a misguided smudge

Some folks might call me a hypocrite for celebrating some graffiti but condemning other graffiti - so be it. On an abandoned building or other non-historic, public space I find graffiti an engaging part of the visual  public conversation. We're so awash in corporate images and logos, the markings of the "Corporate Person," that we have come to think of locally made original images as somehow criminal rather than part of a public conversation. 

However, when it comes to natural features or historic ruins, graffiti has no place - the location distracts from any potential message or content in the markings. For example, check out the above image of the smeared mess of a sloppy, unclear and ugly "tag" that was recently deposited on the historic ruins of Foushee's Mill built in 1819 down by Texas Beach. In this misguided smudge, I can only read a single word: LOSER.

Folks who feel compelled to mark on natural features or historic ruins should use chalk or other biodegradable substance so graffiti artists won't look like such selfish jerks. 

Graffiti as memorial & public reminder

Sometimes graffiti can be of a memorial nature, a fleeting reminder of local history, good and bad. Here the reminder is a grisly one - we can barely see some pinkish script on the handrail of the Northbank Park walkway. It reads:

HATE CRIME

SUMMER

1998

DECAPITATED

                              HEAD

                          OF

                         GAY

                         MAN

The script gets the date wrong but  includes an arrow pointing to the spot where the severed head of Henry Edward Northington was found by a couple on a morning walk on March 1, 1999. Though Northington's sexuality could have been a possible motive, I would argue that any decapitation should be considered a hate crime. 
It's a significant step beyond simply ending a life.

Since I love to walk the trails of our 550 acres of parkland, this story creeped me out and compelled me to write an editorial about it questioning why there was not a more aggressive investigation of such a grisly murder. STYLE rejected my essay and offered little coverage of the bizarre event until New York's Village Voice came out with a front page story about the murder as a potential hate crime on April 6, noting in the article that "fully a month after his death, Richmond police have still failed to release the cause of death and the local medical examiner has yet to issue an autopsy report." 

The article describes the area (sometimes known as "Texas Beach") as a gay cruising area but these days all types of folk head down to the riverside there to relax with friends, cool off, sunbathe nude, party or skinny-dip. And straight, bi or gay, sometimes they even hookup in those wild riverside woods.   

The memento mori graffiti has long since been painted over, but for a brief moment people were reminded of Northington's gory death and perhaps walked with more care & awareness on our glorious riverside trails. I've been hiking in the area ever since and have never run into any trouble, though I always pay attention to my surroundings - as we all should whenever we're out and about. With Richmond's surge in population since that time, there are more people on the trails which makes them safer with more potential witnesses or allies should a crime occur. 

Bad PR

Some who read this blog might think that I celebrate all graffiti, that I have no limits on what counts as artistic expression but that's not quite true. The image above is of graffiti on the ruins of Foushee's Mill built in 1819 and it just looks stupid and sloppy - not artistic, not enlightening, just ugly. And it's bad PR for the good graffiti artists. 

Graffiti's status

I may be wrong, but it seems to me that the status of graffiti is changing - though, local governments still hate it and spend inordinate amounts of money cleaning it up. My earlier posting about BANKSY's film Exit Through the Gift Shop getting nominated for an Academy Award for documentary was the first hint that graffiti is being taken a bit more seriously than it has in the past. True enough, there are plenty of bad, sloppy or just plain vandal painters (an upcoming post will be on defacing an 18th Century mill) but many graffiti images are thought provoking and insightful commentary about contemporary life. 

BANKSY did not do the illustration below, but a recent issue of the 

The New Yorker magazine featured the following image, possibly suggesting that some people are beginning to look at graffiti (or at least artistic graffiti) with a fresh perspective, open to the meaning and commentary suggested by the image. 

Scary Dollies: WTF? Graffiti? Misogyny? Doll Fetish?

OK, so I find a lot of strange things in my RVA ramblings, and these images are some of the strangest. I took the doll-mobile picture about a year ago, and in the past month I took a picture of the single china-faced doll hanging on a bench. 

Do these "count" as graffiti? The doll-mobile seems potentially misogynist, but hard to take seriously - harder still to interpret. 
If not anti-woman, perhaps a critique of the eating disorders partially inspired by impossible doll physiques. 

I found these pseudo-barbie dolls hanging on a branch underneath the Nickel Bridge, complete with a litter of missing limbs below them.

I found the doll below more recently, hanging from a bench right next to the Old Pumphouse in Byrd Park. Unlike the pseudo-barbies, this doll seemed less of an "installation" as the placement of some kind of sentinel to watch over the Pumphouse....who knows? She was a creepy little thing who disappeared the next day. 

Watch out for stray dollies!

I'm watching you!

Three Meditations in Marker

Rainbow of ribbons on a fence atop Montreal

I'm beginning to think that the category of "graffiti" includes more than the traditional painted tag. It could include yarn bombing,or ribbons tied to a fence as I once found in Montreal. Or it might even be a bizarre mobile made from doll parts - an image you'll see in an upcoming post.

But perhaps the simplest graffiti is written with a marker on a suitable surface as in the image below. These three sets of marker wisdom may have been written by the same person, but each could represent a separate philosophical statement. 

"HE LOVES YOU" is written beside an inverted pentagram with a goat's head inside that some read as the symbol of the Devil, or possibly the symbol of Baphomet. Hell or no, everybody knows that the Devil throws the better party and is most interested in our pursuit of pleasure and happiness - now that's love. Though the two characters are not equivalent, the phrase echoes the "Jesus Loves You" slogan so prevalent in Christianity. Recent photos however indicate that perhaps Jesus definitely does NOT love you. 

"WHO ARE YOU? WHO AM I?" is as existential as it comes and raises the question of identity - something we often take for granted. Recent news reports indicate that the human body, the personal "I" we think of ourselves as being, an integral, single, human unit is actually a teeming community of microbes and plenty of DNA that isn't even human. 

"LiFE'S A RIDE SO ENJOY" could be the Devil's advice, but it also seems like wise advice to celebrate life while you have it - before your ride is over (and who knows when that will be?).

borf?

Just a short entry today....

I took this picture several years ago on the walkway beneath the Lee Bridge. It's grey color gave it a subliminal feel, not immediately noticeable. Most significant however is the message in the cryptic statement - took me a lap around Belle Isle to figure it out (a bit slow).

Good advice, no?

Originally I thought "borf" was just the name of the tagger, but then Wikipedia expanded my understanding (oh, heresy!).