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Graffiti maker shows little fear of heights  
First published: Tuesday, September 18, 2007

A couple guys called suggesting I check out the latest graffiti high atop the Hulett Street bridge over the Schenectady downtown arterial.
  
The span, aka the Cotton Hollow Bridge, has been marred by about 20 yards of various gang tags. That's what I saw, but since I don't belong to a gang the code didn't mean anything to me.

I wrote a brief item recently about rooftop graffiti on the old State Theater building, but pigeons would get a nosebleed trying to reach the bridge scribble.

I visited the newest city eyesore and discovered graffiti on both sides of the bridge, something my tipsters didn't know. While I was staring skyward surveying the "art," city police joined the act.

"Is there a problem or anything wrong going on?" one of the officers asked. That was a logical inquiry for cops spotting a person staring into space on the shoulder of a high-speed highway.

I said my mission was to determine how the paint sprayers reached the bridge underbelly. "We've been trying to figure out the same thing without success," one of the cops said.

It seems as though the aerial artist hung from the bridge deck with one hand and spray painted a steel beam with the other -- risky stuff. No doubt if you offered him pay to paint a house, he would refuse.

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Child’s chalk art
cited as ‘graffiti’
   NEW YORK — Chalk it up to the city’s crackdown on graffi ti.
   A 6-year-old child’s chalk sketches on her family’s stoop brought her bemused parents a graffiti-removal notice that threatened a $300 fine, the family and Sanitation Department officials said.
   “My mom got a ticket for graffiti, and it wasn’t even graffiti,” fi rstgrader Natalie Shea said. “It was art, very nice art.”
   But a neighbor apparently didn’t see it that way and called the city’s 311 complaint line about the blue flower drawn earlier this month on the stoop of Natalie’s home in Park Slope, a Brooklyn neighborhood known for being family friendly.
   The notice that arrived Oct. 5 — giving the family 45 days to clean up the “graffiti” — was a form letter sent in response to all such complaints, city Sanitation Department spokeswoman Kathy Dawkins said.
   Natalie’s mother, Jen Pepperman, said she would wash off the girl’s doodles more promptly in the future. As for the offending flower it was erased Thursday by a heavy rain.
   The Associated Press  

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Child’s chalk art
cited as ‘graffiti’
   NEW YORK — Chalk it up to the city’s crackdown on graffi ti.
   A 6-year-old child’s chalk sketches on her family’s stoop brought her bemused parents a graffiti-removal notice that threatened a $300 fine, the family and Sanitation Department officials said.
   “My mom got a ticket for graffiti, and it wasn’t even graffiti,” fi rstgrader Natalie Shea said. “It was art, very nice art.”
   But a neighbor apparently didn’t see it that way and called the city’s 311 complaint line about the blue flower drawn earlier this month on the stoop of Natalie’s home in Park Slope, a Brooklyn neighborhood known for being family friendly.
   The notice that arrived Oct. 5 — giving the family 45 days to clean up the “graffiti” — was a form letter sent in response to all such complaints, city Sanitation Department spokeswoman Kathy Dawkins said.
   Natalie’s mother, Jen Pepperman, said she would wash off the girl’s doodles more promptly in the future. As for the offending flower it was erased Thursday by a heavy rain

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Teenagers’ paintings in public spaces can be eyesores or art
BY SARA FOSS Gazette Reporter

