Around the World

Cassandra Klaesson, Sweden

What are my thoughts about the street art?
Yeah, they are mixed. But I think it could be something beautiful. Some street artists are pretty good and are making some big changes in the cities. Making it more colorful.
But there are some people that writes meaningless words on walls or buildings. And that’s one of the things I don’t like.
But just because some people are destroying the town with these meaningless words doesn’t mean a city must remove them all. That’s just wrong. Instead it could possibly work with this and come up with a solution.

One of my favorite artists is Banksy whose gender we don’t know. When he first started with street art, he was just doodling his name everywhere. Maybe not that fancy. But he made something fun with it. He wrote his name on places you would never think a street artist would reach. Making the world become interested in the art. And, in time, the “doodles” developed artistically. They developed a meaning behind the art. Art have opened eyes for people and what is happening around us in the world. And because of it he has started a discussion about things around street art. Making people getting involved. Although he also made some enemies on the way, he doesn’t think about it and it’s just doing the thing he loves. But he mostly could do this because he’s been hiding his identity.

After all he’s been an inspiration to many. Art doesn’t have to be about colorful paintings, self portrait or a nice picture of a landscape. It could also be something on the wall you walk by each day on your way to work.

But the street art is not just some doodles on the wall. It could be knitting around a street lamp, bridge or something completely else. Or you could make the plates with the street signs more colorful or just pimp them. Street art doesn’t have a limit.

But as I wrote before, there are some bad things about street art, like the words are either racist or just bad in general. And sometimes it is in the inappropriate place, like a building or a monument that has some historical importance and is destroyed from these irresponsible “artists”. There are a lot that could be destroyed by street artists. And because of it the debate about street art is growing and there are a lot of people that want street art to be banned. I understand if something that’s already beautiful gets destroyed.

One solution is that some cities designated street art walls where people can come and do their art or just practice. But it still doesn’t stop some people from doodling somewhere else.
In a city nearby where I live they have these kind of walls as seen below, and I been walking past them many times and love some of the paintings.

But I still think cities could do more for the street artists. The cities should help them like they help other sports or artists. I think everyone deserves to do what they love. Some ideas are that they could get sponsored projects from the cities, like making a old wall look “new”. Or for example an old house that they couldn’t afford to renovate. Why don’t they create cool artwork with it?
There is a lot of possibilities you could do and it’s only your imagination that could stop you.

  A wall from my hometown Simrishamn, Sweden.