Alley art

“Is that an A or an E or both? And that looks like an N,” I said to my boyfriend, Ray, staring at a collage of photographs that depicted 50 or so walls from around the country decorated with just as many graffiti murals. It was just one small part of a one-night-only exhibit at Bleulion gallery, which featured the works of local graffitists—some of whom illegally paint on walls and buildings around town.

“Your N might be a U,” Ray said. “That’s definitely an S. Or a B.”

“I feel illiterate,” I told him.

“Yeah, so do I.” Because every graffitist comes up with his or her own stylized font, even when you start to decipher one artist’s tag, the next artist’s just looks like a coded scribble. Ray pointed to a photograph of a massive, green wall painting in which Hulk-colored, tube-like forms looped and zigzagged around a pulsing ruby object.

“Maybe there aren’t any letters in that one. Maybe it’s just a dragon,” I said.

“I would rather graffiti didn’t say anything,” Ray said. “It bothers me that some guys just write their tag names over and over again and just use different colors and different spray techniques to make them look different. If I practiced doodling my name every day, I could make it look pretty fancy, too.”

The aerosol paint can sprays a thin line between creativity and vanity. Fortunately, Reno artists seem to be taking their graffiti in more intellectual directions. That may be due in part to the fact that Nevada anti-graffiti law recently has become stricter.

Since 1999, when Siaosi Vanisi went on trial for murdering Sgt. George Sullivan, anti-police graffiti started popping up; this led to increased concerns about the intention of graffiti, as well as an increased drive to put a stop to it. Reno citizens who were having their property defaced enouraged lawmakers to make the punishment for acts of graffiti vandalization more severe.

“We have had our van tagged once and our walls done three times,” said Dave Galloway, owner of a business in south Reno. “The day we discover it, we take it off. So whoever puts it up is not getting a lot of use out of it.”

Galloway said there’s a difference between graffiti artists and taggers. Although, most of what he sees is ill-concieved writing intended to convey messages of territoriality.

“If you were truly a graffiti artist, you would approach a person and ask them if you could do the art on their property. That’s different than tagging people’s private property and leaving your symbol behind … There ought to be an outlet where people can take turns painting public walls, but when taggers or graffiti artists decide, ‘There’s a wall here, so I’m going to make marks on it,’ that’s not fair.”

Most graffitists in Reno who classify their murals as art tend toward the more conceptual end of the graffiti spectrum. Those who were invited to paint the walls of Bleulion saw it as a chance to elevate their creations, in the public’s mind, to the realm of “real” art and to do it without the risk of being caught by police officers. Even then, some of the artists said they knew other graffitists who were staying away from the gallery show, worried that it might draw cop attention.

“Some kids are actually afraid to come out due to the fact that the police might be here,” said an artist who goes by the tag name Votes. The night of the show, Votes wore a lot of brown: trousers, a long-sleeved button-up and a golf hat. He seemed distracted by all the people walking around him.

Votes painted his tag name on large parts of the gallery wall in silver and black, but he was also responsible for many of the graffiti-inspired canvas paintings that decorated the wall space. He wouldn’t admit to unlawful tagging on a regular basis, but he did say that the last time he painted illegally was on Father’s Day, when he painted a piece for his dad.

“People need to see that you can do something positive doing graffiti, and that you’re not just criminals,” Votes said. “[People] have got to understand that it’s an art form, and it’s not just going to dissolve by making tighter laws.”

Votes showed me around the gallery. There were photographs, paintings of tag names, paintings of cartoonish heads and faces, miniature toy trains that had miniature graffiti designs painted on their flanks and one massive sculpture—200 or so empty spray paint cans assembled by Votes into one giant can of spray paint.

“Most of these artists do street graffiti as well, because there’s nowhere else to go,” said Max Ezra, co-owner of Bleulion. “You do see a lot of bad graffiti [around town] that doesn’t show a whole lot of intellectual development, whereas this piece really does.” He pointed to a painting of a yellow boxcar. The wheel of the car was faint, and a shadowy ladder climbed up its side. The side of the train had an undecipherable tag on it.

“This is something that transcends typical graffiti and goes to a higher level,” Ezra said. “This guy is a good painter; it just happens to be graffiti.”

Ahren Hertel takes his graffiti art to a higher conceptual level. He doesn’t do street graffiti, but he incorporates many of its elements into his paintings. Hertel is tall and wears glasses. He has a tattoo of a flaming pencil on his upper right arm that mimics the Catholic tradition’s image of the Sacred Heart. Hertel went to the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, where, living in a low-income area, he saw a lot of graffiti.

“I look at graffiti and think that it’s cool, so I incorporate elements of that into my art,” Hertel said. “I don’t paint illegally myself, but I’ve had some friends who do, and who don’t really use their head when they go out. The whole destruction-of-property thing is always an issue. But if Reno can’t have [tolerate] it, Reno should have a free wall. If [Nevada] is going to crack down on it, they should be able to give something back.”

Cracking down is what happened during the Nevada Legislature’s 2003 session, when an amendment to Nevada’s anti-graffiti law was adopted. The amendment makes it easier to convict graffitists of felonies rather than misdemeanors.

Previously, unless a greater criminal penalty loomed, any person who defaced public or private property through an act of graffiti without the owner’s consent was guilty of an offense proportionate to the value of the property damaged, which generally meant a misdemeanor.

The new law assigns a dollar amount to total damages, compounding damages from different acts of graffiti done over a period of time. Persons who commit acts of graffiti where the value of the loss is under $250 will be charged with misdemeanors. In situations where the destruction is between $250 and $5,000, the graffitist will be guilty of a gross misdemeanor. And in situations where damages add up to more than $5,000, the conviction will be a felony.

Graffitists like Votes, who are into graffiti because of a desire to be artistic, say that these stricter regulations won’t deter them any more than the previous laws did. Votes and Hertel believe that the law is designed primarily to deter gang activity. They don’t see the law as being directly relevant to them and their friends, even though they know they could be prosecuted just as severely as any gang member.

“What we do isn’t even comparable to gangs,” said one artist in his early 20s who goes by the tag name Fazer. The night of the show, Fazer wore a striped polo shirt and a trucker’s cap turned sideways. He spoke modestly with his hands in his pockets. “It’s not territorial at all. For the most part it’s just: ‘Here I am. I exist.’ … What that law may do is deter the ones who are doing graffiti rebelliously, but people who are in it from the art perspective are going to go out and paint regardless.”

Fazer stopped tagging illegally about two years ago. He had been caught several times but escaped getting a conviction. Now, he sticks to painting on canvas or on walls that he has been given permission to decorate. He says he’s trying to stay out of trouble, but that graffiti shouldn’t be viewed as a troublesome activity in the first place.

“Instead of just seeing graffiti as destruction, [people] should see it as a person and think about how many months that person spent practicing one little tag before finally going out on the street and doing it. Maybe they’ll see that and not just a scribble on a wall."