"The Rainbow Bandit" and Public Art

In August the Alibi published a feature story on the city's most recent controversial public artist. A month before he painted (or rather dripped) a rainbow on an abandoned downtown building that had been taken over by the city. Within a few days it was all over the news, but the rainbow got such a positive response that the news teams couldn't report anything negative, so they stopped. When I went downtown last week to photograph, I was happy to find the rainbow was still there, though a block down the street I spotted the Graffiti Removal Team...

I too am a fan of the rainbows and what they represent. Public art is able to reach a wider audience and affect more people than if it was displayed in the traditional sense. It brings attention to places that have been ignored, therefore people are forced to confront ideas and feelings they may otherwise be able to avoid. The first two photos were taken obviously around election time two years ago. I used to pass by this building frequently, and every couple weeks or so there would be something different painted on the wall. Oftentimes the previous artist's work was not covered up, but simply added on to, creating a collage of varying styles, colors, and subjects. It is art on a different kind of canvas, perhaps a more interesting one.