Sunday, August 02, 2020

Graffiti



The Huron River flows peacefully through the Michigan landscape, a lovely place to be on the water. West of Ann Arbor, railroad tracks go along the river bed, crossing it several times on low trestle bridges. The supporting structures are very popular with graffiti artists. Occasionally their work might qualify as a mural, but most of the time, it’s little more than just tagging; in fact, it’s close to pure vandalism. It’s sad, because Ann Arbor is a city that much appreciates murals, and the local art association has recently raised $50,000 to subsidize several murals on walls downtown – I hope these taggers don’t deface the murals!

Blog post © 2020 mae sander.

9 comments:

Tandy | Lavender and Lime (http://tandysinclair.com) said...

I sell spray paint and ironically we used to sell grafitti remover as well. It's terrible how much gets tagged!

Bleubeard and Elizabeth said...

Yes, it's sad to see, but better to have graffiti on a bridge than in a downtown area where the taggers can do a lot of damage to beautiful murals. I'm delighted to read that your city has dedicated so much money for murals.

My city gets people (shop ownwers) to volunteer their walls who also pays the artist for the paint and possibly a small stipend, too. No one gets rich from the project, but the artists get their names out there in case someone wants to hire them.

Jenn Jilks said...

It's too bad, isn't it?
There are places where they've allowed the taggers to tag.

Divers and Sundry said...

Maybe some of the mural artists could be assigned this space ;) Around here the taggers don't deface murals but move to blank spaces.

Carola Bartz said...

We have graffiti in our downtown area (our downtown is not particularly attractive) and it's removed on a regular basis only to re-appear after a few days. Unfortunately we don't have many murals, I wish we had.

Jeanie said...

There's graffiti and there's mural art and there's a huge dif. The graffiti, not so much. This is too bad. Sometimes you'd just like to see the rocks or whatever that supports the bridge.

dee Nambiar said...

Seriously! Legal murals are supposed to prevent graffiti like this. And it's really sad to see tagging on good artistic works.

However, the kind of graffiti that looks ok to me are the ones on old, abandoned railcars and houses. They make cute pictures, I think. :)

Have a healthy week, Mae.

Bertiebo said...

Oh yes sometimes it's vandalism. Not always though

Linda said...

It actually looks pretty, reflected in the water.