s like staring at a wall” could have a positive connotation for once.  Walls everywhere appreciative street artists’ efforts to help them become more attractive.  It would be really cool to get someone to pass by and smile because there is a thoughtful, creative, provocative, or downright funny piece of art that (legally speaking) doesn’t belong.  It doesn’t have to be an elaborate idea; simplicity often enacts the most primal emotions.  Banksy and his movie Exit Through the Giftshop also instill within me a desire to do something creative with the world around me.

"What's the point?" can be the point.

There are so many bare walls throughout Champaign!  I wish store owners would hire artists to spruce up their bland brick walls.

It looks as though someone (maybe two people) tagged the old La Bamba restaurant on Sixth Street just north of Green.  There’s a silhouette of a boy playing trumpet that cheers me up every time I look at it.  I’d title the graffiti ‘Passion and Exuberance.’  It looks as though someone else added to it because there are musical notes in a different color and style coming out of the trumpet.  Also, I’m sure I’ve seen another image of the boy somewhere, except that boy did not have the musical notes with the horn.  The artists put the image right on the side wall of the building and doesn’t fully utilize the environment.  Unlike Banksy who will pretend that the wall could be in another setting, these artists simply want to place a jovial picture in an otherwise bland area.  I really appreciate it because it’s the displaced nature that lifts my mood every time.  The out-of-place idea could have been utilized better if it, say, had the boy more visible and doing something out of the ordinary.  For instance, if he was higher up and walking on a tightrope while playing the trumpet, it would get more people’s attention and would still have the same youthfulness, but it would lose some of its innocence in the process.  I feel like James Elkins, author of Use Your Eyes, would love it because he, like the American Beauty character Ricky Fitts, thinks that anything can be beautiful.  I think he’d be enamored just because he asks questions like, “What’s the story behind this?  Why would someone put it there, and what emotions was he hoping to evoke with it?”  While I agree that anything deserves initial appreciation for its presence, we just don’t share the same affinity for grass.  I think Drucker would not really appreciate it because of its simplicity.  It doesn’t say much, but I think the point of it is to bring you back to a youthful memory, if only for a moment.

Going back to the Elkins article, I want to briefly talk about his appreciation for the world around him.  The “Everything is fascinating” train of thought helps people to be inquisitive, but there must be as much skepticism as admiration for what you’re experiencing.  It’s a good start, though, to becoming an opinionated, ‘thinking’ person.

Some questions I have that pertain to the reading, though:

• I think that Drucker’s point about everything needing to be informative and purposeful is a very interesting one.  Does graffiti need to have a point?
• Seeing some tags on the walls makes me upset, while other tags look beautiful.  Thus, the age-old question: Exactly what can you consider ‘art’?
• Should the story behind the artwork affect how people should view some piece?

Oh, and for anyone in Champaign-Urbana, be sure to check out Brad Thorp’s ‘Editor’s Note’ in this week’s edition of the buzz.  He gives great commentary on graffiti and what, in general, can be considered art.