Graffiti Taggers paid to Deface EastEnders Set

Graffiti vandal was paid by BBC to deface EastEnders set
By Laura Clout
Last Updated: 1:48AM BST 30/05/2008
The leader of a gang of graffiti vandals was paid to deface the set of EastEnders after the BBC hired him to work on the soap opera as a painter, a court heard yesterday.
Andrew Gillman, 25, sprayed his 'tag’ over some of the most famous landmarks on the set, including the Queen Vic pub, the Albert Square street sign and the car lot at Mitchell’s Autos.
The head of an international graffiti gang known as 'The DPM Crew’, he went to work for the broadcaster under a false name after producers decided the set needed some genuine examples of graffiti.
Months earlier, Gillman had been arrested for criminal damage along with eight other members of his gang, and was on bail when he got the job, under the name Eddie Jones.

The gang’s activities are alleged to have lasted years and even included cross-Channel expeditions to Amsterdam and Paris.
London’s Southwark Crown Court was told their night-time forays saw numerous attacks on Britain’s stations, trains and railway rolling stock.
Apart from leaving rail companies with large clean-up bills, inconvenience was caused to commuters as carriages were taken out of service.
Two graffiti “writers” from the French capital were even found to have been invited on an “exchange visit” to London to demonstrate their talents.
Prosecutor David Durose said: “Shortly before Christmas 2007, Gillman gained casual employment with the BBC. He was employed under the false name Eddie Jones by the Art Department for the EastEnders’ series to assist them in decorating the outdoor set for that programme, which is not in the East End at all, but part of the BBC’s studios in Elstree.
“He tagged 'NEAS’, 'DPM’ and references to 'MOODY’ all over the EastEnders set. If you watch that programme, you may well have seen them in the background,” he said.
Gillman, and seven other members of the gang have admitted conspiracy to cause criminal damage. Another defendant, Paul Stewart, 26, from Lewisham, south-east London, denies the same charge.

Mural a counter to Graffiti

Student-painted mural a counter to graffiti
David MadridThe Arizona RepublicMay. 28, 2008 12:00 AM
It is just a block fence in an Avondale alley, but the bright and colorful artwork now covering the wall provides several benefits, say the artists who participated in the project.They believe it could prevent taggers from targeting the wall. It also allowed students of Avondale's Estrella High School to participate in a project that beautifies the property near the school.Students Violet Mendez, 16, and Michelle Brito, 18, said the project demonstrated that aspiring artists could use their talents without resorting to illegal graffiti.

"If they had a chance to draw on a wall like this, where they were allowed to, I think they would," Mendez said.Bryan Kilgore, 32, a teacher at Canyon Breeze Elementary School in Avondale, designed the 30-foot mural.Painted on a fence north of Estrella High School, the mural depicts a variety of musical instruments. Kilgore, 12 students and art teacher Margaret Lieu painted the mural."This is a true community effort to combat ongoing graffiti and tagging in our neighborhood using public art," said Bernadette Mills, assistant director of the West Valley Arts Council. Avondale, Estrella High School students, Art League West and Dunn-Edwards Paints collaborated on the project. The block wall was primed and painted by Avondale, while Dunn-Edwards in Goodyear donated all the paint and supplies.Kilgore said he hopes students will take away a love of art and of being a positive force in the community.The students said they would like to see other walls opened up to student artists."It would be something positive," Mendez said. "They would get better at it, and they would be able to get their energy out that way.""Students, young adults and parents," Kilgore said, "get to see individuals paint on a wall legally to uplift and build a community rather than seeing people do it illegally." He believes murals painted on walls prevent illegal graffiti. It has worked in Los Angeles, he said.

