Week 7: Graffiti is Art

            Charles “Chaz” Bojorquez uses Graffiti to solidy his roots as a born and raised East Los Angeles Chicano artist. He went to school for Graffitti at the University of Guadalajara and describes how graffiti was useful for his career’s trajectory. He describes graffiti as an art form and as a creative language for expressing oneself in freeform. This form of art is a voice and it’s style empowers youth. However, this freeform style can often be misconstrued as vandalism and as tagging, this is because of the bad reputation that Graffitit holds. This negative reputation revolves around gangs, drugs, and illegal activities which social media and the police tend to correlate to gangsters, vandalism, a loss of control or structure and a “a symbol of the loss of moral control in our society”(this is due to Graffiti’s freeform style). Yet, most Graffitti artists combat use their skills and education to provide people with a different representation of Graffitti by showing that Graffiti is tangible and can even be seen in advertisements. 

            I grew up in the heart of LA and constantly surrounded by Graffiti, it was everywhere I looked and I grew to gradually identify different forms and symbols. I used to imitate those styles in notebooks when I was in school. I remember in middle school, my teachers used to berate me about it until I eventually stopped. However, I still vivdly remember how much fun it was designing different characters, phrases, and using different fonts to create a masterpiece that was completely and solely my own. It is this feeling that Bojorquez describes when he says that Graffiti can empower youth. For bipoc, this artform can be a tool for self-empowerment, self-epression and a way to record your observations of the world around you into symbols and cartoons. It isn’t always easy to put the injustices and abuse you witness as a kid into words and so graffitit, whether it was on a napkin or the back cover of my 7^th grade math botebook, gave me a space to decompress the distress I felt witnessing sad life events. However, graffiti also allowed me to express joy and hope in powerful ways since, after all, pictures speak louder than words. I still like to draw, paint, and make crafts (my crafts are basically in Domesticana style) so in a way, my middle school teachers did not stomp art out of me. After reading and viewing Bojorquez’ work, I am excited to once more pick up a pen and give graffiti a shot 