By Ryan Price
The Ottawa Technical High School has been closed since 1992 but its grounds live on as a popular spot for local residents to walk their dogs or do a little gardening, and for local artists to take part in legal graffiti 101.
However, legal graffiti locations remain a much debated issue and opinions on whether or not they actually help deter vandalism differ amongst even those typically on the same side of the debate.
Bob Lynn, an Ottawa resident who has lived close to the Ottawa Tech wall in Centretown for four years, says that while it’s nice to look at and adds a bit of colour to the city, he thinks the legal space for graffiti artists also helps quell some of the negative activities graffiti is normally associated with such as tagging: painting one’s signature on public buildings around the city.
“I think it’s a good thing because it kind of keeps people from [doing graffiti on] a lot of the buildings,” says Lynn. “You do see some graffiti on buildings, but a whole lot less [than before].”
Not all residents share Lynn’s positive outlook on the situation.
While the tech wall resides on Ottawa-Carleton District School Board property, and not that of
the city, the area behind the wall serves as a gardening space for local residents who pay rental fees. According to Lynn and other area residents who take their dogs to the school grounds, some gardeners have been known to throw their garbage menacingly over the wall onto the graffiti artists below as they attempt to paint.
Some feel that the legal wall is an ineffective strategy to limit graffiti-related vandalism. An Ottawa-based artist who goes by the name Daser has been creating murals and large stylistic art pieces called burners for almost 25 years, varying in style from themed pieces to abstracts based on Italian futurism. He says he doesn’t think the legal tech wall is working.
“It’s basically at the point where this wall is clogged: only certain people control it, and some people even control it to the point where there could be problems if you were to come here,” he says. “It’s not a free wall for kids to paint…their stuff would be immediately wrecked.”
Sabra Ripley, a member of the Graffiti Management Stakeholders Committee and organizer of the annual graffiti art event House of PainT, says that even though she doesn’t think increasing the number of legal graffiti walls will alleviate the vandalism problem, the city still needs to have an area set aside for those looking to do murals.
“We can crack down in many different ways, but if we don’t provide spaces for people to be artistic outdoors…we continue this process of limiting free expression in our city,” she says.
Ripley says there have been discussions about changing the status of graffiti-related crimes so they will become a fineable offence and no longer result in a criminal record for offenders. She says that fining people will probably help decrease graffiti-related vandalism; though she jokingly suggests that maybe they could “increase the cost of spray paint.”
While he hasn’t recently painted on the tech wall, Daser says he tends to “haunt” it frequently to see what people have been creating. He is always hopeful to see some well-developed mural creations.
“People [who] have the talent and skill should be allowed to articulate their artwork,” he says. “It could be a tourist attraction.”
In May the city of Ottawa announced their enhanced Graffiti Management Strategy which would add five new zero-tolerance zones and make law enforcement easier for graffiti-related vandalism. Manager of technical services, Eric Katmarian, says that a one year monitoring period will begin on the two legal graffiti walls in Ottawa – Ottawa Technical High School, and the Dunbar Bridge on Bronson Avenue near Carleton University – sometime in the spring. The budget is to be finalized Dec. 14.
“It’s not going to be active monitoring, it’s simply going to be looking at how frequently we are removing graffiti from that area and the surrounding areas compared with the rest of the city,” says Katmarian.
He adds that so far, “The research [the city has] conducted in partnership with the police shows that the graffiti walls aren’t effective at reducing graffiti in the surrounding areas.”