Goal of online effort is to catch taggers
By Mark Arner
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
December 18, 2007
A south San Diego resident has taken his frustration with graffiti online in an effort to catch the vandals defacing his neighborhood.
JOHN GASTALDO / Union-Tribune
San Diego city utility worker Anvil Thomas used pressurized water on pretreated graffiti on Elm Street in south San Diego. A concerned resident is crusading against graffiti vandals through his Web site. Activist Rodel Reyes spent two days and $100 creating his anti-graffiti Web site, which shows images of gang or tagger names spray-painted on fences, freeway signs, Dumpsters and other surfaces around Nestor and Otay Mesa.
The Web site, launched Nov. 19, invites the public to look at the photos and share any information with the San Diego Police Department. Residents can send comments or photos to Reyes for possible publication.
Although the Web site spurns law enforcement advice by displaying dozens of examples of graffiti, it is a hit with viewers, police, the District Attorney's Office and City Councilman Ben Hueso.
“I just see him as a concerned citizen who wants to help solve the problem,” said San Diego police Officer Bryan Roberts, who serves on the city's Graffiti Task Force.
At 41, Reyes is not a professional Web designer. He said he just wanted to help stop chronic graffiti vandalism, which has unnerved him and hundreds of other residents in south San Diego.
Online: To see Rodel Reyes' Web site, go to web.mac.com/argento1/iWeb/Graffiti Law enforcement officials usually worry that publishing graffiti images could encourage similar vandalism or give glory to the perpetrators.
Publishing photos “gives taggers what they want: publicity,” Roberts said. “But the way it's presented on (Reyes') Web site, as a problem, is different. I don't see it as hurting us in any way.”
Roberts said he is frustrated that vandals he had arrested are often back on the streets days later, spray-painting more graffiti.
“I would hope that the court would hold the parents responsible,” he said. “But after I arrest them, it's out of my hands.”
Reyes said the city's current solution of quickly painting over or sandblasting graffiti doesn't work. He also contends that people convicted of such crimes should serve time in juvenile hall or jail, rather than just being ordered to pay fines and restitution.
Under state law, graffiti vandalism can be punished by up to a year in jail, and by fines of up to $50,000. District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis said judges rarely sentence those convicted for graffiti to jail.
Reyes believes graffiti has lowered property values in his Egger Highlands neighborhood near Nestor. Local housing experts said they know of no studies calculating graffiti's effect on property values.
During the past year, Reyes has served as a volunteer member of the Otay Valley Regional Park Citizen Advisory Committee, and was among several people who organized a Sept. 26 meeting on graffiti that attracted a crowd of more than 130 people.
Steven Schroeder, 64, helped organize September's meeting.
“We're tired of our neighborhood looking like a ghetto,” Schroeder said.
Since its inception, Reyes said, the Web site has earned warm reviews from the public. Deputy District Attorney Jeffrey Dort and Hueso also like it.
Dort called the Web site “an important first step” in fighting the problem because it will allow community members to take an “active role” in cleaning it up. He did warn that photographing graffiti vandals in action could be dangerous, even deadly.
Hueso represents District 8, which covers much of south and southeast San Diego. He said graffiti has long been a serious problem.
“It is costing us millions and millions of dollars,” Hueso said. “Rodel has taken it upon himself to create a Web site to help stop it.”
Hueso said he too has struggled with graffiti near his home in Barrio Logan, and often jogs or walks his neighborhood streets to jot down where he sees such vandalism.
“I'm very sympathetic, because I live with this problem every single day,” Hueso said.
Reyes acknowledged the compliments but said “we don't need any more praise.”
“This fight against graffiti vandalism will ultimately be won in the political arena by electing officials who want to put these taggers in jail or juvenile hall,” Reyes said.
Mark Arner: (619) 542-4556; mark.arner@uniontrib.com
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 18/12/2007
Colin Gleadell on British art
Market news: graffiti art
Last Thursday's £9.4 million sale of 20th-century British art at Sotheby's brought the year to a jubilant end for department director James Rawlin. He said that 2007 had been a "fabulous" year; the sale brought his year's turnover to £24.1 million. In fact, it has been a fabulous year for both Sotheby's and Christie's. Together they have totalled more than £50 million in their specialised sales of 20th-century British art for the first time.
Good Friday, Daisy Nook: L S Lowry has proved one of the safest investments for collectors
To put this into perspective, it is important to understand that Rawlin and his adversaries at Christie's rarely get their hands on major examples by the top, internationally recognised names of British art. The best Henry Moores, Barbara Hepworths and Ben Nicholsons are usually sold in the swish Impressionist and modern art sales in London or New York.
Similarly, important works by Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud or David Hockney are placed in the more glamorous and high-profile post-war and contemporary art sales with the likes of Rothko and Warhol. The 20th-century British sales, or "Mod Brit" sales as they are known in the trade, may attract some international interest, but they are perceived as primarily local affairs.
Nonetheless, business has been booming for the Mod Brits with new artists emerging into the limelight with each sale. This year, artists who have sprung to life after years of market neglect include the mystic Scottish abstract expressionist Alan Davie, with a record £234,000, and the abstract painter John Hoyland, whose exuberantly coloured works of the 1960s have been selling for up to £50,000 each.
A common factor with these and other early-20th-century artists, such as Adrian Heath or John Cecil Stephenson, is the role that dealers have been playing - working with living artists or their estates - to promote their work through exhibitions that in turn trigger demand in the salerooms.
But the king of the Mod Brit sales, who needs no such trigger, is L S Lowry, whose inimitable paintings of the industrial north populated with "matchstick" men and women are among the most popular in Britain.
Since 1995, when Christie's sold a large number of works from the collection of Lowry's close friend and early supporter, the Rev Geoffrey Bennett, he has become the most heavily traded artist in the Mod Brit sales. He has also proved one of the safest investments for collectors. According to art-sales analysts Art Market Research, the top 25 per cent of his works sold have grown by 20 per cent a year since 1997. Average prices at auction have more than doubled in the past year alone.
In 1999, a painting of crowds going to a football match broke the £1 million barrier for the first time when it was bought by the Football Association for £1.9 million. Last year, two more paintings fetched more than £1 million, and this year there have been five. The highest price came at Christie's in June when his masterpiece, Good Friday, Daisy Nook, last sold at auction in 1970 for £16,000, was bought by London dealer Richard Green for £3.7 million.
The price, astonishingly, placed Lowry above Hepworth, Nicholson and Hockney in the auction tables. It also surpassed anything fetched by Frank Auerbach or Bridget Riley, whose best works are placed in the international contemporary art sales. As for Henry Moore, only one work, a massive bronze, has sold for more at auction.
Not surprisingly, therefore, Lowry has huge influence on the distribution of power among the Mod Brit auctioneers. While some do surface at smaller salerooms such as Bonhams or Lyon and Turnbull, Christie's has tended to handle the majority of highly-priced Lowrys, helping it to claim market leadership in the Mod Brit field.
But, last week, Sotheby's also had a superb selection of paintings and drawings by Lowry. The Fairground, which had been identified as a view of Blackpool Pleasure Beach in the 1930s, doubled its estimate to sell to a private UK collector for £1.4 million. A Football Match, which had been bought five years ago from Richard Green for £510,000, was sold to another UK collector for £1.1 million.
Altogether, the Lowrys contributed nearly £3 million to the total and brought Sotheby's Mod Brit sale on to a level with Christie's for the first time in many years. That's why they'll be toasting Mr Lowry in New Bond Street this Christmas.
Art Sales returns on Jan 8
