Graffiti art wall painted over

Petaluma,CA,USA

November 24, 2004

In 1998, a Petaluma graffiti artist went to Al Stack, who runs a business on Lakeville Street, for permission for himself and his friends to paint Stack's back wall, approximately 60 feet long and 10 feet high, just east of the railroad tracks that parallel Hopper Street.

Stack granted written permission, and the young artists began to create a colorful, often-changing mural of graffiti art that became well-known throughout the graffiti community, and the local art community as well.

Last weekend, the wall was completely painted over with beige paint.

Local photographer Scott Hess has gone there often to record the work. He went by the wall Saturday morning, "and the wall was shining in all its colorful glory. It never looked better, with lots of new, high-quality art."

A Santa Rosa graffiti artist, who has painted at the wall since the beginning, said probably 25 or 30 people painted there.

"People came from Austria, Los Angeles, New Jersey, San Diego, Sacramento. People from San Francisco came up a lot. It was a famous wall in the graffiti community."

He said there used to be a free graffiti art wall in Sonoma, but it no longer exists. This was the only local legal, public spot for graffiti artists.

A sergeant at the Petaluma Police Department confirmed the wall had been painted over, with Boy Scouts doing the work. A police officer was on the scene, she said. Calls for more information about who ordered the over-painting were not returned by press time.

The Santa Rosa artist, who asked to remain anonymous, said he had spoken to Stack earlier this year, and Stack said he liked the artwork, but he had a problem with the trash, "careless graffiti writers leaving cans and garbage.

"Over the years," the Santa Rosa artist said, "there have been kids that have gone there and cleaned up the mess, trying to keep the area clean so people weren't talking badly about it."

The police, he said, "always had a problem with it, because it was trespassing on railroad property. Although the wall was legal to paint, where we were standing was trespassing. Once a cop even told me, 'If you can find a way to hang so you're not touching the ground, I wouldn't have a problem with your painting.'"

The Santa Rosa artist said he and others prefer to call the art on the wall "'style writing' -- massive, wild, colorful lettering, not quick, sloppy scribbles."

Hess said he was "shocked, angered and saddened when he drove by the wall on Sunday afternoon and it had been obliterated with bland beige paint. That wall was an amazing, vibrant, ever-changing piece of art, running along the roadway like a colorful serpent. It was an exuberant uprising from young, passionate painters. To come in and destroy it in such a thoughtless, arrogant way seems to me to be a spiritual violation against the energy of youth.

"That's my gut reaction. Hopper Street is a much less exciting and hopeful place at this point." Meanwhile, he said, the wall was tagged Tuesday morning with scrawling pieces of graffiti.

"Are we ready to take a perpetual stand in this place against our young regional style writers in the name of sanitized uniformity?

The Santa Rosa artist said he was willing to step up and be "a voice for artists who paint at the wall, if that is needed. There must be some kind of agreement we can work out to get the wall re-opened."

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