Nuvo Graffiti Article

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"Graffiti artists are the urban shamans and the streets are our modern day caves."
-TransGlobal Urban Artists

    Without light, very little survives in this hidden wasteland beneath one of the city's many White River bridges. Long ago a school of fish washed up into a depression, where they were trapped. Their skeletons are still intact, wrapped in a dust, arid skin that is as this as rice paper and crackles under the feet of anyone who trespasses on this strange place. Despite its remote and desolate appearance, this palace of death has become a living museum to underground art. In this gallery of concrete and steel holfing up the Keystone Bridge, the pale gray walls have been transformed into splashes of colorful graffiti-shoutouts from these secret galleries tucked beneath the city's infrastructures.
       What I discovered in these galleries was somthing wonderful and alive, thrilling and dangerous. I imagined cloak and dagger meeting in dark tunnels underneath the city. But once word hit the street, I was bombarded with requests for interviewsas writers saw the opportunity to gain notoriety through this newspaper article.
       So here it is: notoriety. For this week's issue, NUVO will let the artists trade in empty walls for blank pages.

The sudden outburst of graffiti that has caked Indianapolis is an indication that Indianapolis had matured into a major city, complete with the kind of urban art crimes that have rattled in other Midwest cities for years.
       While graffiti crews have been working in the country since the 1970's, it was not until the early 90's that this art form began to emerge in Indianapolis after the trend migrated from Chicago, Los Angeles and Cincinatti.
       "It takes disease a little while to spread," says a local graffiti writer who goes bu the name of TAONE.
       In the minds of many Americans, graffiti is typically associated with an African-American subculture of gangs. That mythology us far from the truth in Indianapolis. The predominatley while male artists that typify the local graffiti scene are theything but urban gangsters. In fact, each graffiti artist interviewed by NUVO insisted their graffiti is not gang related, but something entirerly different. In their own personal highly stylized ways, these young artists are striving for respect, not simply by marking territory with pitchforks and death-threats.
       Founding crews MUL (Made You Look), IWS (Infamous With Style) and NUA (Notorious Underground Artists) have fragmented, spawning a half-dozen more crews of different sizes. But despite growth, the art of graffiti is still shrouded in a mystery as dark as the studios these young painters work in.
       All graffiti begins with the tag-a small scripted name or series of initials that each graffiti artist, or "writer," usesto identify themselves. The highlt stylized tags are often repeated in larger works of graffiti, such as fill-ins (bubble letters) and pieces (large and highly stylized multicolored works usually seen under bridges). A few writers advance to the largest works, called productions.
       The most illegal graffiti work is called bombing-thrilling, high-risk graffiti work in public places such as businesses, billboards, rooftops and water towers. The artists will often wear latex gloves so that the evidence will not stain their hands. Even though their work is extremely illegal, most bombers follow the code of ethics-no churches, private homes or schools.
       By rough estimate there are approximatley 30-40 regular graffiti writers in the city, and their numbers are quickly increasing.
       Despite their passion for painting, many writers interviewed by NUVOhad a hard time articulating why they do what they do. Few had a political perspective, even though a student of local graffiti will note the occasional revolutionary cry of "Property is Theft" written in the corners of a larger graffiti mural.
       Notorious Northside tagger Rumor One refused to be interviewed, fearing that the request was a police sting. But he explained his activities in an e-mail to NUVO:"Why do I write rumor on everything? So that Other writers and poeple who are interested in graf will know that I exist. Also it is a was of self expression. Every tag i bust is a "Fuck You" to every authority, teacher, or anyone who has fucked my life up. This expression is going to come out somehow so I say better in graffiti than violence."
       Comparing graffiti to a virus, one writer says simply, "its addicting. When you in, you in, It's just what you do."
       The first generation of graffiti writers plied their trade on the walls of "The Drake," an abandoned building near 52nd Street that butts up against the railroad tracks that have now become the Monon. On the other side of the tracks, the back wall of the Indiana Carpet Distributor's was known as the "Wall of Fame", where only the city's best and most privleged writers would dare to paint.
       "There were hundreds and hundreds of empty paint cans at the back of the building," says ICD President Ed Arkin, who approved of early graffiti on the wall. When taggers became bold enough the defaces the artists work, the Wall of Fame quickly deteriorated into the Wall of Shame.
       "It was a war between the artists and the taggers," says Arkin, "and i had a war myself with the building against these painters."
       The Expansion of the Monon threatened to make what had been a private wall a public spectacle and Arkin soon pulled the plug on his open-art project.
       It wasent long before a local bombe, who goes by the name of BAKS, struck back, smothering an ICD employee's car with red spray paint. The now infamous bombing can be seen on the Internet at http://www.allwegot.com.html/news.html.

A Monkey on Their BAKS
One of the city's most wanted art criminals and notorious bomber, BAKS has been about as close as anyone has gotten to the "All City Bomb"-a pseudo-mythical game which pits crews against one another in a race to see who can get their name up most in the city.
       At one time, the infamous bomber claims the IPD graffiti task force actually thought that BAKS was the work of several writers.
       "They thought I was a crew, I was up so much", brags the writer, who spent two years living under the White River bridge at Westfield.
       He spent those years tagging the city with one of Indianapolis' few female writers, a girl named Clever, who had since retired from the graffiti scene. While hopping trains around the counrty, BAKS became involved in the popular bombing of freight trains.
      For an artist looking for an outlet, throwing bubble-lettered pieces on trainds has become the ultimate in fame. "A freight is like painting a portrat and sending it around the world," says one writer of the hobby.
       "I see graffiti as the truest art-as the truest love," says BAKS. While artists work in their cozy studios, grafffiti writers risk life and limb climbing scaffoldings and scaling freeway overpasses in search of their hidden canvases, he explains.
With 16-inches of snow blanketing downtown last winter, BAKS and his freinds in IWS got to work. Following the train tracks through downtown, the crew hit the streets, caking the city in Krylon. "Wee has fill-ins right off Washington Street.
"It took me about two years to get to the point where I wanted to in graffiti-to the point where i actually liked my stuff," he says.
When asked if he could see himself writing graffiti in several years, BAKS compared himself to another misunderstood artist. "Van Gogh painted all his life. If you have a talent, you might as well stick with it.

