Impressive Graffiti

[Chip]

I live in an urbanized area, and in my travels about I frequently encounter graffiti. As a canoeist, I frequently find myself under bridges—prime graffiti territory. Most of the time the graffiti is eminently forgettable. Graffiti is almost always a crime, and much of it is juvenile, foul, profane, or just egotistical tags—who can write their names the largest and brightest.

But every so often I come across graffiti that I find impressive. It first has to be decent and more than just tagging something with a name. For example, consider “Kiss Pretty Girls” written in 8’ high letters beneath I-95 in Baltimore. I guess if you assume it was painted by a male, it could be regarded as misogynistic, but outside of that, it’s not an ugly sentiment. It represents a lot of paint and effort, and crime though it may be, it brought a smile to my face.




I was hiking along the Patapsco River recently and ran across graffiti so elegantly executed that it encroaches on art. The Lady Drinking Wine is about 8’, top to bottom and features delicately painted feather/fur jacket and realistic shadowing. Too bad others have tagged on top of it, which seems to be the fate of all graffiti. Who goes out to ruins in the woods and spends the time and effort to leave a painting like the Lady?



Last week I hiked in the Ilchester section of Patapsco Valley State Park where lie the ruins of St. Mary’s Seminary. Talk about time and effort, this is the most extensive graffiti work I have ever run across. Whoever is doing it is either a mean SOB or has so impressed the other graffiti peep that they leave this work be.

 

[stripperguy]

Impressive... but
There was an incident of graffiti on the sacred walls of French Louie’s cave, deep in the Adirondack wilderness. Thankfully, some respectful hikers removed it with great effort.
As for graffiti as art, if you’re ever in Miami FL, check out the Wynwood Walls, truly impressive open air museum of sorts.

 

[TrailBlaser]

I remember reading that about the cave. I never saw it, but very upsetting. Graffiti may have a place, but it isn't in the wilderness for sure.

 

[yknpdlr]

Impressive... but
There was an incident of graffiti on the sacred walls of French Louie’s cave, deep in the Adirondack wilderness. Thankfully, some respectful hikers removed it with great effort..

Not far away, near North Lake, a few years ago I ran across massive graffiti on rocks on the trail to Ice Cave Mountain, which I attempted with limited success to clean up on a return visit, but somehow they managed to desecrate an inaccessible rock wall at the cave that I could not reach. The ranger told me he was pretty sure who had done it, but could not prove anything.

 

[ppine]

Not impressive at all.

 

[PaddlingPitt]

I was a student at UC Berkeley during those tumultuous ‘60s. One evening at a pub I strolled to the restroom. On the stall’s wall were two of the best graffitis I have ever seen.

”I’d give my right arm to be ambidextrous.”

”People say I’m apathetic. But I don’t care.”

Sorry I don’t have a picture.

 

[Odyssey]

It's an urban art form, and I'd be very happy to see it stay there. Living in a city can be beautiful if you're into architecture, public art, green space design and even an artful graffiti/tag here or there. Some are graphic splendour but most IMO are ugly scribble. However there are cities I once lived in where artists were commissioned to paint historical city scenes or graphic art on otherwise nondescript walls. They truly are wonderful.
https://www.amusingplanet.com/2016/0...herbrooke.html
https://tourismhamilton.com/street-art-guide

ps When I was young I don't remember seeing graffiti/tagging along the HWY 11 roadside heading north into shield country, but it became a common sight as the years went by. Into the 70's and beyond as soon as you saw your first craggy granite rock face rise beside the road you'd see it had been defaced with whomever Sally was now in love with. It was ugly back then and remains ugly now. Although nowadays there's more inuksuit than ink thankfully. If Sally, her current BF or anyone else wants to make their mark on the landscape I wish they'd not carve on trees, paint on rocks, or play with stones, but instead go back to the city and practice graffiti on their back garage wall until they get it right. And then keep it there, because as everyone knows you can't improve on Mother Nature, and gawd knows we don't need to know who Sally's dating now. End of rant. ha

 

[Alan Gage]

A few years ago a friend of mine was visiting mount Rushmore and made a negative comment about how a picnic table at a rest stop had been vandalized by graffiti. I thought that was a little ironic.

Last light I was stuck at a train crossing for 15 minutes. I enjoyed the small handful of well done graffiti. The rest was pretty lame. Nice examples in the original post.

Alan

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

Fortunately or unfortunately, as the aesthetics may be, I've never seen graffiti while canoe tripping.

Oh . . . maybe this has nothing to do with canoes . . . and is actually an OT thread without a notifying OT prefix.

In that case, I'll confess that I have done one graffiti (or graffito) in my life. I was sitting in a toilet stall in the Harvard Law School in the mid-70's, looking at all the vulgar graffiti and curse words, certainly not words of the prophet, written on the bathroom walls. I was thinking that Harvard students ought to be more civilized and clever. So, I penned this in an empty space and took a picture of it with my Brownie camera.

 

[dougd]

Back in 1975 while doing the Albany River we came up on narrow rock chocked section of the river. There was graffiti painted on the rocks as we passed by. I remember thinking that is not how one passes the rivers and places you go.

