By Katrina Swift
Via:[www.canada.com]
Mayor Gérald Tremblay may have a tough time of it as the city launches its annual campaign to clean up graffiti.
Walk through practically any Montreal neighbourhood and you’ll see graffiti – walls are covered with it, bus shelters and garage doors scattered with names, scribbles and scratching.
Question is, why do young people go out in the middle of the night, risking arrest and fines, to paint on the sides of buildings?
“Street art teaches a lot about impermanence and not being attached to the art that you’ve done, because it can be taken off really easily or painted over,” says Lola, a soft-spoken graffiti artist now awaiting a court date after being caught one winter night.
For her, graffiti is like therapy, a way of expressing her emotions and communicating anonymously with others.
“It’s just a release,” she says.
A destructive release, many might say, but that hasn’t stopped its popularity from growing. “It’s definitely flourishing in this neighbourhood,” says Michael Deserres-Kohn of the SubV boutique on Sherbrooke St. W. The store sells paint supplies and graffiti-inspired clothing.
“Day after day, there are a ton more kids coming through all the time, spending all their allowance on spray paint and markers.”
According to police Commander Eric Lalonde, there were 335 arrests for graffiti on Montreal Island in 2007, up from 186 in 2005. The higher number, Lalonde says, is due in part to increased publicity encouraging people to report graffiti.
Most of the cases involve minors, who are usually charged with mischief and fined up to $100. Adults may receive suspended sentences and are asked to pay for the cleaning, Lalonde says, while minors are asked to write a letter of apology and sometimes do community work.
“Graffiti at its root is definitely vandalism,” admits Deserres-Kohn, himself a local graffiti artist who does it legally and is often paid for his work.
For some younger graffiti artists, spray-painting a piece of a building is about doing what friends do; for others, it becomes an obsession. A veteran graffiti artist, Bruce (not his real name), says he would leave the house at midnight to do his tagging, unable to stop himself from getting his name out there, even after being caught several times by police.
Being arrested for the first time has stopped Lola. “Since I’ve been caught by cops in my area, I haven’t really gone out because I’ve been kind of terrified of being caught again.”
And, from time to time, all that illegal graffiti experience can be turned into something more constructive. Bruce is now creating graffiti murals on contract. Deserres-Kohn has worked for Tandem N.D.G., a youth crime-prevention program, doing murals around the area. “There’s definitely some really positive sides to the kind of graffiti movement in the neighbourhood,” he says.
All of them continue to be captivated by the practice of graffiti, and a bit mystified by its allure.
“Some people maybe just do it to express themselves, some people as a release, some people because … it defines who they are and they just have to keep doing it,” Bruce says. “Some people, it’s just for their ego.”
For the younger ones, Lalonde says, it might be part of growing up and is rarely associated with gangs.
First of all, it’s forbidden, so it’s a challenge, he says. “I think they are in a period of their age when they want everyone to know, ‘I’m alive! I’m here!’ “