by Sandra Beckmeier

Living street art, strange how it's constantly exaggerated. Never mind and spray paint flows without stopping, and an insider's tip -- Krylon® aerosol has the best collection of colors. It's easy to see how the entertainment industry and media have time and again shackled the form by glamorizing graffiti's one-time "marriage" to gangster violence.

Luckily the form is much more intelligent than popular opinion, traced back to Cave writing, the walls of Rome and to the natives of North America. Though names like Keith Haring, Fab Five Freddie (Freddie Brathwaite), and Lady Pink are some of the art world's wonder children, graffiti's voice hasn't become a solvent part of American culture even though it is widely perceived as folk artistry. Like rap and anything that shouts loudly in despair that it has been lost under the trappings of law because of the corroded interpretation it becomes vandalism filled with violence.

So, we know there is graffiti on the moon. There was graffiti on the New York subway a year after it was constructed. Stereotypes show another image to betray ourselves with, of a juvenile delinquent spray-painting walls in the wee hours of the morning. Never mind the kid is probably bleeding from scraping coarse, brick surfaces with his knuckles for one reason: just to say "I exist." Graffiti isn't synonymous with gang activity. It has evolved far beyond that into an artistic juxtaposition, because the walls are where writers battle it out.

Society places kids in the "hopeless" mind-set, pre-determining their futures while teachers and parents are forced to pull them away from it, and this makes one realize how important the contributions of folks like Austin artist/activist Jane Madrigal can be. Madrigal acts as housemother for a group of young artists known as SKAM Productions.

She believes these kids have been seduced by films like Colors, in that they have been locked into an identity where a fictional environment plays closely upon the environment that is familiar to them. And in the world where there is not identity, a role is a role. Madrigal believes the project works in two ways to benefit a positive model because it is a collective: it helps improve the self-esteem of at-risk teens while embracing itself as a tool for crime prevention. She believes that graffiti should be recognized as a way out of an at-risk existence instead of the other way around. But no one listens.

Righteously hailed as a "mentor" and "civic leader," Madrigal stumbled into the graffiti movement in 1995, when she and a friend went to the Rio Grande Valley to teach art at an alternative learning center. She worked as a teacher's aide, and became acquainted with what school administrators termed "at-risk youth."

After returning to Austin she sent bus tickets to several kids so they could participate in Mexic-Arte's Young Latino Arts Exhibition, which she curated. Through the grapevine, word spread quickly and Madrigal was surrounded with a large group of young artists inquiring as to how they could get involved. Bang. SKAM Productions was born.

ADA: You mentioned Al "Skam" Martinez?

Madrigal: Yeah. He is responsible for bringing the graffiti movement to Austin. He's really well-respected and remembered by all of us. In 1982 he came down from Newark, New Jersey. I think he was about 12 years old.

ADA: How did he help legitimize graffiti?

Madrigal: He did a lot for graffiti through his work with the Dougherty Arts Center and for the Austin League of Minority Artists, because he had been exposed to so much on the East Coast. He did his thing illegally for years. But then in 1988 he started to work legally.

ADA: Who did he approach for commissions?

Madrigal: "They" approached him, supposedly.

ADA: The city?

Madrigal: Yeah. He had done a piece called "Tough City" on some bank and when the piece came out on the news, the reporters were publicly asking for the artist to come forward. They had seen his work around town, blah, blah, blah. But he didn't come forward. It wasn't until much later. It was their way of trying to lure him out of the "dark streets" I guess.

ADA: Was he killed in 1994?

Madrigal: Yeah, he died on January 28 from a gunshot wound to the head. He was in Houston, sitting at a Taco Bell drive-through. We're still finding pieces he created around town. A few weeks ago one of the guys was on top of some random building and found a piece Al did in 1988 that no one ever knew about. You can't see it from the street, unfortunately. You have to be up on the building to see it.

ADA: Where is it?

Madrigal: Not sure yet. We're going to take photographs.

ADA: What was your motivation behind forming this group?

Madrigal: The criminalization of the youth, and the violence issue. Also the fact that there is hardly any hope for these kids, they're pre-destined for jail. I was trying to make a point to them about the qualities of the art form, and that they should be proud of what they do. My motivation for the most part was finding a way to simply give them some worth.

ADA: Curating the show was a great idea.

Madrigal: A lot of what happens when graffiti artists do their work illegally has to do with the ego. A lot of them are figuring out that they are going to have to think about how they can make a living as an artist -- provided they don't get killed or go to jail.

ADA: How old are these kids?

Madrigal: The youngest one just turned 16.

ADA: You mentioned that you're putting together a documentary about the group and the movement locally.

Madrigal: We're shooting video as we speak which will hopefully churn some interest. Right now I'm feeling a little jaded and negative since I'm involved with the art/political scene in this town. But, if everything works out we'll have space at the M.A.C.C.[Mexican American Cultural Center] by the end of the month.

ADA: Just getting off the ground. Fight the power.

Madrigal: Yeah.

Madrigal explains that SKAM Productions artists work within a classical definition of hip-hop graffiti, broken into three different types. A "tag" is someone's name written somewhere, generally in one color. "Throw-ups" are simple pieces created in two to three colors (many times in black and white or silver and black). "Pieces" are multi-colored and considered to be the highest evolution of hip-hop graffiti. Graffiti, like hip-hop, is a ghetto concept. And the form, like hip-hop, is an evolution of ghetto culture. The elements are as vocal as the voices, combining confrontation with life and disgust for the socio-political-economic climate. Smart kids.

The term vandalism, in its inappropriate context, refer to those elaborate, colorful, spectacular paintings seen all over cities. Neat-o. In a real sense, the art form, like rap music, has been censored by society and government. Hopefully it drives home a point about the vandalism aesthetic which sometimes seems to give graffiti its validity (in younger circles). What is unfortunate is that the message behind the rebellion all too often gets confused as some kind of twisted chaos.

One thing is for certain about the future of Madrigal's efforts with SKAM Productions, and most likely graffiti in general. It's a challenge against a slightly offset community clearly oblivious to street culture. Their work adds color to the mind-dulling blandness, and the designs upgrade the environment. Turning an established ideology upside down is no easy task, but hopefully Austin will support artists by providing legal environments for these voices to continue to grow up healthy within a "healthy" art community.