The City Auditor’s office is poised to release a three-month study analyzing Seattle’s graffiti problem, as SeattleCrime.com first reported. The study—which was commissioned by City Council Members Tim Burgess and Tom Rasmussen—is set to be released later this month but a draft copy was obtained by The Stranger (draft .pdf here), and street artists are already calling bullshit on its findings.
- karl_addison via Flickr
The report includes a street count of graffiti found in four areas—two in Capitol Hill, downtown, and First Hill. Here’s what has local street artists (and appreciators) pissed: while city officials found 556 examples of graffiti during their street count, they discovered “no instances of what could be called artistic tagging.” Street art is defined in the report as “colorful or complex… masterpieces.”
“It’s ridiculous,” says street artist Scratchmaster Joe. “Even if you call art subjective, even if you hate all graffiti, not finding one instance of art takes the credibility right out of their report.”
Groups like Seattle Streetart are devoted to capturing the best of the city’s fleeting graffiti. The group boasts over 35,000 images of street art uploaded by 1,800 members. Clearly, a large number of people in the city appreciate graffiti’s artistic value.
And then there are folks like Neighbors Working Together for a Clean and Safe Queen Anne, who’ve canvassed their neighborhood over the last six weeks with signs encouraging residents to call 9-1-1 if they spot “any suspicious looking graffiti-related activity.”
“Graffiti has been identified as a problem by many residents and business owners,” says Rasmussen, explaining the need for the report. “What I wanted to know—in a nutshell—was how big of a problem graffiti is, what our procedures for handling it are, and how those can be improved.”
Here’s what the report found: Out of the 900 people surveyed about graffiti by the city auditor, only 40 percent called it a “medium to very big problem.”
The report also found that stickers, which aren’t officially considered graffiti, are nonetheless the most prevalent type of tagging in Seattle; the day-long street sweep of graffiti recorded that 40 percent of all tags were stickers. And contrary to what you hear from the property owners and businesspeople who are lobbying the council to get tougher on graffiti, the auditor’s report states that public property—like streets signs and utility poles—is twice as likely to be tagged as private property.
The city auditor’s report makes nine recommendations for updating how the city handles graffiti, a few of which include adding stickers as a subcategory, making graffiti artists subject to higher rates of restitution, acquiring a dedicated graffiti cop to patrol the streets, and creating diversion programs for offenders.
But graffiti artists say these efforts won’t accomplish much. “I already thought stickers were illegal,” says one artist who requested his name not be used. “What good is one cop going to do? And what are they going to divert me to, soccer?”
The graffiti artists I spoke with all echoed the same sentiment: The city can’t stop graffiti. The next best thing is to work to make it better. They want more public art walls. “If people have the time and opportunity to practice, the graffiti you see on the streets is going evolve,” says Scratchmaster Joe. “You’ll see more well-planned pieces.”
- .Ariel via Flickr
- This is street art
Art walls aren’t anything new—many businesses in Belltown and other areas of the city already embrace them—but the City Auditor’s report dismisses them as ineffective. Scratchmaster Joe says that’s a mistake—art walls won’t stop graffiti but they do prevent bad graffiti from happening. “It worked with the Georgetown graffiti wall,” he says, and it’s worked in other places around the city, such as the Monique Lofts on Capitol Hill. Residents from the condo building approached Scratchmaster Joe and his partner Nko—who run a public art company called Handsome Murals—to paint the side of their building nearly two years ago. “Our wall was tagged weekly,” says condo owner Luke Wilson. “We spent nearly every Saturday painting over it to avoid fines from the city. All we were doing was creating a blank canvas for new crappy tags. One day it occurred to me, ‘Fight art with art.’”
The condo board got funding from two city grants to pay for a giant, colorful, crystal-like mural and since then, says Wilson, “I don’t think it’s been tagged since. I can’t begin to calculate the hours and money we’ve saved by doing this. Hopefully we’ve paved the way for other people to consider similar projects.”
They got one thing right.
There is no “art” in what the taggers in Seattle put up, especially when they tag other artists artworks and murals.
NONE.
haters gonna hate
art walls are the only way… get with it BLIND Seattle government
These “street artists” should look into the concept of “buying their own canvasses” if they’re so intent on the “opportunity to practice” their art.
@3: I pretty much agree, but there are still some obnoxious assholes that will tag over murals (with ugly, boring tags).
@4 Hooo, I laughed and laughed. “Canvasses”! What is this, 1860s France?
Forty percent is a pretty significant slice of the population. Seems like a lot more worth while to listen to the concerns to the 40% who care about graffiti than the 4% who bike to work.
