French *Street Artist* Grafitti Tagging Joshua Tree N.P.

$275

In January 25th, 2009, Santiago Meza Lopez (aka maker) shared his recipe to make “Pozole”, it include two empty oil barrels, several pounds of caustic soda, latex gloves, gas masks, and a pair of “teachers”, supposedly brought from Israel.

...however, i don't consider them "sacred" because i don't know what they mean

Iskander Lemseffer, an acquaintance of Saraiva and owner of Lab Art, a Los Angeles gallery dedicated to street art, expressed mixed feelings about the dispute.

"When it comes to street art, you do it big or don't do it all," Lemseffer said, standing beside a provocative work of his own: a replica of a movie Oscar on its knees cutting lines of cocaine. "But even I was shocked when I saw photos of what Andre did to that rock."

Los Angeles graffiti artist Kalen Ockerman, 43, who is also known as Mear One, said street art has a purpose that goes beyond the image.

"Graffiti art is the honest voice of the dissatisfied soul — it's a political act," Ockerman said. Then he added, "All Andre did was smear a work of art by mother nature with industrial chemicals to celebrate his own ego."

As the debate goes on, some private businesses forced to paint over graffiti regularly see a certain irony in protests by graffiti fans angry about tagging in national parks.

"I wish they were just as outraged over graffiti on other people's private property," said Lena Kent, a spokeswoman for Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, whose freight cars and engines are tagged on a daily basis.

"Playing devil's advocate: If provoking outrage is not part of your intention as a graffiti artist, why do it?" Jeremy Cross, an artist and curator at the Night Gallery in Santa Ana, said with a impish grin.

“Everything I do comes from the attitude I learned from graffiti.If I want to do something, I do it. If I want to paint this rooftop, if I want to paint this train, or a place that’s very difficult to access, I’m going to go and paint it. And I’ve kept that attitude with everything I do. I want to do a movie — I do it. I want a nightclub — I’ll do it.”

“Graffiti should only be painted on what humans have built — not on nature’s land and rocks,” he said, nibbling on French pastries at an outdoor lunch table in Hollywood. “Joshua Tree was the wrong place for it, and I am sorry.”

Who removed the graffiti from the boulder in the parking lot?

“I did,” he says. “Four days after I put the graffiti on the rock, I cleaned it off with a bottle of water, a brush and sand.”

“by making people think I went all over the park to deface it, and by posting a 20-year-old image taken from one of my websites of Mr. A on a rock in Brittany, France and using it as possible evidence of vandalism in Joshua Tree.”

“As a result,” he adds, “park rangers had to spend hours and days searching for nothing.”