Things here in Ottawa are really heating up as far as graffiti is concerned. Spring cleaning time has brought with it a call from some members of city council to shut down the legal graffiti walls in my fine city.

Ottawa Sun columnist Earl McRae put out this piece today...which you can read at:
[link]

It's a shame, Earl...I really appreciate your honesty and hard-hitting journalism. The work you did getting a smoking room built at the Veterans' retirement home and in lobbying for better domestic violence victims' protection networks...that I really appreciated and got me standing behind ya all the way.

Now I understand that a good bunch of graffiti is a godawful eyesore. A lot of what gets put up in the urban environment is an eyesore. Also, there is a thin line between what constitutes vandalism and what doesnt'- I myself draw the line at being where one's actions negatively impact or inhibit others' use or enjoyment of property.

And I'll come out swinging right off the bat and say that I am not a vandal. I'm not Banksy pulling a Warhol to hype up his work to some gallery (I respect Banksy with all my heart, but as with many artists a lot of his public persona is designed to draw hype and attention to himself)...I work off Jane Jacobs's principle that the health of a city can be gauged by its ability to create and allow for social interaction.

With that in mind, here's my reply to the anti-graf folks in my fair city. I'm doing with a handful of dollars, my own paint and tools and my spare time what you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars figuring out how to do. Your attempts at public art have failed miserably. You gut the interiors of your cities in a war of attrition against the homeless and succeed only in making them unenjoyable by anyone.

It's the street artists- folks with cans, paint, powertools, and a healthy dose of eclecticism- that are healing the city. We're opening up spaces for interaction and brightening people's days. Think of us as the anti-entropy brigade. We're restoring energy to places where it has left and broken down. Also, we're the ones who have to live in the neighbourhoods that you call 'blighted'. We don't have the luxury of jetting off to the Bahamas whenever we feel sick of it all...and so we've got a closer attachment to the city than you suburb-dwellers. And by gawd, it's in need of fixing up...but not from any fault of ours.