When is graffiti art?

BY MARK SCHULTZ : The Herald-Sun
mschultz@heraldsun.com
Jul 18, 2004 : 9:37 pm ET

DURHAM -- A group of local artists is heading for a City Hall showdown this week with a meeting to try to determine when graffiti is art.

Arts Integrity, a loose-knit group, started the debate by letting young people paint graffiti on the walls of its building at the corner of Trinity Avenue and Washington Street, just up the block from the old Durham Athletic Park in downtown Durham.

But the stylized writing, like that found on subway cars in larger cities, has gotten negative reviews from the city's Impact Team, which cleans up unwanted graffiti. Team leader Mitch Archer has given Arts Integrity until today to produce a letter from its landlord authorizing the graffiti. Even then, Archer said he wanted to schedule a meeting this week to determine the artwork's long-term fate.

"We want to make sure things don't get out of hand," Archer said Friday. "To them it may be art. To other folks it's graffiti."

Arts Integrity began holding art events in May. Local artist Will Carter spray-painted the first graffiti on the building, a colossal "A.I." on and around the front door. A couple of days later someone called and asked if he could add some graffiti of his own, and the project took off.

Sitting in the shade behind the building last week, Carter and Amanda Wilson, the leaders of Arts Integrity, defended the graffiti.

"You know what makes this art?" the multi-pierced Wilson, 24, asked. "I can't do that. And with a lot of practice, I still couldn't do that."

Graffiti art -- most of the graffiti artists' "tags" are single words -- takes a lot of skill, said Carter, a 27-year-old sculptor.

"If you look at the elements and principles of design, then you see all of that in the pieces that are up on our walls," he said. "You've got harmony, balance, repetition. You've got use of color that contrasts and complements itself. You've got symmetry. And all of this is what they teach in schools."

The group tells the artists not to use nudity, vulgarity or gang symbols -- and to stay off the brick foundation. When space runs, out, the graffiti is painted over and the process begins anew.

But Archer said he was as much concerned with copycats spreading graffiti to other spots as he was with the Arts Integrity building.

"I went to this conference in Raleigh at the end of June dealing with litter and graffiti. Their take was, even if you give the artists a place to express themselves, eventually it's going to move beyond that," he said. "This today. What is it going to be tomorrow? That's what we can't have."

The city has no graffiti ordinance, Archer said. That's one of the reasons for the meeting he hopes to have this week. In addition to Arts Integrity, he plans to invite representatives from Downtown Durham Inc., the city attorney's office, the city Appearance Commission, the solid waste department and the economic development department, he said.

"We want to remain friendly," Archer said. "We want a win-win. We understand people look at art from different points of view."

But Arts Integrity members don't see why the city is focusing on them when there are bigger problems: drunks hanging out in doorways with open bottles of liquor, break-ins like the three next door in just the few months the arts group has been there.

"If it's wanted, it ceases to be graffiti; it ceases to be defacement," said Richard James, a 23-year-old painter who thinks the graffiti art is awesome. "I don't think seeing graffiti makes people want to do graffiti. I think being bored makes people want to do graffiti."