Graffiti artists may be true folk artists. Like visual poets, they sling their paints like verbs and nouns, creating stunning statements all the way through. They tell their true tales from the heart and soul, and redefining not only themselves, but their communities, imbedding their statements into the collective memories of the people. A visual narrative directly connects the street corner to the spirit, bypassing the definitions of art presented by the galleries and museums. As if put into a blender, the ingredients mix and the letters become pictures, merged with the personality of the writer. The colors take shape, statements are made, dreams are made manifest, and truth is made real. That is graffiti art. Poured out like water.

The Prophets With the Spraycan

Staring at the buildings; they are bare. Staring at the spaces; they are boring. All the while the energy and blood is seething with stories to tell. Almost with a sense of prophecy, the artist looks at the emptiness and can see what he will make happen in the future. From nothing, the graff writer makes something.

Graff writers connect to where they are from and to their community in a way that some find difficult to understand. In all parts of the world, graffiti writers are visual recorders, illustrating the concerns and issues of their communities in tangible ways that the usual news channels refuse to convey. That is until after the fact.

Style Medicine for Sick World

All the styles, and parts and pieces, that we discussed in this book have been employed and are used all over the world in pop culture, advertising, fashion, animation, skateboarding, digital design, and more. Because graff allows for three key things.

• Innovation - Every good style inspires an even better style. It’s the old maxim that good art should inspire greater art. And graffiti has inspired and influenced all manners of visual information.

• Cultural re-education - Why do people need art? Why do we want to create it, and why do we like to view it? On both sides of the question - whether an arts educator or graffiti policy developer or even the writer themselves - all parties receive an adjustment on their perspective.

• Exposure to the arts - Wildstyle changes with each individual artists interpretation of the style, but all of it relies on basic artistic principles. The end product exposes both the artist and the audience to all sorts of new artistic information, and a new dialogue can begin.

As for the future of graffiti, that is in your hands - not the hands of museums and gallery owners. All graff writers that came before you laid down the bricks of the road, and it’s up to you to continue. Graffiti will move along as the whole of humanity moves along. Things will evolve, and new styles will meet up with new technologies to express how we feel. A new aesthetic will always come about. So it went from caves to rocks, to walls, to trains, back to walls, now to your computer and cell phones… What’s next?