Don't like Graffiti? He dosen't care

Don't like graffiti? He doesn't care The Dominion Tuesday, 27 May 2008

LYNDA FORREST/Dominion Post
TAG MAN: Joseph Kitchener says he thinks about tagging every minute of every day.
Related Links
• The 'tagging bill' may come down harder on graffiti vandalism, but the motivation of one prolific tagger suggests it probably won't stop bored young men making marks on your fence or business. Marty Sharpe reports.
Meet Joseph Kitchener. The 24-year-old former P addict from Flaxmere has found a more addictive drug: graffiti vandalism. He is a prolific tagger and a "bomber" and boasts of "stuffing up" much of the North Island.
Kitchener epitomises all that people detest when they see their city or town defaced by vandals.
A seasonal fruit picker currently out of work, he's a young, bored man with no interests and no ambitions that don't include spraying paint on someone else's property.
His idea of a good night out is to board a moving freight train in Napier, hang off the side of it with a bag-load of spray cans and "bomb" a shipping container before jumping off as the train nears Hastings. His friends - part of his "crew" - drive alongside filming him as he does it.
Kitchener won't reveal the name of his crew for fear of being charged for numerous tags around the North Island, but says it includes four others in Hawke's Bay, three in Hamilton and two in Wellington.
They tag scrawls of three to four letters marking their turf and paint "bombs", which are larger, colourful images and words - better known as graffiti.
They share photographs of their work on the Bebo, YouTube and Facebook websites. They're putting the train episode on YouTube next month.
Born and raised in Sydney, Kitchener moved to Flaxmere, near Hastings, with his parents three years ago. He has been a tagger since the age of 12 and is well known to police locally and in Sydney.
With a string of burglary convictions, and one for assault for which he spent two months in prison, he is no stranger to court.
"Jail was nothing compared to what I thought it would be. The people are nice, they're all like me. Instead of having conversations explaining why I do things, those people already know why I do those things," he says.
It rather deflates any hope people might have that jail sentences will deter graffiti vandals.
He says he understands why people would get upset at being tagged, but he just doesn't care.
"I definitely wouldn't like it if it was done to me. But if I thought about that I wouldn't do it, if I thought about people's feelings. I've never cared what people think of me. If I did I would've stopped."
A lot of it is about turf. A group claims an area with its tag, which is usually nothing more sophisticated than three letters.
At the moment Kitchener and his crew are concerned about a Christchurch crew going by the name of PAS. They are starting to tag in Hawke's Bay.
"They've got a YouTube site where they say, `We will own the North Island one day'. It just gees me up to do more and more."
Kitchener has been caught tagging twice. There have been plenty of close calls, with police or security turning up just after he has left. And there have been threats from business owners and residents.
"I've had people threaten me with knives, baseball bats. I've had them run after out of their houses and put their dogs on to me," he says.
"I don't want to break the law, but it's all I think about every minute of every day. I can't help it. It's a habit. When I see a wall I can already see my bomb on it."
Lately he has resolved not to bomb or tag houses, fences or cars. "Businesses have insurance. They can afford to clean it up. That's what they get insurance for. House owners have to pay for it out of their own pocket.
"Now I'm just down to bridges, trucks, poles, trees and trains. Trains are the best. To watch a train go past and see your bomb on it: that's the ultimate experience."
A large wall, supplied by the council the same way it provides skate parks, would be the answer, he says. But it would need to be somewhere people could see it.
"Sometimes I put myself on the line just so I might get caught, so I can get the gratification of people knowing who did the bombing."
He is frustrated that he has to tag under bridges where no one will see it. "I want people to see it and look at the detail, see what I can do."
Kitchener has been drug-free for six months, and says he "gets pretty much the same buzz" now from tagging. "This is all I want to do. If I wasn't doing this I'd be back on drugs - and that wouldn't be good for anyone."

