RALEIGH--Out on the overgrown property that was once the Polk Youth Institution stands an abandoned woodshop and two short towers. Graffiti covers nearly every available square inch of the walls in a clash of colors and styles, a visual dissonance created by various and sundry artists, students, punks and passers-by.
The images range from elaborately detailed pieces to quick tags, from cartoon characters to earnest political commentary. "If I Was From Texas, I'd Be Ashamed" is right around the corner from two bunnies coupling. Graffiti spills over onto light poles and bakes into the asphalt of the vast and empty parking lot. Discarded bottles of Mountain Dew and rusting cans of high-gloss Krylon are the only traces of the artists who have come before, their work painted over by subsequent artists on the constantly changing metal canvas.

This is a "free wall" or permission wall, a legal space to paint graffiti. The N.C. Museum of Art, which owns the Polk prison site, invited artists to express themselves after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This summer, the museum will demolish the free wall to make way for a park, and the most visible evidence of Raleigh's small graffiti scene will disappear.

But in many ways, the free wall embodies the debate about graffiti. It isn't what most people consider art, no matter that its sponsor is a major art museum. (In fact, plenty of residents would prefer that graffiti artists be remanded to a place like Polk Correctional.) It inspires the contempt of many people, who see graffiti of any kind as a blight, an eyesore and an invitation to crime.

The free wall also isn't what most graffiti artists consider graffiti. Free walls provoke the dismissive ire of purists, who say that true graffiti was and always will be illegal. They insist that the real art lies in the "getting over"-- getting around and getting your name out there. They brandish their respirator masks, backpacks full of Rust-Oleum and their outlaw image.

At the museum-sanctioned free wall, nothing is so furtive or illicit. Girl Scout troops have painted here. Moms drop off their kids at the wall and bring them lunch. And so it goes at other local free walls -- the free expression tunnels at N.C. State and Duke are dominated by fraternity party announcements.

"Graffiti, at its foundation, will always be painting illegally," said Sean Kernick, a professional graffiti artist, illustrator and designer who lives in Raleigh.

But wall or no wall, graffiti and graffiti subculture will always exist on the periphery -- underneath overpasses and bridges, near railroad tracks and on passing boxcars, and other ignored parts of the city. In a place where it can be difficult to differentiate between the miles of anonymous office parks, housing subdivisions and big box stores, the urge to scrawl "I was here," is powerful.

Born in the city

Graffiti emerged in New York City in the 1970s as part of hip-hop culture. Keith Haring began painting symbolic figures on subway walls. About the same time, a delivery messenger began scrawling the tag "Taki 183" around the city as he made his professional and artistic rounds.

Graffiti art caught on, and the mainstream embraced and absorbed it. Contemporary art galleries, including Raleigh's LUMP gallery, now recognize it as a legitimate art form and regularly show the work of graffiti artists. Eleven-year-olds learn about graffiti in social studies class, and learn how to make it in art class. Mayors have ceremoniously added the final spray to feel-good community graffiti mural projects. There is even a "gospel graffiti" movement among Christian kids.

Advertisers have also co-opted the form to add "youth market street cred" when they sell cola or computers. Companies hire graffiti artists to design logos, Web sites and packaging. Once it was known as "the language of the ignored," a grass-roots vehicle for inner-city kids with no voice to be heroic and say something bigger and louder than they were allowed. Now the grass-roots is AstroTurf.

"What graffiti was in the 1970s sure as hell isn't what it is today," Kernick said. "Graffiti culture is so big now; this is the flavor of the month. Just selling to that market alone is millions of dollars."

Kernick has a couple of heavy photo albums that document his long career in graffiti, starting with his first piece in high school in Philadelphia. Two graffiti writers took him out to write one night, because he could draw. He was in 11th grade. The whole world of graffiti subculture was opening up to him, and he was into it.

"We'd do stuff, right in the street," Kernick said. "There's nothing better than finishing something you've worked really hard on, and the sun comes up, and people are walking by and seeing it."

His passion now is his legal illustration, which is directly derived from graffiti. Among the design services he offers, he will paint your name in graffiti letters on a scale model of a freight train. He moved with his fiancee to Raleigh from Brooklyn, N.Y., long considered a major locus of graffiti art and innovation. Here he can afford to pursue his illustration full time.

He talked about the wild innovations New York graffiti artists are doing now: One artist used a compressed air gun to create gigantic signs with roller paint. He was able to reach the upper floors of buildings from the ground. Another stuck plastic adhesive-backed designs all over subway walls and buildings.

"There's so many people doing amazing things," he said, "and so many cops trying to stop them."

Cheap thrills

At the heart of most graffiti artists' drive to paint is the creative impulse. Some people spend a lifetime perfecting their letterforms, Kernick said.

Sometimes, however, the creative impulse is mixed with a desire to deliver a kick in the teeth to society and its concept of property. And if they're being honest, many graffiti writers might admit to the surge of adrenaline at getting away with it, and the incredible stories they have to tell afterward.

Kernick has the requisite battle scar, 4 inches running down the inside of his forearm with a metal plate inside, a souvenir from the night he fell off a rooftop while trying to paint. He fell past the ground level and onto some concrete steps, breaking his arm. He has been caught before and let go; he has been caught and jailed for three days.

Artists go to great lengths to find a place to paint. Stewart Sineath, a 23-year-old painter living in Chapel Hill, once found a spot in his hometown of Burlington that he could reach on foot, somewhere he could spend hours on a piece without getting seen by passing cars. He had only to walk along the side of the highway, jump two fences, run through the woods and hike through mud to reach it.

Sineath, whose work has been shown at LUMP gallery, has traveled to New York and studied the styles and letterforms. But he no longer paints illegally, he says, because of a few "bad episodes," such as the time he was chased by a man on the University of North Carolina campus.

"I guess you could say I'm kind of a fraidy-cat," Sineath said. "A lot of the kids out there, if you cover up their stuff, they'll want to start a fight. And there's been horror stories about graffiti artists getting beat up by property owners or police officers. I just want to have a good time. I don't want to get in trouble."

Local graffiti artists say that a small group of talented guys regularly puts in work, but that the area's car culture and suburban sprawl work against the incubation of a graffiti scene. Except for freight trains, there aren't many places or surfaces where a graffiti piece can stay up for a while and be seen. And it's not amazing if no one sees it.

"The people who do it, who have really impressive skills, you'd pass them on the street and not even notice," Kernick said. "They're not accepted, they're funny-looking. You can tell by the way a person dresses, by the way they carry stuff. A writer can tell another writer."

All it would take for Raleigh to develop a real scene, Kernick said, is for the right person to move to town, make his mark, teach other people, and build a scene.

Report, record, remove

Debbie Regentin is a sergeant with the Raleigh Police Department's Threat Assessment Unit. She keeps a file with photographs of all graffiti found in the city. Graffiti has not been a major problem in Raleigh recently, she says. There have been five to 10 arrests in the past year, some involving political graffiti, because of the Iraq war.

Regentin credits her unit's aggressive "report, record, remove" approach with erasing the graffiti quickly.

"If you leave graffiti up, it really is the 'broken-window' syndrome," she said. "It sends the message that the neighborhood doesn't care. You've got to stop it, or it'll take over a community."

Regentin's unit is exploring a proposal for a new "free wall" in Raleigh, she said. "I do think there should be some expression. Some of the artwork I've seen is beautiful."