   For months, the initials MVG appeared on cracked pavement, houses, and storefronts, an anonymous calling card written in spray paint.
   “We were just getting our group’s name up at first,” explained DC Dunkel, 14, one of the Schenectady teens responsible for the graffiti.
   Then he and his friends were arrested one morning, caught in the act. This they hadn’t expected.
   “We figured the cops weren’t out early in the morning,” he said. “It was just quick, on the way to school.”
   DC eventually landed at Quest, the drop-in youth center based at Sacred Heart-St. Columba’s Church in Schenectady, as part of his community service. There, Judy Atchinson put him to work painting murals in the church basement.
   The walls of the church basement were already covered with murals, which lend some brightness to a room that is otherwise dark and dingy. There’s a green dragon, painted by a college student who volunteered at Quest and “wanted to leave something of himself behind,” Atchinson said. A ship was airbrushed on the wall by someone sent to Quest to perform community service. A colorful, cartoonish streetscape spans the length of a wall, mixing Schenectady landmarks such as Jerry Burrell Park and Proctors theater with the out-of-place and fanciful, such as a skier descending the Empire State Building and a flying saucer.
   Atchinson, who runs Quest and considers the murals folk art, won’t let just anyone paint on the wall. First, she looks at sketches of their work; DC, she said, had an impressive sketchbook. The street graffi ti that got him into trouble “was not an advertisement for his abilities as an artist,” she said.
OPEN CANVASES
   Schenectady is wrestling with an increase in graffiti, and on Monday, the Schenectady City Council will vote on a much-discussed law that would require merchants to lock up their spray paint and widetipped permanent markers and forbid them to sell those items to customers younger than 18. Property owners would also be required to clean graffiti off their property within 20 days.
   Atchinson, for one, advocates establishing a graffiti wall and mural painting project to provide legal spaces and outlets for teens to express themselves artistically. She believes this would reduce the amount of street graffiti in Schenectady.
   “Kids should be involved in murals in our neighborhoods,” she said. “A lot of cities just make it against the law to buy paint. ... This is not cutting edge. Why are we so behind the times?”
   DC agreed that a graffiti wall would help but suggested that not everyone would be satisfied by a wall.
   “Some kids do graffiti to mark their turf,” he said. “Some kids would do it on a wall if there was a wall where they could do it.”
   Schenectady City Councilwoman Barbara Blanchard, who proposed the graffiti law, said there is a difference between a graffiti wall and a mural project. She said murals have been shown to deter graffiti — vandals seldom deface the art — while graffiti walls have not.
   “Kids expand beyond the area they’re allowed to do graffiti in,” she said.
   A mural program might work in Schenectady, Blanchard said, but she added that she wasn’t sure where the murals would go.
   “Our graffiti tends to be all over,” she said. “Murals definitely could work, but I don’t have a site in mind.”
   A lot of the city’s graffiti, she said, is located on bridge underpasses.
   “That’s not where mural people want to put murals,” she said.
   Blanchard described the graffi ti ordinance, which is all but certain to pass, as a first step in combating graffiti. One idea she likes, she said, is creating a “graffiti squad,” comprised of teenagers, to clean graffi ti off property. “It could be a learning experience for kids,” she said.
INSPIRING PRIDE
   Successful mural programs have been established in other communities.
   For years, Susan Shanley ran the Saratoga Mentoring Program, which has enlisted children and teenagers to co-design and paint murals throughout Saratoga Springs. She is no longer affiliated with that program but still organizes several mural painting projects each year.
   “I started doing the murals because I wanted kids without resources or self-esteem to be out being creative,” Shanley said. “The mentoring project was designed for kids who need opportunities. I wanted kids who didn’t fit into academic settings easily.”
   One of those kids was Jose Van Derburg, a cheerful 19-year-old who admits he was a terrible student from a poor and dysfunctional family and says he was admitted to Green Mountain College in Vermont largely on the strength of his work with the mentoring program.
   He drew his first mural when he was 11 and is now working with Shanley to organize a mural project with kids in Mississippi. All told, he’s probably contributed to about 10 murals in Saratoga Springs, including a vibrant painting of Solomon Northup, a free black man who was working as a cab driver and violinist when he was abducted into slavery in Louisiana. A Canadian, Samuel Bass, and residents of Saratoga helped arrange for Northrup’s release.
   When a mural is complete, everyone who has worked on it signs the wall.
   “My name is on, like, 11 walls,” Van Derburg said. “It’s a beautiful thing.”
   Painting murals helped keep him out of trouble, he said.
   “If I’m painting murals for six hours a day, I’m not going to be doing anything [bad],” he said.
   His mother, he said, loves his murals.
   “She could say, ‘Look at what my son did.’ That sense of achievement and accomplishment spreads through a family.”
   “When we started this, people said you shouldn’t do this because kids who do graffiti will wreck the murals,” Shanley said. “None of the murals have been touched by kids who do graffiti.”
   Fifteen-year-old Myra Salcon was 7 when she drew her first mural. Recently, she touched up a colorful painting of a moose that was part of a mural titled “Celebration of the Iroquois Clan Animals” drawn at Ballard Elementary School in Wilton. The project was lead by Shanley and parent volunteer Jeanne Daley.
   “I enjoy designing [murals],” said Myra, who attends Saratoga Springs High School. “I like choosing colors that look pretty and colorful. When people come up and say you’ve done a wonderful job, it’s a great feeling. I’ve always been interested in art. I love it a lot, expressing the feelings I have inside.”
CITY PROPOSALS
   Schenectady County Historian Don Rittner has proposed a couple of mural projects in Schenectady. He’d like to see a mural of the naval battle between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia painted on a wall at the small park the city owns at the intersection of Union Street and Erie Boulevard. Schenectady played a major role in the Civil War, with key components of the USS Monitor, including the donkey engine that powered the ship’s rotating turret, being manufactured at the Clute Brothers Foundry downtown.
   Rittner’s other proposal, which appears to have more traction, would involve painting a mural, possibly for the Schenectady County bicentennial in 2009, on the “ugly old wall” on the Liberty Street side of the SACC-TV headquarters on Broadway. It would be a cooperative project involving a number of organizations, including Proctors and the Schenectady County Chamber of Commerce. An artist would be tapped to oversee the project, which would be carried out by kids.
   “A lot of cities have mural programs,” Rittner said. “Most big cities do. It’s an outlet for art. It cuts down on graffiti. ... I’d like to see murals all over the city. If you’ve got a city where art is pervasive, you’ve got a city that is alive and doing well.”
FEW LEGAL OUTLETS
   Throughout the summer, DC created four murals in the basement of Quest.
   One of his murals, which says, “Let Us Shine,” was inspired by a drawing in his sketchbook, as was a mural that says “Black Against Black Crime Must Stop.” In the kitchen, a mural proclaims “The Cooks” in black-and-yellow block print. “We wanted to pay homage to our cooks,” Atchinson says during a tour of the church basement Quest calls home. Another mural simply says, “Quest.”
   DC said he got the idea to spraypaint graffiti throughout Schenectady after attending a Boys and Girls Club spray-painting class run by Youth for Christ. He doesn’t think of himself as an artist, he said. “I think of it as a hobby,” he said. He began drawing, he said, after he won an art contest in elementary school.
   Few people regard graffiti as a benign activity.
   After three Schenectady residents were arrested last February on graffiti charges, accused of spray painting a retaining wall near St. Adalbert Church, the Rev. Carl Urban said, “We work very hard to maintain the property and keep a nice presence in the neighborhood.”
   This summer, Public Safety Commissioner Wayne Bennett questioned the Boys and Girls Club program. “The bottom line with graffiti is, you need to have a canvas,” he told the Gazette. “After the [Youth for Christ] leave, then what becomes of the canvas? I suspect there’s very little available to them. The substitute becomes people’s property.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF SUSAN SHANLEY
This 55-foot mural was created in September 2006 by 64 fifth-grade students at Ballard Elementary School in Wilton. The project was led by artist Susan Shanley and parent volunteer Jeanne Daley.

