Allowing Graffiti in Public Places

http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2007/09/creating-public-spaces-for-invited-art.html

This blog reports on a new project instituted in Brownsville to allow kids to create murals and cover up walls that have already been splattered with graffiti. The blogger says this new project will have two big resulting benefits. First, it will steer potential graffiti artists away from walls that might have already been painted with previous artwork and secondly, it will give graffiti artists (and artists in general) a designated place to display their work instead of putting it somewhere completely uninvited. There is hope that this will make graffiti artists more responsible and less likely to deface public property. Overall, the project benefits everybody. It helps out the owners of the property that would normally be defaced by graffiti artists, it benefits the city and its residents who would typically be forced to look at whatever was placed there by any graffiti artists, and it also benefits the graffiti artists themselves who now have a designated place to purposefully display their work.

I chose to write about this article because I have always found graffiti art very interesting and very artistic in its own unique way. Although I consider it art, I do not exactly agree with its placement and displaying it all over public property. Finding a legal way to celebrate graffiti art is a great alternative and should be instituted in more places now.