Graffiti

With the access to I-pads and Chromebooks in the classroom I feel compelled to expose students to digital art. There is fear in this, however, based on the assumption that the antiquity of handcrafted art forms may lose their appeal once students glean tricks from these flashy devises. So to counterbalance my curiosity as well as my fears, we piloted a Graffiti project that introduced GraffitiCreator, a web-based graffiti design website and had all of our students create a digital design based on a word that best described themselves. Once they created a design they liked, students took a screenshot and recreated  the graffiti by hand with the goal of producing an even better design.

The topic of Graffiti was a great concern for us, too. I mean, we like our jobs and want to keep them! So, with  taking on a socially controversial art form, we had to take time to analyze graffiti from several perspectives both locally and globally before diving deep into the discussion of whether Graffiti is an art from or vandalism. The internet is a wonderful tool for such analysis. Coincidentally, during this project an authentic controversy was brewing in NYC. The owner of 5 POINTZ, a privately owned apartment complex that has been an unofficial museum for graffiti artists around the word,  announced demolition on 11/5/2013 which unleashed a myriad of appeals from graffiti artists around the world. The resonating message from the mass appeal was a need for acknowledgement and recognition that graffiti is indeed and art from and not vandalism. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/11/5-pointz-demolition_n_4085315.html

In the end, students realized how challenging graffiti is to create. They were able to view graffiti wearing new shoes, the shoes of an artist. By doing so, some students took on new perspectives while others held strong to their original viewpoints of whether or not graffiti is art or vandalism. The overall goal was to have students experience something for themselves before making judgments of others. I think we achieved our goal.