JOSEPH SANTOS graffiti

After observing the graffiti art only one thing came to mind: a very good friend of mine who is a graffiti artist, legal and illegal. He shall remain anonymous. What I learned was incredible. Tagging is not art, but actual murals are some of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. While I was walking through skid row, and I passed by wonderfully done murals, displaying the art of the community. Alot of these murals can be seen all around LA and people are getting prosecuted. My friend then told me of one spot in which graffiti was allowed, one wall. That is not enough I believe that LA should create more walls for graffiti all across the city. The colors in the can make the grey walls of the city beautiful. Street art should be just as respected as art you would find in a gallery. That is why I enjoyed Bojorquez’s reading about graffiti. he noted the history about graffiti and shined some well deserved arm light on it.

JOSEPH SANTOS a native son

James Balwins essay, notes of a native son discusses the issues of civil rights. He is a first hand witness to the horrors or racsism. Written in the 1950’s, James Baldwin spent about then years writing. I was searching for this book online and I finally found it “http://books.google.com/books?id=HDnxq1cyEq4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=notes+of+a+native+son&source=bl&ots=zJokBpzFPJ&sig=XKaN0ttz52zmN_qB_6EavsO6LZc&hl=en&ei=Ys6vTJeCEoOesQPdk9z8Cw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&sqi=2&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=falsef”
After reading, I couldnt belive how far we’ve come with discrimination and segegation. Yes, it still is not perfect but nothing in this world ever is. Let’s just be glad that the riots and seperate bathrooms are behind us. Baldwin writes “disease—cancer, perhaps, or tuberculosis—which must be checked, even though it cannot be cured.’’ This is refering to the effect the whites thought of the blacks at that time. That quote hit home for me than any other.

Graffiti is Art

Graffiti is Art
From Matthew Roy

Graffiti is Art; short and simple. Tagging is different than graffiti though. Tagging marks territory and has no expression and is the antonym of a mural. A mural is a beautiful painting that is created on a wall of some sort outside to express. After reading Charles Bojorquez’s Graffiti is Art, he helped me understand the background of Los Angeles graffiti and why it exists today. How he perceives graffiti, as art really helps relay a message and not just words or a picture on the wall. Why when people look at graffiti read this as a sign on danger or threatening? In the new age, tagging is overpowering graffiti caused by the growing number of gangs and new-aged people thinking tagging is cool. I am very happy though to have seen the LA Wall and view how an activist really helped changed the way people perceive graffiti and shows murals to express and inspire a true art form. When discussing the time and effort to put into the LA Wall, having known that it helped change lives for teenagers with criminal problems and brought about art instead of destruction. So alongside Chaz Bojorquez, his nature as an activist helped influence artists and activists to promote the nature and being of graffiti installments as a prominent world expression.

James Baldwin/

James Baldwin
From Matthew Roy

In James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son gives insight into the lives between lower class citizens to the upper class citizens. The issue of race between the blacks and whites of society were thoroughly discussed in his book in the time of 1955. During the Civil Rights Movement Baldwin discusses the lives of the African American population living in a civilization that focused on racial discrimination. Through his book, he described the impact and possible future changes in years to come and the chaos still erupted in times ahead. One of James’ most known quotes exclaims, “All over Harlem, Negro boys and girls are growing into stunted maturity, trying desperately to find a place to stand; and the wonder is not that so many are ruined but that so many survive.” Baldwin’s tough lifestyle as an African American writer helped him use personal experience to express his activism and attitude on society through writings. One of his personal experienced was set in a restaurant where he was given poor customer service because he was an African American. Acts like this help him to express prejudice through analysis and understand how it forms. As an activist, James Baldwin helped to spread his wisdom and expressions to bring up the chaos and calamity of racial prejudice.

LAPD

LAPD / from Matthew Roy

Going to Skid Row really got me up and out of my box. Going from Valencia to Skid Row really changed my view on our social structure and shows how the lives of the less fortunate can be. Los Angeles Poverty Department really showed me how much change can happen and how the activists helped people changed and better their lives. Being the leading and most rehabilitative group in the United States, this shows how the group can change a person from Skid Row and get them up and back on their feet. It’s amazing how much effect ordinary people are willing to do to act upon this poverty circle in downtown Los Angeles to help troubled citizens from the area of Los Angeles to help install change. This homeless neighborhood has a department that offers the choice of change while also using art and theater to express the past, present, and future of these citizen’s lives. After viewing their many theatrical performances of their life’s experiences, these acts gave my knowledge to the lives they left and the present they have come into with LAPD. Thanks to LAPD, the poverty department has changed and saved lives by giving people encouragement to have dreams, goals, and aspirations.

Graffiti is Art

The impression by communities today that graffiti is the defacement of property, and a bane upon the urban landscape is unfortunate. Of course it is understandable when the work emits racist comments, or other socially inappropriate messages, however in reference to Bojorquez’s style of ‘Cholo’ graffiti, how can a community, or government ban the work, or paint over it. Graffiti is more than a set of words on a wall or building it is a form of personal, communal, and historical expression, to cover it up is to deny that the person/people who put it there, and their histories can be covered up to. You would not put a sheet over “The Last Supper”, why paint over a piece of graffiti. Not only that, but the amount of money that is spent on covering up this art work could go to something of actual importance such as the homeless. Also when a city is created of boring grey buildings, would it not be beautiful to walk through colorful buildings? Colorful because of artwork, history, and personal expression, a city created by the individuals who inhabit it. I question this within CalArts, when there is a school filled with talented artists, should not the entire thing be covered with artwork? Instead when you enter the building it looks more like a clinical institution. We need more than the sublevel.

Graffiti is Art! - Bojorquez

It is interesting for me to talk about graffiti because I was one of those people that judged it and many times considered it vandalism. As years passed and I immerged myself in the arts I stopped judging it and started to question. When I experience it now, I feel like I’m having a conversation with the artist because I know that he is telling me something and the way I interpret each shape, each color, each detail is my response to it. Like I judge any other art to be, graffiti is a mean of communication because through it you’re able to transmit a message and at the same time imprint your personality, opinion, voice, background, and technique. It finds it’s way to our lives making use of the chaotic city we live in. It spread itself through buildings; it jumps in front of our eyes while we’re blindly driving. I quite can’t image a city without graffiti anymore, because if I do, I inevitably imagine a community that does not have a voice and hide itself behind those walls. How beautiful it is to hear the city speak. To see the wall smiling or the highway shouting at me. Graffiti now colors my world, points at my world and many times questions my world challenging us to do something for a change.

Paula Rebelo