The proliferation of graffiti can actually be a sign of a vibrant youth culture, says the woman who just might own the most graffiti-covered building in all of Sault Ste. Marie.
Andrea Pinheiro is the Director of 180 Projects, an art space on Gore Street that is downright drenched in the (often elaborate) work of local graffiti artists.
With the recent arrest of a young man accused of being behind one of the city's most common pieces of graffiti (you've seen 'BORED' right?), debate over graffiti as art has become rather heated.
Pinheiro says the broader issue is hardly black and white.
“(Graffiti) is an incredible tool for empowering people that would otherwise not have any venues for their work (however) I can understand a person with a building that they’ve put a lot of work into not wanting it,” said Pinheiro.
When Pinheiro bought the building in 2012, the outside was in a state of disrepair and using colourful paints to cover the roughly 6,500-square-foot side and rear outer walls just seemed like a smart, cost-efficient solution.
At the time, Pinheiro put out a casual open-invitation for anyone to paint whatever they wanted on the building and with her connections in the art community and through word of mouth, she had the entire building covered with murals and graffiti after about a year.
“We said ‘Do whatever you want.’ Some people just walked by and asked us if they could join and some of the people who helped were already involved in other street art projects. Soon we were getting a lot of positive feedback from pedestrians who enjoyed how colourful it was.”
And then the graffiti spread.
Pinheiro’s neighbor, George Wilson at Steel City Motorsports, liked what was happening and started inviting artists to paint the outside of his building.
“One day I caught a young fellow tagging on the side of my building. He almost ran away but I convinced him to stop and listen to me. I said ‘Listen, the police are going to arrest you for tagging if they see you. You and your buddies should see me first and that way if any police come just tell them 'George said I could paint'.’ Ever since then they’ve told me about what they're doing and I really like their work," Wilson said.
Wilson now wants graffiti artists to paint inside his store; he’s offering to buy them paint to do graffiti-style pieces of his parts-suppliers names.
However, Pinheiro said graffiti is spreading onto other buildings in the neighbourhood and not all the businesses owners are happy about it.
Toni’s Cakery, across from 180 Projects, is one of these businesses.
Owner Toni Pellegrino said last year she spent $250 to remove graffiti from the outside of her building only to have fresh graffiti on the same walls two days later.
Pinheiro tries to remain thoughtful and balanced about it all.
“I don’t want to make a moral judgment on it. I think its all a matter of context of where it is and what sort of stuff it is,” she said.
Although she’s not specifically an expert in graffiti, as an art professor she tries to inspire her students with street-artists like Swoon and she’s aware of the street-art roots of famous artists like Jean Michel-Basquiat and Banksy.
However, Pinheiro said that while graffiti can be very inspiring, she stresses to her students that they have to be responsible for every artistic choice and to help navigate these choices they should try to understand the wider implications of every aspect of their work: from the materials they choose, to the ideas they engage with, to the places their work is shown.
“If an artist chooses to work with spray paint on buildings that they don’t own then they have to take the responsibility and the risk associated with that choice,” she said.
Without judging others, Pinheiro said that if she herself were to do that sort of work she would follow her own personal ethic.
“On a building where people have obviously spent time taking care of it and have put money into it, if I was imaging myself in the position of someone wanting to do that kind of art work, I would be more prone to working on buildings in disrepair,” she said.
Regarding BORED, she just wishes some of the public sentiment, particularly those making online comments, would be more thoughtful and mature.
“A lot of the comments . . . are cruel. For example someone will say something like ‘Why don’t you send them to your house if you support them?’ It just feels very small-minded I guess.”
She thinks that BORED is an artist who has “committed himself to a type of visual culture and refining a skill” and that whether it's good or bad is subjective and an argument that can’t be settled.
“Graffiti writing, traditionally, is about text and not pictures. I think a lot of people get quite upset because they’re not seeing pictures on walls.”
Pinheiro isn’t used to anti-graffiti sentiments.
She has lived and spent time in Williamsburg, New York, the east end of Vancouver, and the rougher parts of Edmonton — all places where she said graffiti is a sign of vibrant youth culture.
When she reads comments saying that graffiti is a sign of crime and that it will lead to more social problems she wants to tell people that, actually, the opposite is true.
“If anything”, she said, “Graffiti tends to lead to an area becoming more gentrified or creatively engaged rather than crime-filled. I work with a lot of people whose entrance into a career in art was through graffiti. That’s what got them into it and now they have quite established careers as gallery directors and they get to travel all around the world as artists.”
As for her building, it just keeps evolving at a rate of completely changing every two summers.
“I’m sure that the end of this summer it will be completely different from what it was last summer (although) I imagine now that maybe people will be more hesitant to go over the BORED stuff.”
Wilson at Steel City Motorsports is actually hoping BORED will come to his store and paint.
“I like his work. I want to look him up on Facebook and see if he’ll come inside and do some graffiti legally for me," he said.