Graffiti: Art Form or Vandalism? : Expression: Officials in O.C. and elsewhere wrestle to find a way to let the ‘aerosol art’ continue while controlling the other work--often gang related.

Huntington Beach officials are agonizing over it. Los Angeles’ Cultural Arts Commission is wrestling with it. Orange County officials aren’t aware of it.

The issue is the growing Southland debate over the distinction--if there is one--between graffiti art and graffiti vandalism, and how--if at all--to preserve one while eliminating the other.

“All cities have an obligation to ensure that there are public spaces for what is one of the most vibrant and interesting art forms in Southern California,” said Michael Davis, an architect and author who has written about Southern California urban-design issues.

“Almost anyone would recognize the difference between graffiti art and the simple tag,” Davis said.

Huntington Beach is apparently the only city in Orange County that allows aerosol artists to paint in certain areas, despite laws on the books that make graffiti illegal. But while city officials seem to acknowledge that there is a difference between so-called “aerosol art” and simple spray-can vandalism, they are wrestling to find a way to let the art continue while controlling the other graffiti that are often gang related. That’s no simple task, said Ron Hagan, the city’s director of community services.

“The problem is (that as) soon as you allow someone to write on a public wall, how do you tell someone else they can’t write on the wall--or on the port-a-potty right next to it?” Hagan said this week.

Orange County staff handling graffiti cleanup in flood control channels and county buildings and facilities, in addition to one official associated with a special committee concerned with graffiti, said no such line is drawn. That is, when they see graffiti, they clean up the graffiti.

“When I looked into the graffiti issue and how we were handling it, that (distinction) never arose, so I’m not sure anything could be characterized as art,” said Robert Sayers, manager of the Environmental Management Agency’s management services, which did the research for a county committee studying cheaper methods of graffiti eradication.

That viewpoint is shared by many city officials throughout the county. “All graffiti, regardless if it is artistic or otherwise, is removed,” said Ed Green, assistant superintendent of public works for San Juan Capistrano.

Complicating the matter even further is a belief by some who work with gangs that to legitimize distinctions between aerosol artists and vandals would only serve to exacerbate underlying social problems.

Because graffiti are illegal, officials should be looking at what causes youths to engage in illegal activities--however artistic their expressions may be, said one Southern California arts administrator who works with gang members and who asked not to be identified.

“We’re not addressing the problems the kids are facing,” said the administrator. Citizens and city officials should be looking at “finding out how disenfranchised people can find a way to work within the system.”

Architect Michael Davis thinks the answer might be found if “the system” were to embrace aerosol artists. “There are a lot of derelict and unused public spaces that could be brightened and enlightened.”

Further, Devon Brewer, a UC Irvine graduate student who has studied the retaining walls in Huntington Beach and advised city officials, asserts that aerosol art is a positive alternative to drugs and gang violence that “saves lives.”

“It’s nice to have a wall around here because you can express your art form to a whole different branch of people and help graffiti art get accepted more,” said aerosol artist Drez, who preferred not to give his last name, a 19-year-old Orange Coast College student who paints on concrete seawalls along the coast in Huntington Beach.

There have even been gallery exhibitions of aerosol art, one of which opened at the Mexican Museum in San Francisco this May. Walls in Los Angeles, Long Beach and other cities have been set aside for the colorful outdoor artwork.

Recently, the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs began a new program to try to define differences between graffiti art and what nearly anyone would classify as criminal defacing of property, public or private. Next month, department officials will hold a conference to seek common ground--or at least ways to find it--between graffiti artists and graffiti abaters to find ways to provide legal spaces for street artists.

One solution proposed in Huntington Beach would involve a sort of “public exhibition space,” Hagan said, in which painting would be allowed only on removable canvases hung along the retaining walls, which stand between Pacific Coast Highway and the surf and stretch north of the pier for nearly a mile.

Inexpensive permits would be issued to painters, and the canvases would be taken down during off hours, probably every night. Restricted painting times and required permits would allow greater control over the area. With the help of police and other city officials, the costly burden of patrolling the area 24 hours a day or engaging in a constant whitewashing battle could be avoided, Hagan said.

The canvases would ease the problem of gang “tagging”--a way of claiming territory--because the tagging is done as a way of laying claim to the paintings of aerosol artists, he said. Remove the canvas and “you can’t claim something that’s not there,” he said.

“So now we’re looking at the cost and feasibility (of this alternative) and we’re trying to get feedback from (the aerosol artists) to see if they would respect the space and get the word out that if you continue to write on the stairwells and port-a-potties, you’d lose that space altogether,” Hagan said.

He said there are problems with the removable-canvas idea, chiefly that it works against the key desire of aerosol artists to leave their mark on a permanent public surface. Graffiti artist Mike Krampach of Cypress, who uses the name Fear One when he paints, agrees.

“It wouldn’t work,” he said. “It defeats the whole purpose” of painting for fame and recognition.

Admitted Hagan: “I don’t know if there’s a social answer (to the problem) or not. There may not be.” (He added that the retaining walls may be affected by a parking lot to be built beginning this fall along Pacific Coast Highway but won’t know to what extent for a few months.)

Any solution that eliminates all forms of spray-paint expressionism would be a loss to the community, according to at least one Huntington Beach arts authority. “It’s one of the few places (in Orange County and neighboring areas) that people doing spray-can art feel they can go,” said Naida Osline, the city’s cultural services supervisor.

Osline would like see the walls used as an open forum for all kinds of expression and discourse, not just as a place for spray-can artists. She is helping with ideas for a wall-art program that would make the area something of a “community bulletin board” as well as an art space, she said.

“We can always paint it out beige and create a program of punishment and surveillance and control,” Osline said, noting that someone has recently painted “Save Pee Wee,” referring to recently arrested children’s television star Pee-wee Herman. “But it’s interesting; there’s a kind of democracy that goes on down there: If you want to make a personal statement, you can.”

Community members, however, are sometimes less sympathetic when they see gang members’ personal statements.

Huntington Beach resident Wendy Mello complained about the matter at a City Council meeting earlier this week. “I went down there and everything is (marked with) graffiti, from the portable toilets on the beach to the telephone booths at 13th Street on PCH,” she said in an interview.

Hagan said that the possibility of whitewashing the wall and forbidding graffiti of any kind is remote. But the possibility has been discussed in recent meetings involving his department, aerosol artists and the police.

“If I were to give the order to take it all off, and the city had the money to do that, it would just be back on again by the next day, and we don’t have the resources to wager that kind of (ongoing) battle. . . . We hope to come up with a compromise, but it will take a little more time. There’s no easy answer.”

Staff writer Allan Parachini contributed to this article.