Great Graffitti

Graffiti has been around as a form of expression for centuries – dating back as far as ancient Greek and Roman times (if not farther!) Some graffiti portrays negative messages and images but there are many artists who have begun to take the medium beyond hatred and vandalism and use it as a method of political commentary, a way to incite social change, or just as a way to brighten someone’s day.

Why not create some positive graffiti (or other graffiti like forms of expression) in your own neighborhood? You don’t have to be an artist, you don’t have to vandalize anything, the project can be as big or as small as you want. For instance, why don’t you…

• See if your school or other community building would let you create a mural somewhere on the premises?
• Get some sticker paper at a crafts tore and create little stickers to put up around town?
• Write some encouraging messages on post-it notes and scatter them wherever you go?



• Get some sidewalk chalk and make a transitory statement on your sidewalk, driveway, in a parking lot… wherever!
• Stick a positive bumper sticker on your car.

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More From Around the Web…

Positive Grafitti Project is a project that blossomed at the University of British Columbia to combat hate filled graffiti that had been springing up around campus through positive and uplifting graffiti and other art forms. In the founder’s own words,

Through this project, we hope to achieve three goals: 1) First of all we want to raise awareness about the existence of this kind of graffiti and the fact that something can be done about it. [...] We hope to break the silence surrounding written and visual hate ‘language’ on our campus and in doing so, start moving towards eliminating it. 2) Secondly, after seeking out and documenting examples of hate graffiti, we plan to submit them to the various campus resources committed to keeping UBC free of this kind of discrimination. [...]

Their third goal is where we all can join in…

We are working on a multimedia, interactive art project for anyone to contribute to; we are looking for poetry, words of wisdom, drawings, photographs and other images, collages, comments and any other positive and creative pieces that you may have to take us in the right direction. -We hope to end up with several large art collages to install in various parts of campus, as well as ongoing clean-up and awareness work.

If you would like to contribute in some way or find out how to start a similar project near you then send them a message at positivegraffitiproject@gmail.com!

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Awesome, isn’t it? Here’s an interview with the positive grafitti artist responsible for this, on YoYoPop!

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An article on a grafitti artist gone good…

As a teenage vandal, she would have spray-painted her name in curvaceous letters on Cavo’s wall in a search for attention and a chance to show off her talents. Nowadays, Lady Pink is a respected artist who is known throughout the country for bringing street art to the walls of museums and for using her talents to convert spray-painting vandals into positive artists.

Eventually Lady Pink got tired of the vandal scene – a scene which, as she explains in the article, is less about the art and more about the personal fame that goes along with tagging a building, vehicle, or other surface with your name. The fame that Lady Pink garnered in her beginnings helped to launch a legitimate professional carrear that now garners her a great deal of respect,

In the world where pieces go up literally overnight, graffiti writers and admirers today still revere Pink’s work, 20 years later. Except now, they admire her work in museums like The Whitney, the Queens Museum of Art, P.S. 1, the Museum of the City of New York and a host of others. They buy her artwork, and admire it in murals that she paints to stop illegal graffiti.

Now Lady Pink does free murals around the city. She claims that these murals do not get tagged by vandalizing graffiti artists because “they don’t hit a mural out of respect.”

She considers her free murals a way of “giving back” and not being “a culture vulture.”

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Finally, check out this flickr photo stream…

Penguins and a positive message?? I don’t even think I need to say more. (Their cute little bellies say We need love, not bombs)

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That’s it for me but, how about you? Have you seen or created any positive grafitti? Post in the comments!