There was this chick who was so dumb....
Okay, so I really really really need to stop commenting on any blog anywhere. Somehow, I think at like 1 am I magically turn into an engaging, witty, intelligent person. It just used to take alcohol at one time, and really not that much of it before I'd cross the line to complete babbling jerk. Apparently my lack of sleep has similar results. Oh yeah, and in the days when alcohol did the trick, you can add physically attractive to someone somewhere to that list. No sleepless nights now will cause me that same delusion.
So I'm reading this blog, an art blog based out of Pittsburgh, and I have never posted a comment there before, being that I am actually kinda shy and nervous about that sort of thing. But tonight I was in a what the heck sort of mindset because it touched a freaky nerve. She had this good post about graffiti and what some cities are doing about it (I have learned from the Tyler Green incident to say only nice things about people all the time because you never know if they are reading, so how was your visit to von Lintel a few weeks ago Tyler?) I think a few years ago, in college for sure, I would have totally been in support of the Melbourne Graffiti policy, because Graffiti is art and you can't have The Man cracking down on art (yeah, I DID talk like that in college--bite me--I would have said it with some irony because I lettered in irony in college--we all did). Only a few years ago I would have taken the effort to express that same sentiment a little bit more eloquently. But until very recently, I didn't have to live among Graffiti. I choose to do so now when I live at my sister's. It's not like she lives in the movie Clockers, but there is a lot of Graffiti in the neighborhood that is associated in particular with some of the criminal activity that is creeping in as more notorious streets are being policed more heavily. No one in the art world is kicking off their Prada in neighborhoods like this. (Not that I am acusing Sarah if she sees this of wearing Prada, and Prada isn't a bad thing. I'm using it as a class metaphor. Heck, for all I know she shops at Target like me. As my husband kids me, I never stopped wearing Isaac Mizrahi--he just moved downmarket with me). It's just that there are all kinds of reasons zero-tolerance on Graffiti makes sense to me, both practically and even artistically. So me, in 1 am mode (see above), think I have all the answers, want to enter the discussion, want to be in with the cool kids, because don't you know I am one with them.
I write:
Graffiti as art, as a product of urban (mostly) male (mostly) bravada (oh yeah), is one thing. However, graffiti removal is not an anti-art thing. In some parts of Pittsburgh, like Friendship-Garfield, the social fabric that inspires graffiti includes drug dealing territory management, prostitution pimping, and just plain disrepect for property. People admire graffiti as art until it is their block, their house that is marked. Their aren't enough colors in the Sherwin Williams line to make it acceptable for someone to tag your building. It's one thing to admire and respect the daring of graffiti; it is entirely another's lot to have to live with it. Graffiti art by its very nature is "in the moment," a snapshot of time when the artist was able to be somewhere long enough and not get caught and then how long it can stay up. It is not Ozymandian; the artist will by far outlive the monument. Once we choose certain Graffiti as acceptable to keep on forever and ever amen, or even with some sort of agreed upon time limits, or relegate sacrificial buildings as safe havens for graffiti, we kill everything Graffiti art is about.
So just as I push the post button, the last thing I see that stays in my head is that word, bravada. Ummm, excuse me, but wasn't that a car Oldsmobile made in the 90s? CRAPTASTIC. So not only am I dumb enough to leave this sort of comment on an ART BLOG, I freakin mis-type so much that I come off as even dumber than I usually do. FIRE TRUCK! Thank goodness she screens her comments and exercises editorial control over them, because maybe she will determine it is too stupid to keep. If not, I don't know what I will do.
With all the stupid stuff I've been saying in blogosphere, I am going to have to change my name. Any ideas?
Whoever just said Callihan, ha-ha and :-P~~~~~~~~
So I'm reading this blog, an art blog based out of Pittsburgh, and I have never posted a comment there before, being that I am actually kinda shy and nervous about that sort of thing. But tonight I was in a what the heck sort of mindset because it touched a freaky nerve. She had this good post about graffiti and what some cities are doing about it (I have learned from the Tyler Green incident to say only nice things about people all the time because you never know if they are reading, so how was your visit to von Lintel a few weeks ago Tyler?) I think a few years ago, in college for sure, I would have totally been in support of the Melbourne Graffiti policy, because Graffiti is art and you can't have The Man cracking down on art (yeah, I DID talk like that in college--bite me--I would have said it with some irony because I lettered in irony in college--we all did). Only a few years ago I would have taken the effort to express that same sentiment a little bit more eloquently. But until very recently, I didn't have to live among Graffiti. I choose to do so now when I live at my sister's. It's not like she lives in the movie Clockers, but there is a lot of Graffiti in the neighborhood that is associated in particular with some of the criminal activity that is creeping in as more notorious streets are being policed more heavily. No one in the art world is kicking off their Prada in neighborhoods like this. (Not that I am acusing Sarah if she sees this of wearing Prada, and Prada isn't a bad thing. I'm using it as a class metaphor. Heck, for all I know she shops at Target like me. As my husband kids me, I never stopped wearing Isaac Mizrahi--he just moved downmarket with me). It's just that there are all kinds of reasons zero-tolerance on Graffiti makes sense to me, both practically and even artistically. So me, in 1 am mode (see above), think I have all the answers, want to enter the discussion, want to be in with the cool kids, because don't you know I am one with them.
I write:
Graffiti as art, as a product of urban (mostly) male (mostly) bravada (oh yeah), is one thing. However, graffiti removal is not an anti-art thing. In some parts of Pittsburgh, like Friendship-Garfield, the social fabric that inspires graffiti includes drug dealing territory management, prostitution pimping, and just plain disrepect for property. People admire graffiti as art until it is their block, their house that is marked. Their aren't enough colors in the Sherwin Williams line to make it acceptable for someone to tag your building. It's one thing to admire and respect the daring of graffiti; it is entirely another's lot to have to live with it. Graffiti art by its very nature is "in the moment," a snapshot of time when the artist was able to be somewhere long enough and not get caught and then how long it can stay up. It is not Ozymandian; the artist will by far outlive the monument. Once we choose certain Graffiti as acceptable to keep on forever and ever amen, or even with some sort of agreed upon time limits, or relegate sacrificial buildings as safe havens for graffiti, we kill everything Graffiti art is about.
So just as I push the post button, the last thing I see that stays in my head is that word, bravada. Ummm, excuse me, but wasn't that a car Oldsmobile made in the 90s? CRAPTASTIC. So not only am I dumb enough to leave this sort of comment on an ART BLOG, I freakin mis-type so much that I come off as even dumber than I usually do. FIRE TRUCK! Thank goodness she screens her comments and exercises editorial control over them, because maybe she will determine it is too stupid to keep. If not, I don't know what I will do.
With all the stupid stuff I've been saying in blogosphere, I am going to have to change my name. Any ideas?
Whoever just said Callihan, ha-ha and :-P~~~~~~~~
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