Graffiti as an art form

GRAFFITI!GRAFFITI!GRAFFITI!

There are some amazingly talented artists around and I post my admiration and thanks to them for turning the dirty city walls, the dull gray factory buildings and the plain lifeless trains, cargo holds, fences, pavements and back alleyways into colourful, bold, expressive works of aerosol art..piece, mural and stencil...

Just who are these people throwing up the art anyway? Is it the young homie boys with and bandannas hanging outside timezone? Is it the spanish gangsters blasting hip-hop from their valiant as they cruise down Courtney place? Is it the art school hippies creating intricate stencils? Who made the stencil of the spooky tree with the bats? Was it the quiet goth girl on her way home? Was it the kids with teenage angst? It was all of them!

So graffiti as an art form stemmed out from Hip-hop culture, but i wander if its appreciated by people of other cultures? It wouldn't be fair to say 'most cranky old people' say its filth and vandalism. Good graphers with respect don't damage personal property, its a kinda rule to stick to public property in general. With the exception that i guess those people who just painted their new white fence don't like coming out and finding a big tag sprayed all over it.....but thats shitty tagging, not helping to make proper street art a popular art form. That's just kids (of all ages) being dumb and if kids weren't 'rebelling' in that way they would in some other way cause its fun doing dumb stuff when your a kid. PSY was a tag youd find in every crevis of Canberra and randomly in other cities in Oz. PSY fucking everywhere... ofcourse the poor guy got busted tagging PSY one day and so at the same time was busted for every single one, it was a lot of community service, ironically he had to clean graffiti off walls, he must have detested that!

Anyway, for the real enthusiasts and talented graffers they might meet up at a 'writers corner' as its known - a place where they can come together in peace to learn, practice, share and compare techniques and skills. Could be subway, train graveyard, alley way, park, etc. The best example i've seen of this in Wellington is down one side of Aro Valley park..... and that's certainly not harming anyone...

I feel in recent years there has become a growing acceptance for street art, the authorative figures play the 'blind eye' towards some of these writers corners and are encouraging the youth the learn through workshops on provided walls, or is it they have simply given up due to the vast popularity of this culture? I'm all for it but there is definitely a dislike in the community because people associate any type of graffiti they see with vandalism, tagging of private property and images of scary youth gangs cavorting the neighborhood at all hours!

Public property - theres just so much 'wasted' space out there, I can see the attraction and I love that I can wander through the streets and parks, under bridges and railways and see the culture and the youth and the artists representing everywhere, massive tribal or hip hop stylistically pieces hidden in back alleyways, little butterflies, robot men, amazing fonts & typography..... and you come across amazing murals like the big octopus outside Fidel's or the 'Vintage' bar piece in Wellington or see Deb's familiar cat girls in the streets of Melbourne and theres no denying these are really talented and admired artists...

It is a way as its always been of expressing oneself, what you believe in and about freedom. Well, aswell as about rivalry, rebellion and anarchy!

I'm into the real art work and i wish there was more of it, but maybe then it wouldn't be the same, i don't want it to be mainstream, i don't want it to be altogether popular and it's exciting when you just stumble across a cool piece cause you ventured that little bit further down the side street or around that corner, its like gold!