12.06.10: Illusions of Grime, The Confinement of Street Art

By Luis Sierra Campos The City of Los Angeles has had a long and sometimes troubled history of commissioning murals by famous artists. Many of those murals have been defaced over the years by taggers and by graffiti artists. As a result graffiti has a pretty bad name in the city. Each year, 34 million tax dollars go toward eradicating grafitti. A new show opening at the Social and Public Art Resource Center in Venice this weekend takes a look at the criminalization of grafitti and the spaces allowed for it to be considered public art. Illusions of Grime, The Confinement of Street Art opens this coming Saturday, December 11th at 7pm at SPARC in Venice. For details on location and the artists featured in the show, you can go to sparcmurals.org. Hear in the City: Radio Realities from the Urban Landscape A Monday magazine on KPFK, 90.7FM, airs at 2pm, in Los Angeles with Sara Harris www.hearinthecity.org