A closeup of the mural.

PHOTO COURTESY OF SUSAN SHANLEY Mayra Falcon works on the mural created in September 2006 at Ballard Elementary School in Wilton.  

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SCHENECTADY
City looks at approving murals to discourage graffiti
Proposal covers public, private walls
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter

   The long, blank walls of this old industrial city may soon be considered a canvas for muralists, Zoning Officer Steve Strichman said.
   Murals will be allowed, under specific standards, in the new rules proposed in Schenectady’s draft comprehensive plan.
   The announcement delighted inner-city arts teacher Judy Atchinson, who has allowed her students to paint a series of murals inside her drop-in youth center on Hamilton Hill.
   “I’m so excited about this. I can’t believe it!” she said. “Number one, murals make for a more beautiful city. Nothing is worse than a blank wall. Murals are interesting to see.”
   The city’s goal is to beautify the city while also discouraging graffiti. It’s an idea that’s grown in popularity over the years, to the point where Strichman said he was forced to come up with a way to let people do it.
   “It keeps coming up, by property owners who want to have them put up, by artists that want to go around and sell them to people,” he said. “But we don’t have a process and people shied away from it.”
   Murals are now generally considered to be signs, which are governed under a series of restrictions and must be kept small. In addition, murals aren’t even mentioned in the sign rules, so very few businesses asked the city for permission to paint artwork
because it wasn’t clear whether such designs would be allowed at all.
One of the few who got permission was Jon Camaj, who owns the Pizza King on downtown State Street.
   The Clinton Street side of his building has been painted sky-blue and features drawings of the Statue of Liberty, Niagara Falls, the Egg in Albany, Proctors, General Electric and many other buildings.
   It was also supposed to feature Camaj’s face, but he said the city wanted to limit the advertising portion of the mural.
   “We put it up to make the wall look more — well, it was a total disaster before. We wanted something colorful,” Camaj said.
   He paid an artist to create the mural in 2002, and cheerfully declared that if murals start popping up around the city, it’s because of him.
   “Who started the trend? I did,” he said.
   Under the proposed rules, the city could grant permission for artists to decorate city-owned property, although the areas hardest hit by graffiti are railroad underpasses and private commercial buildings. Painters would have to get permission from those owners and submit a design for city approval.
   The Planning Commission would make the final decision by granting a special use permit for the work. It’s not clear yet what standards they will use when they consider each mural. City officials will create specific guidelines next year, after the comprehensive plan is adopted, Strichman said.
   He said the murals should be designed to cover up “big blank walls.”
   But Commissioner of General Services Carl Olsen said he also hopes murals will cut down on graffiti.
   “It appears people [painting graffiti] prefer blank canvases. It may help prohibit it,” he said. “It’s an idea worth pursuing.”
   He warned that the city can’t do much unless private owners agree to have murals painted on their property.
   “We don’t own much of [the graffiti-covered areas],” he said. “Normally it is privately owned buildings. It may be an option for an owner of a commercial building that’s constantly incurring the expense of painting it off.”
   Atchinson said murals would be an effective deterrent.
   “It’s very rare that anyone defaces a mural,” she said.

MEREDITH L. KAISER/GAZETTE PHOTOGRAPHER A man runs Wednesday through the graffiti-covered tunnel under Interstate 890 in Schenectady

MEREDITH L. KAISER/GAZETTE PHOTOGRAPHER A woman walks by a mural painted on the side of the Pizza King at the corner of State and Clinton streets Wednesday in Schenectady.

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Under the proposed rules, the city could grant permission for artists to decorate city-owned property, although the areas hardest hit by graffiti are railroad underpasses and private commercial buildings. Painters would have to get permission from those owners and submit a design for city approval.