History, anonymity:
Graffiti from the artist’s point of view
Sarah
Howel Features Beat
Foster Hunt | The Appalachian
Every day an art student practices
his skills in the Rivers Street tunnels. He leaves a personal
symbol at the bottom of each image.
In the subway tunnels
of New York City during the late 1980s, art student Keith Haring
was arrested repeatedly for vandalism after drawing simple stick
figures on subway walls with a piece of chalk.
On the Appalachian State University campus, every day an art student
practices his skills in the Rivers Street tunnels for everyone
to see. He leaves a personal symbol at the bottom of each image.
It is a signature known only to the artist himself. His roommate,
his girlfriend and his best friend will walk past the work and
never know it is his. The anonymity in the tunnels is sacred.
Not so sacred is the muddled scribble of clubs and campus organizations
advertising through the tunnels, up the stairs and across the
sidewalks. It is this kind of painting that urged campus officials
to pass new guidelines regarding spray painting on university
grounds.
Junior
Billy Fowler began creating art on campus two years ago when fellow
art majors invited him to join them in the tunnels. He has continued
to use the tunnels as a place to practice and display what he
calls “visions” he builds in his head.
Fowler and other artists do not feel that the new guidelines will
inhibit their art.
It is the negative portrayal of campus graffiti that angers Fowler.
He said the artists never carry their work outside the tunnels
in the first place.
“When you see stuff on the stairs it’s club stuff. I’ve
seen it stretch all the way up to Belk,” Fowler said.
He pointed out that clubs were never mentioned in the presentation
of the new guidelines.
“People would never call a club on [their violation of the
rule]; it’s just not right,” Fowler said.
As the tunnel art and the club announcements are all lumped under
the term “graffiti,” Fowler said he feels he and other
artists are being blamed for the campus looking, as Dean of Students
Susan P. Greene described, “awful.”
Campus artists believe art should be considered separately from
club advertisements and vandalism.
“Some people just see a spray can and want to destroy something.
It’s not the artists [vandalizing campus property],”
said Fowler.
Someone in the subways of New York saw Keith Haring’s work
and recognized it as art rather than vandalism. Haring went on
to be celebrated as an artistic genius. Some called him “the
Andy Warhol of his time.” His work was exhibited through
New York and eventually all over the world.
It is impossible to know whether the futures of our campus artists
hold the same success, but, according to Fowler, they deserve
the same respect.
“If it’s scribbling something, it does look awful. What
we do is different, and we have always sprayed only in the tunnels,”
Fowler said.
