A very curious mural

A graffiti wall to honor the Mars rover Curiosity. Science + art = the best.

Grafiteira from Rio de Janeiro in Madison

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From madison.com:

Brazilian artist Panmela Castro painted the graffiti wall at Mother Fool's Coffeehouse Tuesday. Castro, also known as Anarkia, is a grafiteira from Rio de Janeiro known for calling attention to domestic violence and for working to empower women. The rotating graffiti wall at Mother Fool's, 1101 Williamson St., has been in use since fall 2001.

The mural is stunning, by the way.

Spray Can Alchemists

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Big, nice, new (?) graffiti wall on the side of the Alchemy.

Flowers bloom in winter

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Nice big, bold, colorful piece on the graffiti wall at Mother Fools right now. Adds some much-needed color to the otherwise snowy, muddy winter.

Mushroomland mural

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Not entirely sure when this went up - it's possible I just haven't been as observant as I think I am - but I didn't notice the piece/mural until today. Along E. Paterson, near the intersection with E. Washington. Pretty sure it's a sanctioned work, since it's on the side of a business and quite big/intricate. Nicely done!

Scott the Snake

Great new mural on the side of Mother Fools, in honor of the several weeks long protest happening in Madison against the governor's budget bill that, among other things, strips collective bargaining rights from public employees. I've been all over the action, if you're interested in getting caught up.

Beautiful paint and ink

This is the current mural on the graffiti wall over at Mother Fool's, and I have to say, it's absolutely stunning. I'm fairly certain I've seen work by this artist around before--it's a distinctive style--and it's all been just as good. I'm always amazed at the different technqiues and levels of detail that some folks can reach with the spray can.

The one day wall

I'm somewhat surprised that I totally failed to catch this when it happened ("somewhat" because I was rather engrossed in my own project around that time), but I've just received an email from tipster Q about a really cool graffiti wall project that happened over at Brittingham Park back in July. Photos from the event are now available for your viewing pleasure here.

Sadly, the wall was only up for 11 hours, and though by its very nature street art tends toward the transitory, that's really a shame in this case. Still, I'm happy to read about the organizer of the event, Kimberely Coonts, who was also apparently behind the graffiti wall that used to go up during WSUM's Party in the Park. People like her do a great service for our community, and we should all do our best to support their efforts.

Check out the article about the event here.

Worth special note in the piece is this bit:

The problem arises when [graffiti] is without permission and has defaced businesses," she said. "There are a number of small businesses that are running on a very tight margin as is, and when they have to stop what they're doing to go out and undo the damage that somebody randomly inflicted on them, it's detrimental to the business owner and it doesn't reflect well on the neighborhood."

Thurber added that there is a city ordinance that forces business owners to remove graffiti in a timely fashion, or they can be issued a citation on top of the cost of removing the graffiti.

I've heard about that ordinance before, and honestly it strikes me as a silly and potential harmful way of dealing with the problem of tagging. Forcing the business owners--the "victims" in the case--to pony up money (this in addition to any cleaning costs) should they take a bit too long in cleaning it, seems ridiculous. And it can't help foster much in the way of a potential positive relationship between businesses and more legitimate street artists. Isn't there another way to deal with this? I mean, I'm not fan of tagging, and hardly consider it "art" on par with the type of stuff I post here, but this doesn't seem like the right solution. What do you think?