GRAFFITI : Off the Street and Into the Art Gallery

Some people decry graffiti and demand stiffer penalties for those who do it. The Social and Public Art Resource Center is taking a different tack.

The Venice center has turned its gallery space over to three graffiti-style artists, Erick (Duke) Montenegro, Joseph (Nuke) Montalvo and Tony Quan, allowing them to curate an exhibit of graffiti.

The exhibit “Notes From the Other Side,” opening Saturday, will feature the works of 12 artists, including Montenegro, Montalvo and Quan. Besides graffiti-style paintings, the show will include photographs of graffiti and the video documentary, “Three Voices on Graffiti,” by artist Paul Kanemitsu. And visitors will be allowed to paint on a wall set up in the center.

“I think some of the spray-can work is the most interesting new work from a next generation of mural painters,” said Judith Baca, a muralist and the center’s artistic director. “We have a responsibility as the generation that preceded them to support the new talent. What I see is enormous talent and very few venues for this work to go.”

The artists are in their 20s and paint in what they call the Eastside L.A. style. “The Eastside (is) not so much a place, but a state of mind of a type of culture, inner-city L.A. culture, predominantly Latino but mixed with other cultures such as Asian,” Quan said.

He added: “Everybody started off as a graffiti artist, but since then people have taken different routes. There’s examples of mainstream painting (in the exhibit), and there’s stuff that’s still hard-core graffiti.

“A lot of what we try to say in our work has been neglected for a long time,” he said. “With the media bombardment focusing on graffiti as a crime and tag bangers and killing, they’ve taken away from the artistic side, and younger kids have seen that that’s how they can get on TV--by getting fame from killing. When graffiti started off, it was never about that. It was about doing the art, and we feel it should be back toward that.”

Quan’s interest in graffiti and art began when he was in junior high. “I always saw graffiti everywhere,” he said. “I lived in East L.A. and graffiti was something I could relate to.

“I think one thing that unified all of us is that graffiti as an art form spoke to us in a way that other forms of art didn’t. It spoke to the reality of what I and my friends knew, and from there it was a steppingstone to other things. I got introduced to mainstream art through graffiti.”

Of the 12 artists, four, including Quan, have bachelor’s degrees in fine arts. Two are students at Otis Art Institute.

Seven of the 12 are also exhibiting their works in the Museum of Contemporary Art’s exhibition, “Urban Revisions.”

“When I turned toward the art classes at my high school, they really failed me,” Montalvo said. “Graffiti was the exchange of ideas, actually sitting down in a circle of friends and learning from each other. In that way, graffiti nurtured the artist already in me. Maybe you didn’t have access to oils or canvases or 20,000 different brushes. There was only two things--your wall and paint. It was so easily accessible and the freedom was there.”

Until a few years ago, there were some sites where authorities looked the other way and let these young men paint.

“In the late ‘80s, there must have been five or six places where we could go, where it was somewhat legal but illegal, but we could go there, we could paint and it was no problem,” said Kanemitsu, son of the late artist, Matsumi Kanemitsu. “Now I can only think of one. That shows how it’s been shut down.”

“A lot of people, like the anti-graffiti coalitions, say, ‘Why don’t you try and get legal spaces?’ ” Quan said. “What they don’t tell you is in the mid-’80s we did go before the City Council and ask them to set aside some vacant lots for us to paint, and they laughed us off. So now they act shocked when there’s a lot of graffiti on the streets and a lot of gang violence. They don’t give us any positive outlets.”

Kanemitsu and artist Gajin Fujita, who is also in the show, believe reckless tagging--unartistic scrawls on walls, bus benches and street signs--has mushroomed in part because there are virtually no sanctioned yards where kids can go and paint. “These taggers are much younger than us--teens,” Fujita said. “When I see freeway signs getting hit up, it’s very irritating to me.”

“People will do a piece, spend a couple of days on something. Someone will go the next day and go over it in something that will take like a half-hour or even a minute,” Kanemitsu said. “That just shows the lack of respect that kids have.”

Quan believes that he and his peers are in a position to speak to the younger generation. “The question is, how can I, as an older person, direct them in a positive path,” he said. “I don’t really have any answers to that, but maybe they can look at my example. We got a space here where we can show some art. But this is the exception, not the norm.”

Other artists in the show include Rojelio Cabral, Victor Espinosa, Joaquin Larios, Randy Legaspi, Ruben Mireles, Abel Perez and Jose Reza.

“Notes From the Other Side” opens with a reception on Saturday from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Social and Public Art Resource Center, 685 Venice Blvd., Venice. “Circle Discussion”: Sunday from 3 to 5 p.m. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, and noon to 4 p.m. the first and third Saturdays of the month. Show ends July 15. Information: (310) 822-9560.