Seattle Times Local News: Monday, February 28, 1994
Does the name Travis Edwards ring a bell? He's a prolific young graffitist who recently received an unusually stiff sentence.
Fed up with graffitists in general and Edwards in particular (he has left the tag "TRED" on walls from Capitol Hill to Everett), Seattle Municipal Court Judge George Holifield in November threw the book at Edwards, sentencing him to 500 hours of community service and two years of probation.
Since the sentencing, Edwards has been arrested and jailed for failing to contact the Seattle Engineering Department and begin cleaning up graffiti.
Yet on Friday afternoon, Edwards, a slight, soft-spoken 18-year-old, again turned up on the business end of a spray can. He was spotted creating a colorful and intricate hip-hop mural on the side of a Greyhound bus barn's retaining wall at Pontius Avenue North and John Street.
Edwards explained he was there in daylight - not usual working hours for a graffitist - because Greyhound management had given permission to paint the wall. (Maintenance manager Paul Jasper confirmed he had OK'd the neighborhood project but had been unaware of Edwards' presence.)
"It's not fair," Edwards said. "I was in jail for three weeks. There was a guy in there who beat up an old lady and took her money. He got only five days."
