After lecture today, I was intrigued with the graffiti art and decided to research and find out more information about graffiti all over the world. I stumbled upon Art Crimes, an online gallery of graffiti art from the US, Europe, and many other cities around the world. This project was founded by Susan Farrell in May 1994 with a handful of photos from Atlanta and Prague. In September, after her project went public, Brett Webb teamed up with Farrell supporting the site until 2005. Art Crimes has won various awards, such as; Cool Site of the Day (1994) and Top 10 nominee for Best of the Web (1995). It has also been featured in several publications such as, Flashbacks, Newsweek, Discovery Channel, Radio France, New York Times, and USA Today. 10 years later, Art Crimes had thousands of images from 445 cities around the world. It was the first graffiti site on the net and has since inspired others to be created.
The purpose of this website was to publish and preserve the graffiti that one walks past every day. In several locations graffiti is illegal and the website does not advocate breaking the law; however, they think that this art belongs in public spaces and more legal walls should be available for these expressive artworks. Art Crimes wants support in their effort to preserve your local graffiti history. Another main goal of Art Crimes is to provide cultural and scholarly information and resources along with helping to preserve and document the constantly disappearing painting. They also want to inform people that this kind of graffiti, known as, “writing” is being done by artists who call themselves “writers” not by gangs.
Art Crimes is a collaborative and ongoing volunteer project and holds great respect for the writers and their artwork. Terms such as, "graffiti," "artist," "spraycan art," "graff," are objected by many writers. However, this website but a lot of thought into its name using the term “writer” which does not adequately set graffiti writers apart from other book authors or journalists. Also the term “graffiti” is used because it is thought to still have the most recognition and using it makes Art Crimes more findable with search engines. I found this site to be extremely interesting and full of graffiti from all over the world. It is a shame that it illegal in so many places and that it is constantly getting erased. However, this also allows for more graffiti to be created so I feel that this website does a great job preserving this art. When people think of art, graffiti typically does not come to mind but it one of the most visible art throughout cities and I will not notice and appreciate it. I also looked at the art from the different cities and it was remarkable to see all of the different artworks created and how there were some similarities and differences based on the cities. For example, many of the art in New York and LA had similar styles verses the art in Kansas which I felt a different vibe from.
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