Graffiti is art, however, graffiti as an act of vandalism is a crime. If you have ever taken any interest in graffiti before you’ve probably heard someone say something to you along these lines. Graffiti is a world-renowned style of art and expression with its beautiful colors, wacky lettering, and many unique ways of making it. Yet no matter how much praise graffiti gets for being beautiful and stylish there are always some people who need to exaggerate how bad graffiti can be to society. The government doesn’t take much of a liking to graffiti from how much it’s been posted on trains and walls as a form of vandalism. Graffiti is a beautiful form of art and the government should be dealing with graffiti much differently than trying to shun it from society.

What is Graffiti

According to Journey Forever Mag, graffiti is a form of expression and has many styles. Tags are the simple style most people relate to vandalism on stickers, electrical boxes, and some walls all with a single marker. A throw-up or a bomb is simple letters with lots of color and styles like wildstyle, blockbuster, sharp, bubbles, and a piece or character painting. Stencil graffiti uses paper stencils to make its creative letter designs and figures. And finally, wheat paste posters can be plastered mainly on walls in downtown areas. These are the forms and styles people see when they look at popular street art the letters thrown on trains influence what the generation thinks of it.

The generations POV

To find out the influence graffiti has on the generation now I asked someone who has started to make their unique sketches from the styles above named Levi Hubbard. While asking him about his opinions he stated “I feel like graffiti is a big part of our society. Like, not a lot of people do it but the people that are actually good at it can do a lot of neat art.” Along with Levi, I interviewed another sketch artist Tasaun about his opinion on graffiti where he stated: “I think graffiti overall is a beautiful and amazing form of art.” These quote show graffiti isn’t a bad influence but it helps bring out the creative mind in those who are inspired by it and its wacky designs and styles. These are their expressions through art and their way of showing who they are like all other taggers and artists. Along with that similar expressive attitude comes possibly aligning political views on what the government does to shun graffiti.

What needs to change

While asking Tasaun about his opinions on graffiti, I also asked what the government should be doing about it. He then stated, “I think they should just give up. I mean, why put so much effort into catching someone doing something harmless.” Tasaun agrees that wildstyle murals don’t harm anything. When put on trains or walls the government should start to accept graffiti as part of art and street culture instead of pushing it away and shunning it from society. Of course, we wouldn’t just have taggers covering trains and walls with paint all over, there is an idea of how this should be solved. 

The Big Plan

 The idea that would stop vandalism and certain tags is a simple program

for spray artists where you could pay a certain amount to paint a mural on the side of a train cart.  The benefits of this would be the tag wouldn’t be vandalism and from entering your art piece to be painted there wouldn’t be any vulgar language, simple tags, or inappropriate pictures put up on the carts. The brands on the carts would be fine but if people still don’t want to do that and want a wall there are also contraptions to be made like graffiti circles. While stating his opinion Levi also said “I feel like there should be designated spots. If they had more graffiti walls like some people could get together and get walls there so artists could go out and express themselves.” These would be walls designed for free tags for spray artists along with small tags like simple names and signs. With these ideas in mind, the government could lower the amount of vandalism all around in a better manner by chasing kids with paint cans.  

Graffiti artists have had their work pushed from society by the government for years, not including character and piece art. All graffiti is beautiful for its form of expression and shouldn’t be treated as a rebellious weapon. Graffiti has not harmed the walls or trains it’s been plastered on yet police chase it as throwie bombs will explode. Graffiti should be accepted into society as a form of expression and the government should take different actions on how to accept and solve it.