Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Graffiti

Today, as always, I read Lily Hydrangea's blog, Long Island Daily Photo. She posted a photo of a little graffiti, and it seems to have inspired a small discussion of the subject. This reminded me of a post I wrote more than a year ago.

My daughter was teaching English for a year in Veszprem, Hungary, and I went over to visit her. It was the first time I had been across the Atlantic. I was rather surprised to see the amount of graffiti everywhere. Much was political, some an expression of protest (such as, "No McDonald's here!"), and some was just plain nasty. But a great deal of it was really rather beautiful.

There was an underpass not far from the school, and its walls were covered with graffiti. Kitty decided something should be done about it, and she spent many hours with local officials in an attempt to get permission to do it. If you think it is hard to get anything done at "City Hall" around here, you should try it in eastern Europe. But she finally succeeded.


She rounded up a crew from among the students at the gymnasium (high school) and they white washed the whole area. Then they repainted it with a bright mural they designed themselves.





I posted these pictures before, but you may not remember them from back in 2008. I think they are worth a second look. At least, I am enjoying the memory.

5 comments:

Sylvia K said...

What a marvelous accomplishment! Kudos to Kitty! And what a great job the kids did! I looks terrific! Hope your week is going well, Bobbie! And thanks for posting them again, I must have missed them the first time around!

Sylvia

dianasfaria.com said...

such a beautiful mural. & definitely worth the repost because it is such a great story.
I always appreciate your visits & comments about my posts Bobbie. You are very encouraging. Thank you.
: )

Anonymous said...

Very lovely stuff. I'm torn on graffiti in general. Much of it is plain vandalism but, then again, some of it is great art. Some argue for particular spaces to be set aside for it but, for me, that seems to be too much an act of control by 'the powers that be'. Maybe we have to put up with the bad stuff to enjoy the good.

Rambling Woods said...

I love to see young people getting involved and I didn't read your blog in 2008, so it was all new to me Bobbie....

I am moving Thinking Green to my main blog so that I can just have one blog to take care....Michelle

Ramblingwoods Main Blog

Unknown said...

What an accomplishment! It turned out beautifully.

Like SB, I have mixed feelings on graffiti as well.

One thing that comes to mind to defend it, though is how when you see it and it's not just mindless and random, even if it isn't all that excellent, what it triggers for me is how strong the need for public self-expression is.

Cities and towns around the world make decisions about what will or will not constitute public art. Are they any better at it than a regular person? I may think that some graffiti is garbage but I may also not like the rusty sculpture in front of a public building. Worse yet, a canon or a missile like the photo the cunning runt posted the other day.