I have been spending a great deal of time in downtown Los Angeles lately, moving back and forth between the Central Criminal Courts Building and the Men’s Central Jail. If you keep your eyes open in that neighborhood, you start noticing something everywhere. Young people, mostly Hispanic kids, walking around with backpacks full of spray paint like painters carrying their brushes.
Look closely and you realize graffiti is not just one thing. There are really two kinds.
One kind is careful, deliberate, and surprisingly beautiful. Real artwork. Colors layered on top of colors. Shapes and lettering that clearly took time, patience, and skill.
The other kind is the territorial kind. The quick tags that mark the invisible borders of street gangs. That type is less about beauty and more about staking a claim.
But the artists. The real ones. They treat the city like a canvas. Any blank wall, bridge column, or stretch of fence becomes an invitation. And sometimes they place their work in places that make you stop and wonder how they even got there. High ledges, hard-to-reach corners, the sides of structures that would require a good set of climbing and rappelling skills just to reach. These kids are not just painters. Some of them are part acrobat.
There is a stretch in the Third Street Tunnel that is almost astonishing. From one end to the other, it is a rolling gallery of color and imagination. Driving through it feels less like passing through a tunnel and more like moving through a giant outdoor mural.
Of course, the law does not see it that way. In the criminal code, these artists are vandals. If they are caught, they can face serious charges for property damage.
But art has always lived in the eye of the beholder. And if you stand back and really look at some of this work, you start to realize something. A lot of it brings life to places that would otherwise be painfully dull. Concrete walls, railroad structures, freeway pillars. Without color they are nothing but gray. With color, they suddenly have personality.
Years ago I came across a railroad trestle near Charlotte, North Carolina. Someone had turned it into a burst of color. The paint exploded across the concrete like fireworks. I stood there staring at it, trying to imagine what the artist saw in his mind before he ever shook that first can of paint.
The transformation was remarkable. What had once been a plain, forgettable piece of infrastructure had become something worth stopping to admire. I took a photograph of it. Later I had the photo significantly enlarged and framed.
Every time I look at it, I am reminded of something simple. Sometimes art does not arrive through galleries, curators, or museum doors.
Sometimes it shows up in the middle of a railroad trestle, painted by someone who simply could not resist the urge to add a little color to the world.
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