But public art walls are nice. Who doesn’t like art walls?
I don’t get the illegal graffiti artists who complain when their work is removed by the city. The whole point of the work is that it’s temporary. If the artist wants a social and legal stamp of a approval then why don’t they hang art in galleries?
You can’t be an outsider artist and not an outsider artist at the same time. One or the other.
Art walls aren’t anything new—many businesses in Belltown and other areas of the city already embrace them—but the City Auditor’s report dismisses them as ineffective. Scratchmaster Joe says that’s a mistake—art walls won’t stop graffiti but they do prevent bad graffiti from happening.
I think he must mean “art walls with murals created by former taggers” (like the one pictured in the article), because certainly the city art murals in my neighborhood get the shit tagged out of them every week or so.
@7 if they’d just let us get a free pass for using shotguns to hunt taggers, we wouldn’t have a problem in Seattle – it would all move to Sea-Tac and Bellevue and Kent.
don’t try an tell me that the murals that line the busway are ‘art’. because they’re shit. i’d rather the taggers went nutz.
@9 Dumbest Slog Comment thus far today! Congrats!
Thanks MIS. I aim to please .. could you step a little to the right?
@ #7: i don’t think any seattle street artists or graffiti artists are complaining that their art is removed. street art is fleeting, and that is what is known. it’s more of an issue about being lumped in to the same category as careless taggers who disrespect other art and of course others’ property. just because there are irresponsible, self-involved taggers that get up around the city so frequently doesn’t mean that seattle has no street art…
http://www.flickr.com/groups/seattlestre…
Fuckers like these are why spray paint is under lock and key at Home Depot.
I went to Home Depot today and got spray paint off of a shelf TODAY.. there was no lock and key involved.
get your facts straight Greg
while city officials found 556 examples of graffiti during their street count, they discovered “no instances of what could be called artistic tagging.”
Entirely possible given that the lifespan of these are so short. Are any of the pieces in the flickr images you linked to actually still there?
So that’s how you get the city to pay for your paint. thanks!
I just clicked the link for Seattle’s Streetart and looked at the first three pages of photos. Although there is the occasional artwork, most of it is just crappy graffitti and not what I’d call art at all. Fancy lettering is not art, sorry, not even if it resembles caligraphy (which this crap doesn’t anyway). I can understand why the report said there was no street art since the images are fleeting and even among the stuff being defended, looking for the good stuff is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
there are over 37,000 photos in the group pool, and the group allows photos of all types of street art, even “crappy graffiti” because it still illustrates the broad range of the street art subculture. there is a “best of” thread if you want to see a few of the most recent favorite photos of street art chosen by group members, though it barely scrapes the surface of what quality art has been up: http://www.flickr.com/groups/seattlestre…
Give street artists more canvases. Quit taking art class out of schools.
Taggers who keep putting their crap on murals that people spend lots of time (and money) to create in neighborhoods are assholes. It’s the “look at me” howl by pathetic turf marking jerks. Go piss in your own yard. The only graffiti I see that comes close to the skill of the many (regularly tagged) murals around town are on the rail cars in Balmer yard (Interbay).
It’s all crap.
Seattle has the ugliest graffiti of any city I have ever been in. The stickers are a blight. The writing on anything big enough to write is just plain stupid. It is not artistic in any sense. It is UGLY. I remember when Fantasy LTD was on 1st and Pike. It was beautiful, graffiti-like but very well done. Taggers kept tagging over it and any other decent art in the downtown area.
We need SEVERE penalties for these VANDALS. I think they chop your hand off in Turkey if you get caught stealing. Maybe in America we could find some sort of grunt work to punish these asshole vandals. What we are doing is not working.
Owners are required to paint out graffiti or be fined = Stupid
Owners are not required to use the same color paint = Stupid
Owners are not required to paint the whole wall = Stupid
So we have multi-colored walls made of patches covered with graffiti = ! ! ! UGLY ! ! !
Look at this address. 420 E Denny Way Seattle, WA 98122 This is a horrendous FAILURE for the owner and everyone who has to look at it. The owner has painted it, the neighbors have painted it, but a week does not go by where some asshole goes and wipes its ugliness all over it and any blank spot that exists.
The graffiti people are useless, their hands are tied because of the way the law is written. The police have to “catch them in the act” of doing it. And it is ok to paint your building to be the blight of the neighborhood. It is fucking UGLY. I am so sick of looking at this mess.
