NY graffiti painters see craft as art, not vandalism

NEW YORK - As a subway rattles overhead on a bright sunny day, the smell of aerosol paint permeates the air and graffiti artists spray-paint the side of a building with little fear of police.

Their canvas, the facade of a 18,600-square-metre former factory, has been transformed into a legal "aerosol safe haven" that attracts both local city kids and commercial artists from overseas in their 30s and 40s.

It is supervised by William Green, 41, known by his "tag" or graffiti signature "Nic One. He is part of a movement in New York - the birthplace of modern graffiti - to distinguish graffiti as an art form rather than vandalism and to fight back against anti-graffiti laws.

As skateboarders gathered near the vibrant, multicolored complex, Green and his partner Jonathan Cohen, 33, alias "Meres", the creator of the space, gives teen-agers tips to improve their craft.

Cohen wants to establish a permanent graffiti school and gallery. Five years ago he received the landlord's permission to transform the factory's facade into graffiti art using techniques requiring a high level of skill, such as murals based on movie or comic book scenes.

"Here you don't have to look over your shoulder or start running from the cops; you have people like Nic looking out for you," said Diego Garces, 16.

When struggling youths in the 1970s began scribbling messages on subway cars in this once crime-ridden city, few might have suspected it would spawn a worldwide commercial street art and fashion phenomenon.

Now commercial artists are seeking to change negative opinions about the movement closely linked to hip-hop culture.

Fighting the law

Faced with a new city law that banned the possession of broad-tipped markers or spray paint by people under 21, graffiti artists say lawmakers have lumped vandals in with legal artists, violating constitutional rights to free expression.

"At its core it's sloppy legislation and highlights the cultural disconnect between these politicians and a younger generation," said designer Marc Ecko, 33, who is helping seven young artists challenge the anti-graffiti law through a lawsuit.

The kids won the first round when a federal judge imposed a temporary injunction stopping it from being enforced until the case can be heard in court.

Ecko, who owns a graffiti-inspired fashion business, won a separate legal clash with the city last year when a judge allowed him to stage an event that featured artists spray-painting mock subway cars.

The New Jersey-bred entrepreneur, who used graffiti designs to gain credence with the hip-hop world because as a kid he was in his words "too fat to break dance", has taken his battle nationwide, funding a lawsuit against the city of Miami and threatening one against Denver. He plans to write to dozens of mayors seeking talks and graffiti exhibitions.

Others like Green, who prefers the term "aerosol artist" due to graffiti's association with illegality, seek to educate through creating legal spaces.

"Graffiti is a part of New York for good or for bad," said Green, who grew up in the South Bronx selling guns and spray-painting subway cars and basketball court walls. He now travels the world holding exhibitions and doing artwork for movies, animation and video games, including designs for Ecko.

"You can't completely stop it," he said.

But New York City Councilman Peter Vallone aims to do just that. He calls the graffiti art movement a thinly veiled advertising campaign for Ecko that incorporates some of the city's most notorious "taggers".

The city estimates three-quarters of its 2,500 graffiti-related arrests in 2005 were of people under 21.

In addition, the cost of removing graffiti rose from US$300,000 in 1993 to US$10 million in 2003. Nationally it costs more than US$10 billion a year to remove.

"I've seen how graffiti can lead kids down the wrong road," said Vallone, a former prosecutor and sponsor of the New York law being challenged in court. "It starts them out in a life of crime and then they graduate from there."

Vallone says if "some innocent people" are dragged into the net then that may be the price to achieve his ultimate goal "to completely rid this city of graffiti."

"Your right to free expression ends where my property begins," he said.

For now, the battle continues. Vallone vowed he will introduce "even tougher" laws while Ecko, who declined to say how much he was spending on his lawyers, sees himself as a "watchdog for legal graffiti art."

"I don't want the kids to forget about the '80s and what it meant," he said, referring to graffiti's transition from an emblem of urban poor to commercial success. "I am in the private sector; I've got the resources and I've got the time."

- REUTERS/VNU