Graffiti

Graffiti are generally thought of as the artwork spray painted (usually illegally) on walls in a curvy, semi-distorted style. However graffiti can also be drawing on desks, carving initials in a tree, or any act of drawing or writing on something not meant for that purpose. The most common style of graffiti are words, often the artist’s nickname, called a “tag.” Recently graffiti has grown to include commissioned pieces fore stores and incredibly intricate portraits and other drawings.

Some artist use stencils, which produce clean, sharp lines, whereas free-handing has softer edges due to the way spray paint disperses. Highway underpasses are one of the most common places to find graffiti, including Duluth’s own Graffiti Graveyard (pictured below). Other common places are on high school desks, subway stations, and walls in urban areas. In the past, many people associated graffiti with gangs, as gangs sometimes mark their area with simple symbols; however that is not the case today as most artists are not affiliated with gags. The graffiti style has incorporated its way into advertising and computer fonts—there are even graffiti creators online. 

Photos by Steph Koehnen