And i remember the Lone Ranger article the stranger wrote about this AUG 22 2007. What a crock of shit that was. Anthony is not one bit interested in catching these vandals. He is interested is referring you to a company who charges you a fortune to clean up the graffiti for you. No prevention, no prosecution, and “here is some paint, you clean it up and watch out for the needles”. Fuck you ! Fuck you and all of you and your fucking bullshit. Fucking Vandals.
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Conte…
While I’m not sure what kind of paint was used, the mural on the side of the new Grocery Outlet on 4th Ave S is really cool. Every time I’m about to pass it, I cross my fingers and hope it has stayed intact and no one has scribbled their pithy name on it.
hahahaaha! graffiti is not art! it’s fun and very addictive. it’s something a civil sane person couldn’t began to understand and their really isn’t much to understand, you are writing on walls to impress normal day to day “art” loving folks, It’s a non stop dog eat dog violent competition between other writers that span world wide and no building, street sign, mural, surface is safe if a writer feel he/she wants to get up on it bottom line, call it what you want, but it won’t be stopped anytime soon. I’ve been writing for over 15 years, and I know kids that have that same shitty little ball of anger inside of them that I did and they are out every night getting up so they can be the next king of the city!
@6 I love you
I don’t know where city officials came up with the definition of “colorful or complex…masterpieces” for street art. Do a quick search in wikipedia and you’ll better understand; a better definition for street art would be: unsanctioned art created in the public realm.
This article fails. It fails not only to bring to light any new or interesting facts on an over-discussed topic, but also fails to clearly define what street art even is. A mural is executed in the public realm, but since it is sanctioned, it is not street art (Caption fail). A public art wall where people can practice (Tubs/Sodo wall/Redmond Skate park) is not the same thing as the Georgetown art wall (mural) or the art wall (mural) at the Monique lofts. And lastly, street art executed on a public art wall is not really street art, since it is sanctioned. Also, street art is not necessarily graffiti. And it’s also not necessarily artistic tagging.
Please, everyone involved in this article: do some background research so you have an ounce of credibility.
i 100% advocate all types of graffiti and street art.
@4… crawl back in your hole
@6 i love you too
@ everyone who creates street art (im not including people who tag their stupid name on crap)… find places to put your art where private business owners are not liable for graffiti cleanup fines. building owners only clean up graffiti because they get fined by the city. if they didn’t risk fines, most of them would let it stay. many of them may actually embrace your work. get creative and put your art in public places. sidewalks, streets, telephone poles, powerlines… the city can’t fine themselves…
None of this changes the fact that all Seattle graffitti is absolute shit. Try traveling some time.
@ 28 – I admire your call for graffiti artists to just plain do a better job (rather than just tagging the crap out of stuff), however you final comment of “the city can’t fine themselves” I have to disagree with. The city most certainly CAN fine themselves – and it does via the clean-up costs it incurs. Of course we the taxpayers are the city and we are the ones paying the fines.
does anyone know who made the Guernica mural/graffiti near Pioneer Square?
i dont know but i want to because who ever they are they deserve serious respect.
And, then there is this:
SEATTLE STREET ART BOOK
A Visual Time Capsule Beyond Graffiti (Volume 1)
http://www.seattlestreetart.com/
From the book introduction:
Aside from its rain and coffee, Seattle, Washington is known for many things subversive, from Grunge music to the activist driven WTO riots…. Today, there is a culture here that is only represented anonymously in the reclaimed public spaces of the city. Images dot the urban landscape in the typical street mediums that are used across the globe…
You will see that these are not commercial enterprises or vandalism graffiti, but individual creative statements… something we can all relate to. … a small window into this temporary world that’s constantly being revised in a flux of new symbols. Some of the work only existed for a day before it was written over by other artists or removed by the city… a reminder that nothing is permanent, and control is an illusion in the chaos of a city. Enjoy.
And, then there is this:
SEATTLE STREET ART BOOK
A Visual Time Capsule Beyond Graffiti (Volume 1)
http://www.seattlestreetart.com/
From the book introduction:
Aside from its rain and coffee, Seattle, Washington is known for many things subversive, from Grunge music to the activist driven WTO riots…. Today, there is a culture here that is only represented anonymously in the reclaimed public spaces of the city. Images dot the urban landscape in the typical street mediums that are used across the globe…
You will see that these are not commercial enterprises or vandalism graffiti, but individual creative statements… something we can all relate to. … a small window into this temporary world that’s constantly being revised in a flux of new symbols. Some of the work only existed for a day before it was written over by other artists or removed by the city… a reminder that nothing is permanent, and control is an illusion in the chaos of a city. Enjoy.