SubscribeDefaced graffiti-styled mural restored
by Doug MacCash, The Times-Picayune
Monday October 27, 2008, 10:22 PM
As anti-graffiti activist Fred Radtke awaits his day in court on charges of obliterating a Bywater artists’ mural painted on a cinderblock wall, the artists showed up this weekend and, once again with the wall owner’s permission, began a new mural that they completed Monday.
ELIOT KAMENITZ / THE TIMES PICAYUNE
The mural on the cinder block wall of Southern Coating and Waterproofing has been restored after it was painted partially over with gray paint. Monday, October 27, 2008.
The new design celebrates the Day of the Dead, with cartoon skulls, New Orleans-style tombs and interlocking graffiti-style lettering. As three artists applied wisps of spray paint to the wall Sunday afternoon, one of them, Clayton Nepveux, called special attention to the scales of justice in the upper right corner of the wall, near the corner of Press and Burgundy streets.
After the incident last week, the scales may be tipping in the direction of street art.
On Wednesday, Radtke, New Orleans’ most celebrated and scorned anti-graffiti activist, was in the process of rolling gray enamel over a newly finished painting when he was brought up short by a pair of National Guard Military Police officers. Though Radtke, known as the gray ghost, has long enjoyed the cooperation of the New Orleans Police Department, this time he had defaced art that was painted with the permission of the wall’s owner, Southern Coating and Waterproofing.
The mural was by most standards a well-composed and laboriously applied work of art, not a run-of-the-mill, hastily applied graffiti tag. But Radtke and his organization, Operation: Clean Sweep, apparently disagreed.
Radtke, however, had neglected to secure permission of the owners to blot out the mural, even though company representatives were in the building’s office when Radtke arrived.
Radtke was released soon after his arrest Wednesday. He was later issued a summons to appear in court on charges of criminal damage to property. If convicted, he could be fined up to $500 and/or spend up to 90 days in jail, plus pay restitution.
Radtke did not return a call seeking comment.
The three painters, Nepveux, 25; Jay Matthews, 33; and Gabriel (who declined to provide his last name), 28, paused in their work Sunday to discuss the never-ending New Orleans graffiti controversy. Though all three artists approve of some graffiti writing, they said they do not make a practice of illegally tagging themselves.
“We’re not just knucklehead kids running around, ” Matthews said.
Gabriel said he and others have repainted the Southern Coating and Waterproofing wall several times since 1999, suffering regular anti-graffiti blottings.
But graffiti writing, they pointed out, isn’t the issue here. By Nepveux’s definition, “graffiti is illicitly painting a surface in a public space.” It follows that where there’s permission, there is no graffiti.
At least one police car passed by Monday without pausing as the three artists donned air filter masks and returned to work.
