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Legal Wall Project


The-Sable

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So I recently had a conversation with my art teacher about setting up a legal wall at my high school or some where else in my town (pop <40,000). She tried to set one up last year but was shot down. I really want this to work but I need help convincing people in my town that it would be beneficial to my community. A lot of people are worried that it will cause the spread of people tagging into the area surrounding the wall. I just want a place for my buddies and other people interested in painting to have a rad place to practice and not get fucked over by the cops.

 

Will this work?

Have other smaller towns tried this?

How do you run a wall? Would I have to paint over everything at the end of the month so people can have a fresh canvas?

Any pages I should check out?

How much would something like this cost?

Would the wall really influence others to paint near the wall?

 

 

I know a lot of you will tell me to forget about the wall and bomb wherever I want, but this might be my senior art project and I would really like to make this work.

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you probably only have what..8-10 weeks of school left...if that?

 

thats not enough time to get this idea through peoples heads. cool idea for a senior project, should have started working on it as a junior.

 

as for you and your buddies practicing, go to a bridge spot, a trackside, travel to the closest city. stay off trains. put forth the effort, or dont write. convincing your school to let u have a graffiti practice wall will get no respect. 0.

 

yes it will spread graffiti around the area the wall is in. next question.

 

if you still dont know if its going to cost something...youre not putting up enough effort for this project either.

 

how do you run a wall? by the sounds of it you shouldnt be "running" anything.

 

 

 

 

 

buy/rack some paint. go find chill walls.

check out the sketch threads in the paper chaser section in here..post photos. get ideas from what people tell you. go work on essentials for a while. then ask yourself in a couple years if youre still worried about a legal/practice wall

 

 

 

 

i got off work early, smoked a lil bit. donated 2 ¢

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you probably only have what..8-10 weeks of school left...if that?

 

thats not enough time to get this idea through peoples heads. cool idea for a senior project, should have started working on it as a junior.

 

as for you and your buddies practicing, go to a bridge spot, a trackside, travel to the closest city. stay off trains. put forth the effort, or dont write. convincing your school to let u have a graffiti practice wall will get no respect. 0.

 

yes it will spread graffiti around the area the wall is in. next question.

 

if you still dont know if its going to cost something...youre not putting up enough effort for this project either.

 

how do you run a wall? by the sounds of it you shouldnt be "running" anything.

 

 

 

 

 

buy/rack some paint. go find chill walls.

check out the sketch threads in the paper chaser section in here..post photos. get ideas from what people tell you. go work on essentials for a while. then ask yourself in a couple years if youre still worried about a legal/practice wall

 

 

 

 

i got off work early, smoked a lil bit. donated 2 ¢

 

Im a junior right now, so im just kind of thinking ahead. I got all summer and way into next year to figure out the specifics.

 

Im still up bombing whenever I can and wherever I can even if i don't have a city sanctioned paint wall to work on. Its just a nice idea and project that I could do for my school and town.

 

When I say run, I mean like painting a fresh canvas and keeping the level of spray painted penises at a minimum.

 

Ha. So far the most advise I have gotten from people on 12oz is being told to start tagging cop cars.

 

Thanks for the insight. Happy toking.

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A lot of older writers will tell you this a stupid/lame idea, but it's not.

 

I know that it's really difficult to practise piecing when you've only got illegal walls to hit. Half of the guys who'll shoot you down for this are probably hitting legal walls regularly, but have some notion that you should 'pay your dues' or whatever by not doing so.

 

Climbing around finding illegal chill spots is cool. You feel like the fucking man if you discover a new spot that none of your friends has ever seen, especially if it's in some insanely hard to find location. For example, we once found a hole in the ground that led down to a disused subway tunnel, it was awesome to know that nobody else (including cops) had thought of this. But none of that stuff is better than being able to chill in the sun with your friends, playing some music, maybe getting a BBQ, and taking your time.

 

No, you won't get any respect for painting a legal wall at your school, but you will get better at painting. If you then want to go hitting all sorts of spots that will earn you respect, you will still be able to after a legal wall is set up. They're not mutually exclusive.

 

My advice is, if you can't establish an official 'legal wall', see if you can't get permission for you and your friends to do a mural somewhere. Then, a couple of months later, you can 'update' this mural, then 'update' it again. After a while, what you have is a defacto legal wall, that you can pretty much paint whenever you want. Important point, though, I'm not talking about a very public, high-profile wall here. What you want is a wall round the back of somewhere. A wall that's already got graff on it and is a bit neglected. If it's going to evolve into a 'legal' wall over time, it's got to be somewhere people don't really notice, and don't particularly care what's on it. It starts as an art project, something nice you're doing to spruce up a shitty little wall somewhere, and just gradually becomes somewhere you and your buddies can paint because the owner knows you and doesn't mind.

 

The thing is, this depends on how good you are. If you're pretty good, people will, on the whole, dig your pieces and are likely to be happy enough for you to use the wall whenever you please. If you're just starting out, though, people are less likely to accept you painting whatever and whenever you like.

 

There were no legal walls in my city, but there were a few walls where this type of scenario played out.

 

So yeah, if you can't get people to go for a legal wall, see if you can get permission for a mural. It's not what you want, but it will make it easier to get there.

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As far as the legal wall thing goes the only advice I can offer is to check with some local privately funded arts programs and see if they won't support you. Instead of starting with a legal wall see if you can get some art program to fund you. I'd see if they will buy some paint and plywood and give you and your friends a space to paint. Most art private art programs if they have the funding will support you if you come at them right, avoid anything funded by the city since the minute they hear the words graffiti or spray paint it's almost always going to get shot down. I'd try pitching it something along the lines of, hey can we utilize your parking lot on some day when you have nothing going to have a spraypaint exhibition so people can check local artwork.

 

Also you do know that if you tag cop cars you can rock crowns over your tags and pieces right?

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So I recently had a conversation with my art teacher about setting up a legal wall at my high school or some where else in my town (pop <40,000). She tried to set one up last year but was shot down. I really want this to work but I need help convincing people in my town that it would be beneficial to my community. A lot of people are worried that it will cause the spread of people tagging into the area surrounding the wall. I just want a place for my buddies and other people interested in painting to have a rad place to practice and not get fucked over by the cops.

 

Will this work?

Have other smaller towns tried this?

How do you run a wall? Would I have to paint over everything at the end of the month so people can have a fresh canvas?

Any pages I should check out?

How much would something like this cost?

Would the wall really influence others to paint near the wall?

 

If skateparks are hard to get in small towns, imagine legal walls.

Legal walls generally aren't beneficial to the community, wont lie about that. even well-regulated ones invite litter and graffiti in the local area, you need to be realistic about that... 80% of writers are careless and/or scumbags.

 

The advice about making a mural and perpetually "updating" it is great. It's a good way to demonstrate that graffiti can be a non-harmful thing. Go for that first.

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