Graffiti Makes its Mark

Artists are displaying their talents in the East Market Arts District

By Chris Poynter (Email)
The Courier-Journal
November 19, 2006

It was a Thursday afternoon — a Louisville Metro Police car had just cruised by — and Jeral Tidwell was standing on Market Street under an I-65 bridge, spray painting graffiti on a concrete wall.

As interstate traffic rumbled overhead, and people driving and walking by stared curiously, Tidwell’s aerosol cans hissed as they spat out hues of black, green and brown.

Tidwell wasn’t arrested. He wasn’t hassled.

In fact, the city is encouraging him and other artists to use the concrete walls in the East Market Arts District as their canvas.

The Urban Experimental Art Project is a yearlong initiative to encourage graffiti artists to bring their talents from the dark into the daylight.

Under way for seven weeks, it has proved so popular that the scenes on the walls, near the intersection of Market and Hancock streets, change almost daily.

The project was Tidwell’s idea — and he had to persuade a skeptical city government to buy into it.

Last year, Tidwell — who specializes in graffiti, rock posters, T-shirts and skateboard designs, among other things — traveled to Austria for the World Body Painting Festival.

Yes, Tidwell has been known to paint a body or two.

After the event, he traveled to various cities, painting murals on graffiti walls set aside for that very purpose by local governments.

“I was painting right in the middle of the city, during the middle of the day,” he said. “It was wonderful.”

He returned to Louisville, determined to import the idea. He bounced the concept off a friend, Jo Anne Triplett, an arts writer and editor for the Louisville Eccentric Observer newspaper. She also happens to be a member of the Mayor’s Committee on Public Art.

Soon, Tidwell was standing before the committee, pleading his case. Not only did the group embrace the idea, they made Tidwell a commission member.

The underground artist — with a smoothly shaved head and silver earrings — has now gone mainstream, part of the Establishment.

“Can you imagine?” he said earlier this month, still a bit perplexed with his new role.

The urban art project began in October and runs until next October. It’s confined to the concrete bridge support walls on Market, between Jackson and Hancock streets and near Baer Fabrics.

The project will be evaluated next year to determine if it should be continued, expanded or scrapped, said Cynthia Knapek, a member of the public art committee and the executive director of Brightside, the city beautification project.

Knapek said she was skeptical about graffiti being called art. However, her views changed, she said, after she met Tidwell and fellow artist Sean Griffin and viewed their work.

“It was just exceptional,” she said.

The rules for the project are simple: No gang tags. No advertisements. No vulgar scenes. Clean up after yourself. Leave artwork up for two weeks before spraying over it.

The last rule hasn’t worked so well.

In early November, the wall sported everything from a cartoonlike smiling blue shark to a large work by Griffin called “If Walls Could Talk” that featured human faces and mouths.

So many artists have claimed space on the wall that their artwork overlaps — and it’s difficult to discern one piece from another. And, though some of the artwork is high caliber, some is unrefined.

“It’s a matter of opinion,” Tidwell said. “I think half the stuff down there is junky.”

Knapek agreed, but she said, “My hope is that younger artists will see the work others have done and (it will) help elevate their pieces.”

Other American cities, including Seattle, have similar urban art programs.

Michael Killoren, director of the Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, said graffiti, once viewed as vandalism, is becoming accepted art.

“There’s something compelling … about aerosol paint cans and expression,” he said. “If you can channel that energy and talent and creativity into something that is positive and not destructive, that’s a good thing.”

Killoren said people’s divergent views on graffiti raise the ages-old question: What is art?

“Of course it’s controversial and not everyone’s going to agree,” he said. “But in many cases, there is some talent there.”

He cited Andrew Morrison, a Seattle graffiti artist who has moved into the mainstream. Morrison, who earned a full scholarship to study at the Museum School of Fine Art in Boston, painted a mural of Chief Sealth, for whom Seattle was named, on a building in the Seattle area — a portrait that was well done, Killoren said.

Killoren compares the growing acceptance of graffiti, when done in the proper context, to the increasing acceptance of skateboarders, for years viewed as a nuisance to city governments.

Now, Killoren said, cities are building skate parks.

John Begley, director of the Hite Art Gallery at the University of Louisville and a member of the city’s public art committee, said that over the last 25 years, graffiti has moved from the street into art galleries and museums.

The Brooklyn Museum, for example, recently closed a yearlong exhibition of 20 large graffiti paintings.

Begley said he drives past the Louisville urban art project often and notices young people painting on the walls regularly.

“I like the energy,” he said. “And I think it’s a chance to do something that will evolve. It’s looking at art as a process, not as a product.”

Graffiti is not a new art form, he said.

“There was graffiti in Pompeii,” Begley notes. “The anthropologists and archaeologists get a whole different view of everyday life because of that.”

Modern graffiti emerged in the 1960s and has continued to grow with hip-hop culture. Graffiti artists — or vandalism artists, depending on your view — make everything their canvas, from subways to trains to the sides of buildings.

Tidwell said he enjoys getting stopped at train crossings because he watches the graffiti on the rail cars.

“It’s like a rolling art gallery,” he said.

Although the future of the Louisville project won’t be determined until next October, Tidwell said it’s already been a success in his view. The people entering and exiting Baer Fabrics, to buy material for clothes and quilts, often stop to talk to the graffiti artists and observe them at work.

They “are probably about as far away from that genre of art as possible, and they’ve really enjoyed it,” Tidwell said. “Everyone said this is something we should have had a long time ago.”

Source: courier-journal.com