Tougher penalties For Graffiti Vandalism

Tougher penalties in new regulations
By Helen Gao
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
May 22, 2008
SAN DIEGO – Graffiti vandals will have a harder time shoplifting spray paint and broad-tipped indelible markers under new regulations that have received preliminary approval from the San Diego City Council.
The revisions also include tougher penalties for graffiti vandalism. The changes will be adopted after a second reading that could take place as early as next week.
The new regulations will require stores to keep items that are used for graffiti either in a locked display case or in an enclosed area behind a service counter, out of easy reach of minors and shoplifters.
Currently, such items can be left in the open as long as they remain under constant supervision by an employee. However, the city's code compliance department has indicated that vendors are not providing constant supervision.
Under the updated ordinance, markers with a tip 4 millimeters or broader and that use non-water-soluble ink must be secured. Other items that are already regulated as potential graffiti tools include aerosol paint and glass-etching products.
The ordinance, which got preliminary approval last week, also updates the municipal code by incorporating state penalties for graffiti offenses. Under those guidelines, vandals can be charged with a felony and get a state prison sentence of up to three years, pay up to $10,000 in fines and full restitution to victims and perform community service. State law also allows enhanced penalties for defacing cemeteries and houses of worship.
The municipal code, as it stands today, provides only for misdemeanor prosecutions of graffiti violators.
The new ordinance further requires the offices of the mayor and city attorney to provide annual reports to the City Council Committee on Public Safety and Neighborhood Services about graffiti cleanup and enforcement efforts.
The city has budgeted $1.6 million this fiscal year for graffiti abatement, enforcement and public education. That amount does not include what other agencies and private-property owners spend. The city receives 2,300 to 3,000 requests for graffiti removal per month.
To make a removal request, call the city's graffiti control hotline at (619) 525-8522 or visit sandiego.gov/graffiti/.
Helen Gao: (619) 718-5181; helen.gao@uniontrib.com

New York Graffiti

Here I am in New York, waiting to meet the city’s most fashionable street art duo, when a nice young man carrying a toddler turns up. It’s hard not to be disappointed. I wanted grit. I wanted danger. Instead I meet two personable 32-year-olds with college degrees.
Patrick Miller and Patrick McNeil met as teenagers in Arizona, but they teamed up in 1999 and have become known as Faile – pronounced “fail”, an anagram of an earlier name, ALife. They began by emblazoning their 1950s-styled pulp imagery on city streets, and have graduated to making a living putting it on everything from canvases to clothing.
Next week, however, they are getting back to their roots, joining street art crews such as Blu from Bologna, Nunca and Os Gemeos from São Paulo, and Sixeart from Barcelona (but not Banksy from London, who was not invited), in a survey of street art that will go up on the outside walls of Tate Modern. It’s not the first time the pair’s work has been exhibited in the UK – in 2006 their work played a central part in Spank the Monkey, a major exhibition of street art at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Newcastle.
Miller and McNeil painted their contribution – a splashy collision of typeface and figuration – in fragments in their New York studio, and then came to London to paste up the parts into a design almost 60ft high and 40ft wide (18m by 12m). It’s as if several layers of posters have been shredded by happy accident, and it mines a theme the pair plan to explore this autumn in a show at Lazarides Gallery in London: a prophetic dream of a tribe of Native Americans returning to reclaim their Manhattan home.
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I sought out Faile because New York graffiti is the stuff of legend. At least, it was: a messenger boy calling himself TAKI 183 is credited with launching the craze in the early 1970s, and later, when the city was fighting crime and recession, the scene exploded in the city’s subway. Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat brought it into the galleries in the 1980s. Then a succession of New York mayors cracked down.
Miller recalls the era as graffiti’s boom time. “The city has become so gentrified in the past 15 years that it’s pushed a lot of that out.”
The pair admit that they were clueless about the etiquette of graffiti when they began. “We never had any links to the culture,” says McNeil. “Certainly not until we moved to New York and started putting our stuff on top of it. And then people said, ‘Hey man, don’t do that, that’s someone’s work, and if they find you they’re going to mess you up.’ ” Faile see their roots in street art rather than graffiti. “Street art is the expansion of graffiti,” McNeil says. “Graffiti is an inside language. It’s relevant to the crew that do it. Street art connects with the masses.”
Comparing Faile’s work with normal graffiti, it’s clear that they are very different. That makes Faile typical of a new generation of artists who are finding livelihoods at a point where the street, the gallery and the worlds of advertising and fashion meet. McNeil and Miller have degrees in graphic design, and their work is informed by the history of art. There are flashes of radical politics but you’ll also find slick marketing on their website, which presents their work in the style of the Yellow Pages.
But does Faile’s work really belong in a gallery, or even, as at Tate Modern, on its exterior walls? “That’s tough,” Miller says. “We were making these kinds of things on the street, and then all of a sudden the fine art world decided to embrace it. It’s not as if we’ve closed the door on the street.”
Street Art at Tate Modern, London SW1 (www.tate.org.uk 020-7887 8008), May 23-Aug 25; Faile feature in The Outsiders, Lazarides Charing Cross, London WC2 (www.lazinc.com 020-7287 1779), from May 23. For more information, see www.faile.net