 

[Odyssey]

From the link provided in my post above one could wander back through history with the wall mural as an initial guide. All the clues are there, even a canoe.

If you look closely there's a canoe pulled up on shore in the left of the mural. The city of Sherbrooke in which this mural exists grew on the confluence of the Magog and Saint Francois rivers. The Saint Francois (St Francis) was a canoe route in both precontact and colonial times used largely by the indigenous nations. This strategic canoe route flowed from the Iroquois frontier through Abenakis (Algonquin) territory and on to the St Lawrence. Early colonials and First Nations are represented in the mural. Even the iconic lone pine has a story to tell. But here's a better guide than me to explore the mural clues in more detail.
https://murales-sherbrooke.com/1_59_...enasen-en.html

 

[yellowcanoe]

When is it graffiti and when is it art? The towns of Cuba Missouri and Lake Placid Florida have impressive walls of art paintings that I would not call graffiti. To me graffiti is temporary , meant to be improved on by the next artist and by its presence invites future alterations.

 

[Chip]

John Wesley Powell and party left Graffiti on the canyon walls of the Green River around 1869. Today, the graffiti are called "inscriptions" and guide books point out the location of Powell Inscriptions as highlights, so passing canoeists don't miss them.

I always pictured the origins of petroglyphs thusly: A native mother chastising children: "you kids better quit drawing on the walls, when your father gets home he is gonna be pissed!."

Apologies to Glen, but I did see Graffiti from the boat and along a local river I've paddled many times. So, connected to canoeing by a slender thread, at least in my deranged mind.

 

[yellowcanoe]

From graffiti to penalty for tampering? on the Green.

 

[Guest]

Bringing this back to canoe-centric the only thing I have ever graffitied were some in-river bridge pilings on local waters that, at the time, lacked USGS gauges.

An elder-Statesman paddler, guide book author Randy Carter, was famous for his spray painted RC gauges below bridges. Those gauge markings started at his “Canoe Zero” mark and went up in foot increments from there.

In the years before on-line gauges you took what you could get, sometimes phone-a-friend and ask them to have a look at their local river levels. If there was an RC Canoe Zero gauge on a bridge piling all the better.

Mr. Carter’s roving range did not include some small streams near my home, but I liked the concept. I first used a series of thin wood panels, with sequential cut outs, spaced 12” apart at 0 – 1, 1 – 2, 2 – 3 etc.

P1190017 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

At drought-water canoe zero I could sneak under bridges, quickly spray the 0 to 1 stencil, lay the 1 – 2 stencil over the already painted 1, spray the 2 mark and continue up as far as I could reach. By the time I got to the 6 or 8 foot mark that was too-much plenty of water, but was interesting have a look below the bridges and note what level the streams surged to in hard rains, or in passing tropical depression deluges.

Those rigid wood stencils worked fine until I came to my first bridge with circular pilings, and I made a set out of rubber sheeting; a much better idea, those flexible stencils worked equally well on flat or round surfaces.

It didn’t take long to mark canoe zero and upwards below the bridges on most of my local small streams, and I gave the flexible rubber set, which had dots cut out at 3” increments between the numbers, to a paddling friend to mark Canoe Zero gauges in his locale.

And it wasn’t long after that most of my local streams got on-line USGS gauges, and on those that didn’t I had gained enough visual familiarity to judge “Eh, that downstream rock is uncovered, that’s mighty low water”. But, if not, I could still see my stenciled Canoe Zero numbers.

I never thought to add “Kiss pretty girls” to my bridge graffiti.

 

[gumpus]

Most graffiti is vandalism. I think people should keep their paint on their own property.

 

[Sweetfancymoses]

Bringing this back to canoe-centric

Can't accuse William Clark of not being a canoe tripper.

 

[Alan Gage]

Somewhere there's a fuzzy line. What makes one signature carved in stone historic and another defacement? Is it only a matter of time or what the person who carved it went on to do with their life? I find it hard to think of Samuel Hearne's signature as being grafiti but is it really any different than all the other people who carve their name and date in order to say "I was here"?



Alan

 

[Sweetfancymoses]

Mark Twain offers thoughts about graffiti in "The Innocents Abroad'. Apparently, his fellow travelers brought stencils and used candle soot to leave their names and hometowns on some sacred antiquities.

 

[canoeswithduckheads]

In search for a self-worth,
how will we leave a mark,
that speaks of a dim brilliance,
that stumbles off in dark?
Should we take up paint,
seek masonry and stone,
pour out some profound,
self pride or pick our bones?

Or perhaps in final plan,
before tomb or earth's encasing,
we'll seek out carving hands,
of the skilled stone mason,
and to mausoleum lintel,
or monoliths on grass,
with name we'll pith last thoughts,
to head us off at pass?

Spray-painted epigrams,
fine chiseled epitaphs.
so much lost in translation,
Whose last words? Who laughs last?
They say that art is lasting.
That's ephemerally clear.
Like butterflies on bagged coconuts.
"Hey b*st*rds! I'm still here!"