Graffiti art or vandalism

Four local graffiti artists visited the John D. O'Bryant African-American Institute Thursday to discuss a taboo culture.
Marc Larocque
Issue date: 6/20/07 Section: The Inside

Media Credit: News Staff Photo/Eric Baumann

There are elliptical symbols scrawled on surfaces around the city: on pillars, under overpasses, low walls atop apartment buildings, the side of buildings like the Hollywood Nail Salon and in alleys alongside Hemenway Street.

While it is a felony to tag a building, graffiti is everywhere. The art form has crept onto campus, tempting some Northeastern students to partake in the taboo culture, which has spawned its own stars, enemies, specialized tools and vocabulary.

On Thursday night, four local "taggers," or graffiti artists, huddled in the foyer of the John D. O'Bryant African-American Institute. They reveled in the work of "writers," a more esteemed term for taggers, who spray paint Boston buildings with cryptic monikers like So, Teaze, Ryze and Dose.

As these taggers spotted police officers outside, they became concerned, remembering that anyone in the crowd could be a member of Boston's Vandal Squad, a division of undercover cops.

"They hang out on trains and take away taggers' rights using a lot of circumstantial evidence," said Jason Talbot, 30, of Boston. "Their goal is to stop people from breaking the law when they break it themselves, performing illegal searches. It's really disrespectful to the art form."

But the authorities aren't enough to stop the taggers; such disdain seems irrelevant to many who feel their form of expression is far more benign than their other available options.

"We are so pleased to have this presentation here at Northeastern," said Nuri Chandler-Smith, coordinator for the African-American Institute, when introducing Jim Prigoff. A street art historian, Prigoff began explaining that graffiti is nothing new: primitive man began the trend, drawing symbols on cave walls, he said.

Prigoff began to photograph spraycan art in the 1980s, after two decades documenting murals in Europe and Mexico. He said he couldn't help recording the "other writings on the wall," and how they evolved throughout cities like San Francisco, New York and Barcelona, Spain.