Rich people's graffiti

At one San Rafael home, graffiti art welcomed
By Paul Liberatore
In the subways of New York, the streets of Brooklyn, the barrios of Los Angeles and the Mission District of San Francisco, graffiti art is everywhere, a ubiquitous feature of the urban landscape.
Here in upper income, suburban Marin County, not so much. Graffiti is generally unwanted, out of place and misunderstood.
There's a big difference, for example, between illegal "tagging," clandestinely writing your name or initials, your "tag," on someone else's property, essentially defacing it, and the more sophisticated graffiti art, a cool new mural style that came from the streets and has evolved over the past 40 years into a legitimate art form, the only one created entirely by young people.
In one unusual Marin backyard, graffiti art is not only welcomed, it's celebrated. A relatively ordinary (at least from the outside) San Rafael home has been transformed into a spectacular showcase for the work of 32-year-old graffiti artist Max Ehrman.
Ehrman, who has a college degree in architecture and refers to himself as an "aerosol artist," spent 30 labor-intensive hours spray-painting a swirling, vividly colored "organic landscape" on what used to be a plain, wooden, 70-foot-long backyard fence.
"Now it has life," he says, "and energy."
In the underground lingo of graffiti artists, the fence is what is known as a "permission piece." It was commissioned by homeowner Philip Prigoff, a 22-year-old chef who shares the house with two roommates and wanted a piece of art
that would reflect his youthful lifestyle.
"For people my age, graffiti art is a pretty cool thing to be a part of," he says. "You won't find many neighbors around here with something like this in their backyard."
Admiring her son's great wall of graffiti one recent afternoon, Prigoff's mother, Bonnie, couldn't disagree. "It blows me away," she says.
"It's the first thing you see when you walk in the house," Philip goes on. "It's great to come home and enjoy a beautiful piece of art. There aren't many homes of people my age that have anything even resembling art in them."
For the Prigoffs, the appreciation of graffiti art runs in the family.
Prigoff's grandfather, Jim Prigoff, an 80-year-old retired Sara Lee Corp. vice president, is a world-renowned expert on urban art who has written several books on the subject, most notably "Spraycan Art."
"For graffiti artists, that's the bible," Ehrman says.
In an unlikely generational turnaround, when young Philip Prigoff wanted to get in touch with a graffiti artist to paint his fence, he turned to his grandfather.
"I tried to find an artist on my own, and that turned out to be the hardest thing I've ever done," he says. "Most of the people who do this kind of thing are pretty sketchy. They don't want to get in trouble. It was extremely hard to find someone, so I contacted my grandfather and he put me in touch with Max."
The elder Prigoff was happy to be of help, being a fan of Ehrman's work.
"It's beautiful," he says of his grandson's fence, "and I've seen a lot of graffiti art. Probably more than anyone. It's stunning."
Philip's younger sister, 19-year-old Chelsea Prigoff, was so impressed with her brother's fence that she commissioned Ehrman to spray-paint graffiti art on the walls of her new clothing boutique, the Pink Door, set to open at 1567 Fourth St. in San Rafael on May 30.
"I really love organic art," she says. "And when I saw Max's work, I saw that his colors and his textures relate well to what I do with my clothing. I'd always planned on picking my grandfather's brain. He was my inspiration to do more graffiti-esque art myself. He's an old guy with hip ways."
Read more San Rafael stories at the IJ's San Rafael page.
Contact Paul Liberatore via e-mail at liberatore@marinij.com

Paris Hilton Graffiti Artist?

