say it AND spray it!
March 21, 2012
Recently, I have been trying to understand the dealings of the city in artistic affairs.
It is proving to be rather difficult mainly because there are no laws, regulations, or personnel high enough up to actually have any say for there to be a big enough umbrella to cover all sorts of street activity.
The problem that we are dealing with is the illegal removal of permissioned or commissioned work.
Most credible teams have attained Public Liability Insurance which should more than cover the initial complaints. Secondly, many times the artists have requested permission from the business and community where the art is to be thrown up.
The maintenance of City walls should be easy enough to police. If a crew or team approaches a business about a public space with a drawing and a permit and hopefully Insurance then proper permissions should be given. The problem I am seeing is that with such a contemporary media the system is finding it difficult to keep up with legislation. That is why we are having all of these illegal removals. A private contractor from anywhere without any sort of credibility could remove anything they hire people to remove.
As much as I hate to say it us artists need protection! We are desperate to attain these walls and when we are painting everything is dandy, then after all that hard work, permit getting, and permissions granted BOOM all gone in a day. This is an adversity I feel we are all going to deal with. So, we should be able to employ people in those high positions that are going to hold the removal teams accountable for their work as well as our own!
Beat the system with a better system! We are ALL young in this game and so we are going to need the people who believe in us helping our art thrive. I honestly believe that the removal teams are totally in conjunction with no one, which is why there is no accountability! As artists and enthusiasts of this growing scene we want to be able to fight back!
Hopefully we can get those people who love the dissection of City policies in place! Then anyone fighting for the Art will have to answer to a higher power rather than the starving artists trying to rep their own name and protect their bread and butter. It is a conflict of insterest when the Artist has to get permission, make their work, and protect the wall all at the same instance.
I am from Vista, CA and we have a Vista Arts Commission that should be able to help us. This way all permissions can go through proper channels and then we can all move on from a project. Instead of missing all the groundowkr that can help us in the end.
And if tampering or other vandalisms occur against our works then we have a forum to attend and a place to voice our opinions accordingly. This is basic Human Resources and we need it!!!!
So, ask your elders what they can do for you! Don't be afraid of naysayers and questions. Answer with the enthusiasm we all have for our craft and people will believe in us! Most times everyone that I talk to about this medium are enthused about using public space in this way, yet they have no channel to express their enthusiasm. Let us give the people a platform!
Posted by sydasquid on April 03, 2012
When thinking about the removal system, we are I think helping the artists. We aren't causing turf warz because someone covered over my work, it was the system!
Posted by sydasquid on April 03, 2012
"Considering one litre of paint covers 15 square metres of surface area – then in theory one ten-litre bucket covers 150 square metres. To be fair, some tags will need two coats to be removed properly, so let’s say that from each ten-litre bucket you get 75 square metres coverage. A ten-litre bucket generally costs between $90.00 – $140.00 retail – for the sake of being balanced in this discussion, let’s say an average of $115.00. So let’s say the average tag is roughly 50cm x 20cm, that means there is around 10 tags to every square metre (of course this varies but this is just an average). $115.00 divided by 75 is $1.53 – divide that by 10 and you have 15.3 cents per tag – that’s with two coats!"