The Writing on the Wall
The explosive growth of graffiti on the Northside and the fragmentation of several crews has soured the local underground art scene, with many old-school veterans complaining that the new kids on the block are nothing more than aerosol hacks, or "toys."
According to TAONE, many young spray can artists neglect to learn the simplest element of graffiti-the tag.
"The tag is the most important element. A tag demonstrates whether someone has style or not. I can't emphasize that enough," he says.
With limited wall space, the battles between rival graffiti crews is heating up, as writers paint over one anothers's work as quickly as it goes up, often covering a rival crews work with insults to their style.
"There is a lot of tension in the graffiti scene right now," Explained SEKONE, who writes for small local crews SF (Strictly Fame) and M2W (Metal Milita Writers) with freind GEYSER. While both have tagged, they perfer "piecing", or creating larger texrured works eith their own names.
GEYSER has felt the ill effects of crew rivalries with MUL writer SEME, who goes over GEYSER's art as soon as he can.
"MUL, for me, is a bunch of kids who tag" says GEYSER with disdain. "They're not about piecing. They are about putting MUL all over the place."
And MUL writers can hardly contain their distaste for rival crews.
TAONE considers himself one of the old-school writers in the city, even though he is in his early 20s. He accuases many of the young writers of biting each other's styles and getting in underground graffiti wars all over wall space.
"It's deteriorated gratly," he laments. "Theres no values. Everyone wants to bite or throw beef."

TransGlobal and Above Ground
While most writers script their pieces with an eye turned local law enforcement, several renegade artists are trying to go legit. Matt Lawrence, 22, a formal bomber who went under the name of Dose, is hoping to use his skills with i can of Krylon to make a name for himself as a muralist.
Now a student at Herron School of Art, Lawrence works with Style Syndicate and FAB (Fabuulous Aerosol Brothers) on large-scale productions such as the ones at the American Tent Company (205 S. Palmer).
Working under the name TransGlobal Urban Art, the group hopes to educate local government bodies and fellow artists about the art's rich history. Their short-term goal is to obtain legal wall space in the Indianapolis area for legal artists to showcase their work.
But working torwards that goal has been anything but easy, especially givin the surrent heated debate about the exploding Northside graffiti scene.
"I think you would be surprised to find out how many graffiti artists Herron turned out," says Lawrence. "This kind of art form really appeals to the younger generation." But having artistic talent woth a spray can hasen't always differentiated the artists from the vandals, with many Indianapolis residents seeing all graffiti as somthing criminal in nature.
"If we were doing the same exact mural with a paint brush, people would not look down on it," Lawrence exclaims.

Waging War Against Graffiti
"graffiti is probably the second oldest profession," explains IPD North Sgt. Ron Beezik, affectionately called the Graffiti Guru by fellow workers. "Like egging and TPing, kids will do that kind of stuff. But now it seems like it's become a profession."
Brezik has made it his jpb to stamp out professional vandals like BAKS, SEME, AREST and RUMOR that have a high profile in the OPD North District.
"It brings down the whole neighborhood concept," says Brezik of the art crimes. "It promotes the flight to the suburbs."
Since he established the zero tolerance graffiti initiative in his district, Brezik has become somthing of a wonder kind to other departments hoping to eradicate the nighttime vandals. Other districts to implement similar plans in the spring have carefully reviewed his join venture with the Department of Public Works, Prosecutor Scott Newman and the Police Department.
A key to the program is the DPW, which runs a graffiti hot-line (374-1366). So far the program has successfully scrubbed 32 premises using a variety of tools including roll paint, non-toxic citric-based cleaners ans power washers.
But despite the attempts by local IPD officers to curb graffiti, the popularity of the underground art seems to only have grown amd the zero tolerance initiative has resulted in few arrests of the Northside's most famous graffiti artists.
"Its really hard to catch these poeple," says Brezik. "They work a lot of times in secluded areas at odd times of the night."
If anything, the recent stink over graffiti may have backfired against the establishment striving to eradicate art crimes.
Sue Anne Gilroy made her anti-graffiti initiative a linchpin of her mayoral campaign. Her plan to blunt the graffiti writers' bombing campaigns proposed the use of infrared and time-lapse photography as well as the utilization of so-called "arm writing axperts."
Most everyone with a television saw Gilroy's 30-second anti-graffiti spot that featured the annoying kid who whined, "The whole wall?" after being told to paint over his whole vandalism. But the spot infuriated local graffiti writers who are enraged that the commercial falsely prtrayed several legal murals as the works of vandals.
Gilroy's campaign commercial became the symbolic piniata for local artists. At leat one writer blsmed Gilroy for the sudden burst of graffiti on the Northside.
If she's going to piss us off, we're going to piss her off to proove we can't be stopped," explained BAKS