Paint on the walls

They’re vandals deserving the severe hand of the law. Or misdirected artists who make unauthorized public spaces their canvases. Or floundering youngsters seeking acceptance among their peers.

Graffitists, taggers, vandals—even those committed to finding a solution to Reno’s graffiti dilemma disagree on just how to label these kids. And some would say that the terminology is the first step to fixing the problem.

“Call it what it is,” said one attendee of a recent Graffiti Action Team meeting. “Instead of glorifying it by calling it graffiti, call it vandalism.”

The Graffiti Action Team first met Feb. 6 as a follow-up to the Reno City Council’s Graffiti Summit held Jan. 24. Sitting around L-shaped tables at the Northeast Community Center, the 30 or so attendees listened as Reno City Councilwoman Sherrie Doyle introduced the leaders of the volunteer Graffiti Action Team and told the attendees—everyone from a soon-to-be business owner to a youth program developer to several concerned citizens—that their ideas would be crucial.

“One thing is clear,” Doyle told the group. “We have a problem.”

The problem is not a new one. Although graffiti has never been pandemic in Reno, its presence has now crept so far into the community consciousness that lawmakers and citizens are concerned. As cities that have tried everything from locking up paint to assigning designated tagging areas can attest, the problem is a tough one.

“Think outside the box,” Doyle told the meeting attendees. “Sometimes the weirdest idea just might work.”

Attendees were split into small groups and assigned an area of focus, such as “Business and Retail” or “Municipal.” One member at the “Information and Education” table—at which I eavesdropped—suggested a newsletter for parents who have kids in the Washoe County School District, or an informational supplement sent out with Sierra Pacific utility bills.

Susan and James Black, a local couple whose teenage son had been the leader of a gang, talked about neighborhood beautification. In her California hometown, Black focused on one low-income apartment complex. She persuaded its owner to plant trees and the city to bring in Dumpsters for the piles of trash.

“We beautified the area,” Black said. “That was part of our education program. We can’t just go to suburban areas. We have to go places where these kids live.”

James Black said that parents need to be educated just as much as their children.

“You’d be amazed at how many parents are scared to death of their children,” he said. “Scared to death, and they don’t know where to turn.”

Jeff Erickson, director of facilities at the Nevada Museum of Art, stressed the importance of reaching kids at an early age.

“We need to get respect and values instilled before a crucial age,” he said. “But if you start in high school …”

“It’s too late,” chorused several members of the group.

Youth activist Heather Simms said that young people need direct connections to people they can look up to. The common practice of asking established football or basketball stars to speak at schools probably won’t work—teens need snowboarders, hip-hop artists and other up-and-coming stars who are still in their age group.

She also pointed out that taggers are sometimes vilified in rather extreme ways. She passed around a handmade anti-graffiti sign she found.

“Taggers are cowards,” it read, “the same as terrorists. They destroy and deface property. Any tagger caught will be beaten to a pulp by C.E.T (Committee to Eliminate Tagging).”

By accepting that there are indeed artistic impulses—and not pure vandalism—motivating some taggers allows for alternative art projects to become part of a potential solution. Programs could be devised to allow taggers to channel their energies into a legal means of expression. Several local taggers have been vocal in their support of a designated tagging wall, and on Feb. 7, the day after the first Graffiti Action Team meeting, a group of taggers met with Doyle to ask for a wall to call their own.

Ray Valdez, a Sierra Arts artist-in-residence and director of Sierra Arts’ Arts Alternative Program, said that a designated tagging area is likely to work for the kids who are in it more for the art than for the thrill.

Valdez has led teens, some of whom are ex-taggers, in art projects such as the painting of murals on the Northeast Community Center and on the Solari Building on Linden Street. The Solari Building, he says, was being tagged every week before the teens did the mural. It’s been two years since the mural went up, Valdez says, and the building hasn’t been tagged once.

Although some fear that a designated mural area would soon fall prey to graffiti, Valdez says that it’s not likely, since the taggers could potentially be defacing the art of their own friends or schoolmates. Once, one of his students’ murals was tagged, but Valdez found the perpetrator within two weeks, called him up with a stern lecture, and the murals have been tag-free ever since.

Last year, when Nevada Hispanic groups were discussing concerns with local businesses, Valdez suggested that more businesses offer condoned spaces for the making of murals, just as Cam Solari did with his Linden Street building. Some showed interest, but nothing materialized.

“People want a solution, but I don’t know if they’re willing to do their part,” he said. “They just want it to go away. You’ve got to meet it halfway.”

It’s only the steady, unwavering commitment of a community to change kids’ lives that will make a difference, Valdez said.

“Are we just going to keep arresting them?” he asked. “That’s not going to work. And one little summer [arts] program is not going to stop it. You have to continue on.”

Valdez has a grand-scale project in the works for this summer: the painting of the water tank at the corner of McCarran Boulevard and Keystone Avenue, a site that the city of Reno offered to Valdez and his student artists. Valdez already has a list of young artists who have signed up for the project. Among the youth is ex-tagger Andrew Deesing, a student in Valdez’s Arts Alternative program.

“It opened up a whole new world for him,” Valdez says of Deesing. “He said, ‘Hey, I can actually do this in the daylight.’ “

Deesing had been tagging for three years and had never been caught in the act, although it would take him anywhere from two to five hours to finish his designs during the night. His brother had taught him to draw before he started tagging, and his friends taught him tagging in his early teens. He calls his designs “spiritual,” portraying fantastical scenes.

“Like science fiction,” he said. “Like you would see in [Star Trek Voyager].”

One time, Deesing tagged a wall with an entire comic strip. Sometimes, he would crawl over the sides of bridges and perch in precarious positions for 45 minutes at a time to tag.

Part of his motivation was a love for design, he said. But he also loved the thrill.

Valdez says that’s the crux of the dilemma: Murals and designated graffiti walls may transform some taggers into artists, but not the ones who tag just for the thrill.

“I’m no psychologist,” Valdez said. “But it’s about the thrill of winning and losing. It’s about an addiction. It’s not about art.”

Still, the dangerous lure of tagging no longer has a hold over Deesing. Today, he’s doing murals on school walls, still-life paintings and cartoon sketches. He wants to make a living as an artist someday—but he’s thinking of veterinary medicine as a fallback career.

“Just doing art is a thrill for me," he said. "Successfully completing something."