Ravens' View

Welcome to my blog

Graffiti is like a dandelion - to some it's a flower to be appreciated and encouraged, to others it's a weed to be stomped out and eradicated.

Click here to go to my photos on Flickr -a wide selection that includes local graffiti, mural projects, arts events, and our local House of Paint hip-hop festival.  If you have an event you'd like me to cover, drop me a line.

If you are interested in commissioning a mural for your property by local graffiti artists - not tags but creative aerosol art - please contact me via my email ravensview at gmail dot com . Or you can contact the Keepsix Artist Collective , we have coordinated several local murals so far, for the pool at  Jack Purcell Community Centre, Photolux Studios, Hillary's Cleaners, and Genest pool.

Unwanted tagging has become an expensive problem in many cities, including here in Ottawa. While some areas focus on increased patrols and immediate eradication as a quick solution, graffiti murals have been shown in many cases to be a more effective choice - cheaper in the long run, more inclusive of youth and other community members, and with many other benefits.  These murals have been shown to not just be a way prevent illegal painting, but to be tool that links together local graffiti artists, business owners, and residents in a transformed community. Transformed into a cleaner and more socially inter-connected neighbourhood, more attractive to shoppers and tourists, and often with property values improved. And of course, with tagged walls replaced by mural art. This mural design can range from a colourful maze of interconnected letters to scenes and cartoon characters, the mix depends mainly on the customer. 

I have worked for several years in this area of graffiti mural promotion. From my initial photography of back alley art I developed more interests and links into the culture of Hip-Hop, and now volunteer in several youth-related areas. I've developing contacts and some "best practices", and would be glad to act as liaison to help make your mural a success. I've worked with Community CAVE, a group based in Toronto that does these community transformations. I have also worked with Const. Scott Mills of Toronto Crimestoppers, he uses this same approach as a way to reach youth and show them they can be valued members of the community. Check out his work at  Legalgraffitiart on YouTube. I'm also associated with the youth group Sketch here in Orleans. Our mission in Sketch is to enable and empower local youth to create "somewhere to go, something to do".

For previous posts on various mural/youth projects, on Ottawa graffiti bylaws, and comments from various supporters- look via my blog's Graffiti category on the left, or click here.

For links to some positive articles on graffiti, murals, and legal walls click here .

I've added a "how-to" guide here for those interested in running a community transformation event. I also have a slide presentation I can give to your group, on graffiti terms, styles, and murals, that is illustrated with many photos from my files.

For my graffiti photos, if it's your art, or you know whose it is - please let me know and I'll gladly add the credit.

I'm also on Facebook, to connect with some of the groups I work with, and update them on related graffiti news and opportunities. I'm admin for an Ottawa Graffiti group there too.  

Graffiti murals - a positive spin

As I'd mentiond in this other post, we - keepsix collective - have indirectly received a number of complaints about our approach we use to help combat vandalism, build stronger social communities, beautify neighbourhoods, and involve youth in the solution -providing them with alternatives and ways to change their habits. There have been accusations about our artists, assumptions about thir aims and ours, whether this kind of program works. They are all from one person, whom I'll refer to as Mr. X - he's never contacted any of our groups directly, instead preferring to spread his ideas behind the scenes to any of our customers. With little effect, I might add, we have already explained our concept to them and they are already supportive of it, or at least willing to see how it can help.

There has been a lot of discussion on this, so I've split our "sides" (if we need to call it that). I've put Mr. X's accusations into the post Artists or Vandals. And in this post here, Graffiti murals, I've put the positive spin, where I describe our approach, along with some responses that have been sent to customers regarding Mr. X, and support from various groups we work with.

I see these constant emails as an opportunity to respond and promote our positive ideas to more people. The unfortunate thing is they take away time we could be spending working on a positive and proven alternative - we are not content to just sit and complain, we belive in being agents of change.

As always - comments welcome, I just ask that you be respectful in them and that you be open - say who you really are.

Artists or vandals

We (Keepsix) have done a number of murals so far: Richmond Road Hydro last fall, then this year Jack Purcell Pool, Photolux Studio in Manotick, Hillary's Drycleaners on Bank, Genest Pool in Vanier (St. Cecile). We're also planning murals on a cube van for Sodexo, a long (200 ft) retaining wall on St. Joseph Blvd in Orleans, and the buildings in behind Bouchey's on Elgin St.

Feedback from customers, politicians, and the public has been very positive. And from the artists of course - they appreciate the opportunity to get their art up, to develop their skills, and to make money at it.

Positive except for one, whom I'll call Mr X, that has complained about several of our murals - not directly to Keepsix though. He instead sneaks in to target the customer, BIA's, councilors. His main complaint is that we are hiring known current vandals, and we support vandalism. He pretends to support our process, but criticizes our approach. He's even complained about the planned St. Joseph blvd mural, his most verbose and far reaching to date. He's refining his spiel, just not his facts. He did miss a few of our murals, maybe he'll catch up.

We do support mural art, and are using it as a way to provide talented youth with an opportunity, a new direction, a way to be part of a community building process that includes them as well as residents and local businesses. Some of the artists have tagged in the past, some may not have completely "kicked" the habit yet, but we still are optimistic about the program and believe in these youth.

update - July 6/09 - I had been summarizing below some of Mr. X's complaints below, as well as our responses back to customer questions, and supportive messages from the community. It's gottn so long I'll just leave Mr. X here, and move the positive responses to here.

I'd removed the actual names that he claims are active taggers, since they don't need to be further maligned here. I also take out his photo links, as there is no easy way to date the tag itself as being last week or last year. It's a long post, but given his repeated complaints I thought I'd be proactive and capture all that has been said so far on this -especially the positive things.  As you'll see he is repetitive - maybe he needs a web site to link people to, to simplify things. Maybe I'll send this link to new customers, just to get this out of the way so we can focus on hekping youth and improving the community.

Twitter to Facebook to blog to ...?

I've been blogging for several years, to share neat things I find and some ideas and opinions - mine and other's. I do enjoy the creative process but it's a long process, once I start a post and get into adding links I can easily spend an hour at it. 

I signed up to Facebook a year or so ago, as a quicker way to post short pieces but mainly to track what was happening with friends I'd made, and events - especially those related to my passion for promotion of graffiti murals as a positive tool. I have about 150 friends on there, but they are Facebook friends. These are mostly online links to people I have often only a tenuous association with, but I still want to be in the loop for what they are up too. And it works well for that. Unfortunately, some people post a slew of status updates that range in relevance from key events to what they had for breakfast. Means a lot of scrolling down through the day's postings to find what I want, as there's not a setting that says to only show me when someone says something interesting, or lets me group them. In addition, many people add lots of Facebook applications, to link in videos or slap me with a fish or ask what my top ten reasons to wear underwear are. Cute to some I suppose, but besides the annoyance factor many of these apps ask for personal info from your profile, something I resist. Many users also use FB for messaging, rather than email. Good for a quick note I find, but there's no way to archive or sort messages, or forward into email world. And once a message scrolls off the current list, it can easily get ignored.

Just to clarify, while the above might sounds like a trash of FB, all in all it is a good tool for me, I just keep it's limitations in mind. 

Ottawa mural consultation -update

Just an update to the original post, I sent in my comments. Deadline is today, here's my feedback. Download Community consultation Ottawa murals my

Here's a copy of the comments I had: