Graffiti Lives

George Mason is no New York City when it comes to graffiti. I searched about the campus looking for graffiti and while I found several different examples (none of actual professional artists or good graffiti) I settled on one specific area with different types of graffiti behind the art building. I think the best way to describe the graffiti I found is half random or illegal and the other half is just art kids practicing on the wall before actually painting on something they were making.

Generally, since the pictures I took were all in one basic area, I'd say that the writers of these messages were art students, though on some of the random messages, it could have been anybody since the wall I was looking at is in a well-concealed area. Most of the messages or images were never meant to be seen by anybody, they were there as practice before the writers painted the images onto an actual project, though some of the more random or illegal messages, such as the tag "Eggman" and "Think" with a lightbulb above it are misplaced if that is the case. I would think that these images would appear on the outside of the wall, where people often walkby, though these were painted inside the wall where there is a sculpture workspace for students where most of the experimental painting should be placed. So it seems that none of the random words and tags were meant to be seen either, which is kind of backwards since graffiti is generally put in public places where people can read the messages.

Even though I say that these messages were written most likely by all "art kids," I don't know if that's a good specification of the writers of these messages. When Synder says that he thinks graffiti is not a monolithic culture, he's right. Since this space is not closed off, it really could have been anybody that wrote these messages.

In two of my pictures, the "Life is Good" sticker and "Photo Mat" have had letters or in the case of the sign, a sticker added to them to change their meaning or emphasize it. So for me, graffiti is now separated into two separate categories: messages that are added to already existing messages to alter their meaning or images and messages from scratch. Also, unlike what Synder finds in his book to be true, none of the messages I found truly had any social or political messages to them. I generally found the graffiti around campus to be boring actually because it didn't actually have anything powerful to say.

Since this is the case, I think this type of graffiti's role is purely for entertainment. Not in the way that it says something subversive, but in that it is just random scribblings for people to smile at in passing. The writers of these messages didn't mean anything by this graffiti, especially since most of it is spur of the moment, not professionally done or has much time put into it.