Another Robert Boyd Who Is Not Me
“I have friends from out of town who come to visit and they say, ‘Sparkling City by the Sea? More like graffiti city by the sea,’” said Robert Boyd, a local Vietnam veteran.
Boyd, wearing a T-shirt that read “Graffiti Hurts,” said he paints over the graffiti at Carroll High School, near his home, because it lowers property values in the neighborhood, he said.
“Like most people I can’t stand the sight of it and something needs to be done,” Boyd said. (Steven Alford, Corpus Cristi Caller-Times, 1/29/2010)
For the record, I am opposed to damaging other people's private property. That said, there is so much visual ugliness in the world, it's hard for me to see how graffiti makes it worse, and when done by a skillful street artist, graffiti can actually improve a building. Just sayin.'
Labels: graffiti, Robert Boyd
posted by Robert Boyd at
6:42 AM
3 Comments:
I'm on your side, this time. Some really good stuff out there on walls, etc. I don't really mind, so much, being stuck at a train crossing, looking at some of the tagging.
Some sucky stuff, too, tho...
jdallen
"That said, there is so much visual ugliness in the world, it's hard for me to see how graffiti makes it worse, and when done by a skillful street artist, graffiti can actually improve a building."
That's true, to a very limited extent, but how many "skilled street artists" are actually out at 3 a.m. tagging buildings? Judging by the actual works, not many. Most of it is monkey scrawl, mere territorial pissings. Not to sound like Karl Marx, but there's a class element here to appreciation of the supposed aesthetic impulse behind graffiti--you don't see a whole lot of it in River Oaks or Memorial. On the other hand, if you own a home near a middle school in SW Houston you probably grow weary of waking up every 2-3 months to some illegible gibberish spray-painted on your fence.
Having said that, let me add that I can on occasion appreciate unauthorized wall-scrawl:
http://slamposplace.blogspot.com/2007/03/secret-of-heart-revealed.html
So I guess its OK, but only if it meets my high aesthetic and/or literary standards (to repeat my point from earlier missive).
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