Rant of an Artistic Bent

During a recent Facebook conversation with a friend currently living in New Zealand I said I would update my blog if she updated her own blog as well. So Kendrie posted about all of the adventures she got up to over Christmas... which is way more interesting than anything that I could write about. Seriously, I can’t compete with minor earthquakes and jumping out of planes. If you’d rather read her post:

http://flipflopflotsam.wordpress.com/

But I’m holding up my end of the deal.

This was just going to start out as another post of urban art in Halifax. Then I heard the news from back home that city council had a long, interesting debate on graffiti in Mississauga. While I didn’t hear the entire debate and I’m sure both sides of the spectrum were expressed, the negative camp got all the press. Headlines screaming graffiti is on the rise and that it needs to be eradicated. Ideas such as installing security cameras all over the city so that (young) people will be afraid to commit such horrible crimes as tagging a piece of concrete with paint or a marker. Restricting sale of spray paint to adults 18 or older.

And then my own councillor, Katie Mahoney, who I have voted for and has represented my ward for years, had to stand up and say something profoundly ridiculous.  Images on TV of graffiti are a bad influence, so Rick Mercer’s rants in Graffiti Alley in Toronto are part of the problem.

Umm.... what? If you don’t believe me:

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/12/rick-mercers-rants-damaging-anti-graffiti-cause-mississauga-councillor/

Sure, that must be part of the problem... seriously? I understand council being concerned about people defacing public monuments and private property. The idiots who recently ran around a park in Mississauga and destroyed it (setting fire to burlap tree covers, smashing stuff, etc)- that is clearly not okay. But every kind of visual public display is being lumped in the same category here. Destructive, hateful messages crudely tagged to a bench are not the same things as an image that has been artfully, carefully applied. Such as this example on the side of a closed parking garage near me in Halifax:

Peaking out of the weeds, it makes me smile every time.

I grew up an artsy kid in Mississauga and I can say that the suburbs are not exactly a nurturing environment for my kind. The arts are being seriously underfunded and taken out of the school curriculum piece by piece, particularly in the higher grade levels.

I’ve never done anything that could conventionally be called graffiti, but with the broad brush the City of Mississauga is using I’ve done a number of things that would make me guilty. I can remember in elementary school we painted on the sidewalk in the schoolyard to celebrate the school’s carnival. A few weeks later my mermaid was completely gone, because the city had come along and painted over her with black paint. One of my favourite memories of high school was when I got to help paint a mural on one wall in a history classroom. We did it while the school was closed (between exams and final grades being released) and the teacher who paid for the supplies only told the school about it when we were half done. Thank you again Mr. Malik! Last time I checked it’s still there.

The suburbs also features a lot of ugly, plain concrete structures- underpasses, waterways, bridges, and so on. Even diehard minimalists would find it hard to find beauty in them. I've also never heard anyone wax poetically about the beauty of metal utility boxes. So, in an environment where art is de-emphasized as something useless and you are surrounded by lots of concrete, council is surprised that there is a graffiti problem! How about funding community arts programs? How about starting a project something like the painted utility boxes in Halifax?

I think there is a place for thoughtful, well-executed graffiti in the urban environment. It brings colour and surprise to what can sometimes be a monotonous environment. So take a few steps back city council from blanketing the city with cameras and consider some more joyful alternatives please.  

Thank you. Rant over.