Piercing Barriers to Art

Jason Stabile reveals how politicians in L.A. are targeting "piercing", a form of sidewalk art, for a slow extinction (snippet):

....Venice Beach, South Central and Echo Park all at one time offered space where aerosol painters, also known as graffiti artists, could legally create and display their works of art without fear of being stopped by the police. Such displays were not the kind of “scribble” people are used to seeing tagged on billboards or bus-stop benches. They were, and still are, highly detailed murals, featuring pictures and cartoony characters. But now these artists have fewer places to legally paint. As politicians in recent years have been targeting graffiti in an attempt to crack down on urban blight, aerosol paintings have been grouped into the category of graffiti, which is often associated with gang culture. To combat any kind of spay painting, some cities, such as North Hollywood and Pomona, have passed ordinances against erecting murals, while in other cities the police have the ability to censor the paintings they find distasteful. An artist who goes by the moniker “Sparks” explained the difference between the aerosol paintings and graffiti, also known as tagging. “First of all, we refer to (aerosol painting) as ‘piecing,’” he said. “Tagging is about competition with your friends and others to see who can write their names on more walls. Piecing is about being artistic.” It is the association with gang culture and the concept of blight that caused the closing of one popular graffiti spot. The area known as The Pit, a space filled with cement benches and lined with retaining walls along the boardwalk in Venice Beach, has been fenced off for several years. In the past, graffiti covered almost every square inch of its surface and artists were somewhat free to paint whenever they wanted. But when local business owners wanted to make the boardwalk a popular tourist attraction again, the place was cleaned up and closed off. Last year, the organization SPARC, Social and Public Art Resource Center, tried to temporarily reopen The Pit. Members from the group received permission from the Los Angeles City Council to put up new murals along open walls. The paintings however, were later recovered when the Venice Police Department found some of the images to be too controversial....