Childhood Creativity Illegal In New York City
Culture, Art October 15th. 2007, 1:51pm
Brooklyn’s local law 111 states that graffiti is “any letter, word, name, number, symbol, slogan, message, drawing, picture, writing … that is drawn, painted, chiseled, scratched, or etched on a commercial building or residential building.”
Sounds reasonable, right?
The law then continues to define graffiti as something that is “not consented to by the owner of the commercial building or residential building.” Under this definition not only can graffiti be the ugly spray paintings of gang members but also the colorful sidewalk chalk scribblings of 6 year old girls.
Natalie Shea, a 6 year old living on 10th street in Brooklyn drew the ire of her neighbors who called 311 to report that the little girl was breaking the law. Apparently someone on 10th street believes the blue blotch shown in the picture above is more troublesome than “dog poop, garbage from ill-kept homes, and noise from car alarms.” Soon she received a notice stating “PLEASE REMOVE THE GRAFFITI FROM YOUR PROPERTY,” “FAILURE TO COMPLY … MAY RESULT IN ENFORCEMENT ACTION AGAINST YOU.” The warning also says that she could face a $300 fine.
From The Brooklyn Paper:
“This whole thing is ridiculous. Admittedly, this drawing was not her best work — she usually sticks to cheerful scenes, not abstracts, frankly — but to send a warning letter like that is outrageous.”
Under the law it would technically become illegal to play hop-scotch or even sidewalk tic-tac-toe.
City chalk artists such as Ellis Gallagher has been creating sidewalk masterpieces for years and has never been arrested or issued a citation. Even when police ask him what he is up to, once they see he’s just drawing with chalk they leave him be. Chalk after all does wash away with the first rain.
Though it’s reasonable to get caught up in the stupidity of citing a 6 year old girl for drawing with chalk in front of her home, let’s not forget that someone actually called 311 on her. That’s right, one of her neighbors is such a douchebag that they called the cops on a 6 year old girl. Now who does that? I mean, have we as Americans become such ass holes that 6 year old girls with pigtails and handfuls of chalk can arouse in us bouts of “chalk rage”?
I so wish permanent blindness on whomever called the cops on Natalie Shea.
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October 17th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Clearly somebody overreacted. I would think a paint can spill would be bigger and messier.
Is it art? Hmmmm. Maybe. I’m sure Arthur Danto would make an argument for it being art. But then again he would also make an argument for the paint can spill being art as well.
October 17th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Matt:
Well I was kinda being silly in my claims what she created was true art but still, who are we to judge? just because we don’t like it does not mean we should call the cops. The only reason her neighbor called the cops is because they thought it looked bad.