Philly Got Art! Graffiti or Vandalism as Carver addresses Vandalism issue
By: Kevin Leonard
November 2, 2022
During last school year and at the beginning of this one, we’ve faced vandalism in the school bathrooms. There were messages and polls scrawled on the walls with many things that make our school community look bad. Often bathrooms are places for vandalism and the lines easily blur between vandalism and graffiti. So what if one could set the record straight. Vandalism is defacing and graffiti is art.
Graffiti is an integral part of the underground hip hop culture and influenced the rise of hip hop in the US. As it was the first piece of the movement that started in Philadelphia, it has led to many different branches. As a result many people use this as a way to express themselves. To start off there was ‘Cornbread’. The man who started it all back in the 80’s.
In an interview with Daniel McCray, also known as Cornbread, I was able to delve into where it all started and the mindset with which graffiti should be viewed. He defined graffiti as a world culture without race. When asked to describe the difference between vandalism and graffiti he took us back to where it all started, “In the beginning, everything was vandalism. Because the world had not accepted graffiti as art. When they see the scribbles on the walls, it was an act of vandalism. It wasn't until I took that to the next level. I wrote my name on the walls for the sole purpose of establishing a reputation. Gang members have reputations, and they killed their rivals for reputation. I did not want blood on my hands.” He also described how his mission intensified through his trips through the juvenile court system. In his time he met a lot of gang members and as a result he felt the urge to increase his rep even more. He would write letters for the gang members to send to their girlfriends and it helped him spread his name even more as he would make sure they knew who it was who was writing for the gang members. At a certain point he had an epiphany he needed to go bigger.
Closer to the end of his stay in juvenile detention, ‘Cornbread’ McCray, was constantly in trouble for defacing property. And this led to meetings with Psychiatrists. They asked him to stop writing Cornbread everywhere. But he refused as he says “My objective was to set the world on fire and make the whole city of Philadelphia read about me.” He even went on to speak about what he defines as the first wave of the hip hop revolution with constant dance battles, and teenagers running through the streets writing their names on everything in sight. They were “street fraternity, we had street mindsets, we was hooligans, we were jitterbugs, and they tried to distance themselves from us.” But with all of this being known, it must also be known that this was, and is, an art form that came from the heart.
In the interview Daniel ‘Cornbread’ McCray talks more about his journey and who he is as a person. He described how in his heyday, he was talked about on the same level as Jesus and MLK in Philadelphia. As well as how he managed to tag the Jackson 5’s jet as well as an elephant in the Philadelphia Zoo.
At Carver we have some students who worked with a graffiti artist named Chris ‘Tameartz’ Rodriguez. Who coincidentally is the father of another of our students. The two previously mentioned students are Nari, and Aylicia who recently appeared on the Carver Newscast in regards to the vandalism in our bathrooms. They were given the opportunity to create their own graffiti and step into the hip hop artist’s world. They both mentioned it being fun and relaxing.
Another member of the Carver community is resident art teacher Ms. Christine Swift. I also interviewed her for her thoughts on this topic. She stated that graffiti is an art form that the world still has yet to fully accept or understand. She also said “I've always equated it to the art of typography and the studies of forms of typography. Probably because I have a more of a graphics, stylized type background…In a graphic sense, the typography that is used can be very quite beautiful in its structure and its form and in the creativity that they expel with it.” As an artist I have an appreciation for the nuances of graffiti and Ms Swift who is a much better artist than I is that much more appreciative. She also traces some of the history to when people needed hand painted signs for their businesses and how they would use a form of brush script. Every artist had their own style and it translated very easily to the graffiti art style.
When asked about common mediums for graffiti Swift responded with “Well, definitely the application of how either airbrushing slash spray paint is used within you know the designs using different techniques. We create different patterns or textures within the images. Whether that's using different types of wax resist or other materials to create a sense of resist and create a texturing to that you know, is not always the easiest things. Everybody just sees something on the wall and assumes, hey, you know, that's this but then when you really look at the small nuances of how they got this certain pattern or how they, you know, put a certain oil on a wall so that the paint splatters in a different way, creates its uniqueness.”
The final question from my interview with Ms C. Swift was ‘Do you view graffiti as a positive art form, or because of vandalism is it negative?’ And it elicits a thought provoking response, “I think it can be both. I think it really depends on where and what… and you’ve got to work with your neighborhood. You can't just assume that people are going to accept it because they're forced to. You got to work with those people. And when people work together and communicate, then it becomes an amazing piece. When you don't communicate. That's when people get upset and angry. So we have to learn how to talk more and understand each other more than just make assumptions more which is what the world seems to love to do.”
Swift’s ending note and Cornbread’s mission seem to align very similarly. They both believe that the world needs more peace. Cornbread’s legacy of creating peace through graffiti will last a long time and in order to foster a positive community we have to work with his mission and not use the guise of graffiti just to deface property because we feel like it.