Since posting about identifying a young tagger in Kerrisdale, we’ve received a significant amount of feedback.
Without question, virtually every single email we’ve received about this incident has been positive… people are pretty tired of seeing the tags and other graffiti in our (or any) neighbourhood, and are glad to hear that the community is taking it seriously.
We did receive a comment posted onto the blog, no doubt from a local tagger, who viewed tagging as adding “character to the city”. While it might be argued that some graffiti artists are actual ‘artists’, like whoever painted this mural behind IGA at 41st & Dunbar, the other 99.9% of what is seen in the area could only be fairly categorized as a talentless mess. Either way, whether you have talent or not, it’s a pretty clear concept that if you are marking up someone else’s building, car or whatever, it’s a crime. Hopefully it’s also clear that with more CCTV cameras being installed every day, the chances of being caught is increasing dramatically.
In terms of graffiti that can ‘add character’ without causing any damage…
Paul “Moose” Curtis is an artist who has become famous as a ‘reverse graffiti artist’ (or ‘clean tagger’)… and most recently made the news for a mural he did in San Francisco… (a mural that was commissioned by Green Works, a Clorox brand). Click on the video below to watch a short documentary of how he created a 140 foot mural without any paint… or causing any damage.