Ortega Times
Bombing the City, Legally!Wednesday, March 07, 2012 By Jonathan Lopez
Lake Elsinore has a rampant graffiti problem. If they could give teenagers a place or yard where they could go to just bomb and express their feelings, the city would look much better and it would not give taggers such a bad reputation. In Venice Beach, it is legal to do graffiti on a certain part of the city. The only downside is that artwork gets written over by other artists in rapid succession. I think this is cool because artists from all over Southern California go to Venice Beach just to make art on those walls. They have a spot in Pico Union where artists pay a small fee to enter a lot called "The Graff Lab" where they can just go all out and bust their best artwork with no worries of cops or people harassing them. In LA there is an ongoing controversy about whether city murals are categorized as advertisements or actually being pieces of art. So they are trying to get people together and get as many signatures as they can to approve of murals as art, and to make it a city ordinance so no one else gets fined. Murals show a great amount of love for one’s culture and city, so I don’t understand why people are getting tickets for taking pride in what they love and believe in. It would be great if the city would let some artists in Elsinore make some beautiful murals, which residents and visitors of the city could enjoy. If you can’t travel to one of these spots, maybe even your own computer can give you an online background for your art. There are websites like graffitiplaydo.com and digitaldrawn.nl/drawing/online.htm where people can write online with other people and tag and communicate with each other from anywhere in the world. Even Ortega’s own campus allows the students to express their creative side on its walls. There are three pieces of artwork that students did on our buildings which I think makes Ortega High School look way better and more intriguing. |