She's hardly your average graffiti artist.
Paris Hilton, 27, has reportedly been banned from the Moscow Hyatt Hotel after scribbling her name in black marker on the designer wallpaper of a $16,000 dollar a night suite.
"Miss Hilton ruined the wallpaper in the luxury suite. In such a case the client automatically goes on the black list," said a spokesman for the hotel, before adding that the hotel will slap her with a $9,000 fine for allegedly defacing the property.
And why did Ms. Hilton ruin the hotel's lavish wall covering? For a photo, of course!
The heiress, dressed in revealing black dress and black boots, posed for a sexy photo shoot next to her handiwork, which reads "Paris Moscow 2008."
The Hilton Hotel heiress, who spent time in jail last year for a drunk driving, is in Moscow to host Russia's MTV awards.

1.1 million payed for Ed Ruscha Monument

The U.S. government is among 11 defendants who will pay $1.1 million after painting over the six-story 'Ed Ruscha Monument.'
By Diane Haithman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer May 1, 2008
Los Angeles artist Kent Twitchell has settled his lawsuit against the U.S. government and 11 other defendants for painting over his six-story mural "Ed Ruscha Monument," painted on the side of a federal government-owned downtown building, for $1.1 million.The settlement, disclosed Wednesday, is believed to be the largest awarded under the federal Visual Artists Rights Act or the California Art Preservation Act, both of which prohibit desecration, alteration or destruction of certain works of public art without giving the artist 90 days' notice to allow the artist the option of removing the artwork."It was a tough fight," Twitchell said in an interview Wednesday. "I'm just sort of in shock and relief over it all."The U.S. government will pay $250,000 of the settlement. The other defendants are contractors and subcontractors responsible for managing and maintaining the building at 1031 S. Hill St., at Olympic Boulevard, which houses the Los Angeles Jobs Corps Center.Art consultants have said it still may be possible to restore the mural, a portrait of artist Ed Ruscha that was created between 1978 and 1987 and painted over in June 2006. However, both Twitchell and his attorney, William Brutocao of the Pasadena law firm Sheldon Mak Rose & Anderson, said that restoring the artwork at its current location is not a viable option."I could conceivably go up and repaint it, and they could say, 'Guess what, you've got three months to remove it,' " Twitchell said.Said Department of Labor spokesman David James, "While DOL was initially unaware of the damage, appropriate persons within DOL soon became aware of the loss and DOL acted promptly and responsibly to attempt to resolve the situation."Under the terms of the agreement, the artist has until June 2009 to decide what to do with the mural. "Maybe I remove portions of it. I thought of the hands and the head because they are most intricate" and re-create the rest, he said. "And then I still have all my original cartoons for the body, the entire body and all the shadows; I could duplicate those exactly. I could even duplicate those in a smaller size. Anything could happen."Although Twitchell said that some of the defendants in the case deplored the damage to the mural, he called the current site "a hostile location."Currently, Twitchell is halfway through the re-creation of another of his well-known Los Angeles murals: the 1974 work "Old Lady of the Freeway," alongside the Hollywood Freeway, which was painted out by a billboard company in 1986. Twitchell is repainting it on an outside wall of the Viva Gallery in Sherman Oaks.Twitchell has mixed feelings about creating murals in Los Angeles. "What's really discouraging about most public art is the way that, in this city of ours, spray paint vandalism has kind of taken over the streets," he said. "What was once the mural capital is now the graffiti capital -- although I don't call it graffiti, I call it spray paint vandalism. We cannot coexist."Added Twitchell, "Ironically, the city was actually in the process of cleaning spray paint off the Ed Ruscha mural when it was destroyed."Pat Gomez, a public art manager for the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, said she was happy to hear that "the artists' rights have been recognized in this way. We hope that settlements such as this help get the word out to other property owners that these are important rights that need to be acknowledged through proper notice."Twitchell believes that these legal safeguards are necessary in the public art arena. "Without laws, we're not nice to each other; we try to beat the other guy out at the stop sign," he said. "Every law I can think of is to enforce good manners -- it keeps us civil."The Visual Artists Rights Act and the California Art Preservation Act, he says, fall into that "civil" category: "I'd be against a law that said you can't paint out a mural ever; I'd be against that as a public artist," he said. "But the law as it is written is really reasonable."diane.haithman@latimes.com