Click below to listen to ‘Rainbow Falls, Graffiti Art, and “Graffiti Falls,’” which aired as part of an art-themed edition of Western Skies on Feb. 6, 2011 on Radio KRCC. Western Skies is a monthly, hour-long show exploring life in the Pikes Peak region.
Rainbow Falls, Graffiti Art, and “Graffiti Falls”
Intro: Rainbow Falls lies along Fountain Creek above Manitou Springs, but many know it by a different name. Graffiti Falls, as it’s known, has the community asking, is graffiti an art form, vandalism or something in between?
Ambient noise, street traffic.
Drastik: There’s definitely good graffiti and bad graffiti, you have to have good letters first of all.
The graffiti artist known as Drastik stands outside Westside Tattoo in Old Colorado City, where the walls are covered top to bottom in colorful graffiti murals and stylized words, many of them his. A spray paint artist for 16 years, Drastik is unwilling to condemn illegal graffiti, but at the same time, he wants graffiti as an art from to come out from under dark bridges and into the mainstream.
Schwartz: Once you get past whether it was done legally or illegally, the look is just so cutting edge and people are so into it, it’s so interesting to look at, even if its just a word. People ask, well, what does it say? Who cares? It just looks cool.
That’s Michael Schwartz, one of the few graffiti artists in the Pikes Peak area that’s turned his passion into his profession, founding his own art and design business. He explains that spray paint art has a unique personality opposed to other medium.
Schwartz: Graffiti art primarily is to catch attention, catch fame, catch street credibility and things like that. That’s the primary goal. There are three types of graffiti artists: There are the muralists there are the vandals and there are the gang bangers that mark for territory. I guess we can roll all that into one can of paint.
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