I arrived at my studio this weekend to find some miscellaneous dumbass had found it necessary to scribble some kind of illegible tag-thing across its big white double doors. Apparently this person is an amateur and has not yet learned the tricks to stealing spray paint from the hardware store, because the marks appeared to have been made with a red crayon or china marker or something of that sort--I was able to get much of it off just with Formula 409 and elbow grease and to reduce it to a faded pink illegible tag-thing, and the nice guy who manages the property is going to paint the rest of it into oblivion in a few days. So it's really more of an irritation that is going to disappear fairly smoothly without much effort from me, yet I'm still bugged.
Why am I bugged? Well, two things. The first is the ironic notion that I moved to this space from another space that was half the price, because my old space felt rather unsafe, yet nothing negative EVER happened to my building or my property during the three or so years I was in the space. I selected my new space in part because it's only half a mile from my home in a nice residential neighborhood and it felt super-safe ... and since I moved in four months ago, I've been burglarized and vandalized.
Thing two: there are some truly awesome "writers" out there. How come the person who marks up my studio space is some low-rent talentless douchebag whose idea of a tag is a flat illegible unembellished scrawl with a red china marker? I'm an artist, for crying out loud. If someone is going to paint graffitti on my doors, why can't it be one of the cool artistic guys--at least someone who can make those big block letters with all the groovy shading and colors? Ai-yi-yi.
