ANM paints behind the Bayshore Mall in Eureka, one of the only legal sites in Humboldt County.

A little after dusk, with a backpack full of clattering cans of spray paint, the artist, ANM, and his accomplice crept unnoticed through the back fence of an abandoned warehouse lot. The lookout stayed on the ground and watched for cops or anyone else who might try to jeopardize the artist or the mission. The lookout seemed almost comfortable with a 4-year-old pit bull scolding anyone rustling in the nearby brushes.

ANM scaled up the side of the building using the drain gutter and an old tractor tire leaned against the sheetmetal wall. He climbed two stories onto the roof of the warehouse, and walked to the other side of the building's rooftop. He painted with red inline, black outline and silver foreshadow. In about 15 minutes his work was finished. He climbed down the side of the warehouse and they were gone through the fence once again, undetected.

American Graffiti

The graffiti movement is rooted in American soil, springing from the cities of New York and Philadelphia in the early 1970s. However, many people in the United States look down upon graffiti as nothing more than vandalism. ANM has been arrested three times in three years and has paid more than $2,000 in fines for vandalism. In countries like France, graffiti art seems to receive high acclaim. For example, the mayor of Paris asked graffiti artists Oedipe, Bears, Ioye, Lazoo and Kongo to create a mural expressing French outrage over the ongoing war in Iraq.

This is one of ANM's completed works.

Though it is worthy to note that it is not legal to deface another person’s property without permission, both legal and illegal graffiti are becoming fairly popular in mainstream society. Art and culture magazines, like the publication Juxtapoz, have featured both legal and illegal graffiti and other art styles produced by graffiti artists. Forest Sterns an artist, legal-graffiti advocate and a member of Empire Squared, an artist group located in Eureka, said, “I have been heavily influenced by graffiti art on the streets. I have just learned to take my knowledge and skills and apply them to something non-destructive.”

Many illegal artists said that selling their street art for pay is “selling out,” but Sterns disagreed: “Selling and displaying graffiti art helps people accept it as a valid form of art. It has been around for three decades and the mainstream is just now starting to accept it as legitimate art. Spray paint is just as good as oil paint.”

By being involved with a group of people who can display their art in a gallery, Sterns said, “I’m not censored or painted over by the city and I don’t deface property. It’s time that people open their eyes and realize graffiti is a real form of art. So we put it in our own gallery.” Some of Sterns’ more recent projects include a mural painted in Humboldt State University’s Nelson Hall and live, on-stage performances creating his art for an audience at Muddy Waters Coffee shop in Arcata.

	In Los Angeles County, simply putting a spray can to a wall is a felony.

In September 2003, presidential hopeful Howard Dean had a graffiti wall erected in Bryant Park, N.Y., in an attempt to gain support from a younger generation of voters. The press ridiculed Dean for this incident. The New York Observer reported, “It seems the former governor of Vermont thinks that New Yorkers are nostalgic for the time when graffiti turned a walk in the park or a subway ride into an ugly visual assault.”

The man most famous for exposing graffiti to mainstream America’s eye in the 1980s was the wildly popular Keith Haring with his electric neon-colored pieces involving simple outlines of human figures.

ANM says he hopes to soon have his illegal work displayed legally. “You’ve got to get the right connections,” he said. “I don’t have the connections yet, so I’ll just have to wait until I meet the right people to hook up the deal.”

Illegal Art

Although there will probably always be an effort to squelch such a rebellious, bohemian art-form, graffiti has gained respect and support from the art community of late, especially online, where artists don't risk prosecution. Over the past three decades graffiti has infiltrated every major cith in the United States and its popularity is on the rise with artists who are looking to share their gifts of ability with aerosol with mainstream society.