The Urban Asylum

We found this article in the Denver Post on-line, just recently. It talks about how the community is beginning to embrace Graffiti as a true art form. Instead of wasting tax payers money on creating an anti-graffiti task force, local politicians have enlisted urban artists in helping to beautify the community. Following is a portion of the article. You can read it in it's entirety by visiting the Denver Post website. Remeber: ART IS NOT A CRIME!

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There was a time when Lucky Garcia, 15, and Armando Granillo, 14, left their school's back door each day with the rest of their classmates to an alleyway plastered with gang graffiti.

Now, thanks to an innovative program, they and the rest of those attending ACE Community Challenge Charter School in the La Alma neighborhood of Denver pass by an art mural the students designed.

The spray-painted image of a huge tree now covers a back wall of their school. One side of the tree is dead. Gravestones fill that landscape, under a sky of dark clouds. The other side of the tree thrives with green foliage. A proud man dressed in a graduation gown walks on that side.

Now the gangs that once used to throw up their insignias with black spray paint leave the alley alone.

"They don't touch our walls anymore," Garcia said recently.

The "Project Off the Wall" art murals were pushed by Denver Councilwoman Judy Montero and others. Montero thought filling the neighborhoods of her west-side council district with art would help reduce the proliferating graffiti that had become such a nuisance.

"Through the murals, we are trying to get them to redirect behavior away from destructive graffiti," she said. "We want them to see something that is beautiful and is urban art that will have recognition in the community."