Lisa Solberg paints murals that are raw, energetic and that require as little thought as possible. She describes her work as visual Beat writing. With a wide stroke, Solberg painted a black-and-white image of a Rastafari Captain Jack Sparrow with thick dreads on a wall on Garnet Avenue. Solberg said she loves to produce large-scale murals that any passerby can enjoy. “No one is judged for stopping and gazing at art on the street; it is totally free and open,” Solberg said. The Irvine-based skateboard company, Element, commissioned Solberg to paint the mural on the building façade. She was paid to create artwork on their property. A few blocks away, a tattoo parlor opened its wall to friends who sprayed a woman’s face in neon purples and blues: the sharp, flashy colors from the graffiti can. The friends were looking for a safe place to display their work, explained the tattoo parlor owner. The lines blur, however, when graffiti artists aren’t commissioned to splay their art over public walls, and the issue soon lands in the lap of the police and community activists when art slides into destructive tagging. “The problem is when people who are trying to become good [graffiti artists] are damaging other people’s properties,” said Community Relations Officer David Surwilo, who works in the Western Division. Many graffit taggers seem most concerned with making their presence known or marking their territory. Last December, unknown suspects spray painted the word “Vapor” and images of bong pipes on playground equipment and walls at Bird Rock Elementary School in La Jolla. It cost the school $500 in damage. The police department’s Graffiti Strike Force studied pictures of the elementary school vandalism with hopes to link the work to similar graffiti elsewhere. “Sometimes people get discouraged and wonder how [the police] are going to catch them,” said Police Officer Phil Franchina, who works for the Graffiti Strike Force in the Northern Division that covers La Jolla and Pacific Beach. “No one sees them doing it but eventually they get caught.” Franchina estimated the Graffiti Strike Force arrests an average of 30 offenders out of the 80 to 100 cases the unit handles each month. Violators can get hit with a felony if their graffiti damage exceeds $400 to repair. Most offenders are charged with a misdemeanor, according to Franchina. Police encourage residents to take photos of graffiti in their communities before removing it to help police apprehend culprits. Residents who catch graffiti perpetrators in action should call 911. Along the coast, graffiti vandalism tends to pick up in the warmer, summer months and slow down in the winter. “We’re always in business,” Franchina said. “There is always someone who will take over for the taggers.” In Point Loma and Ocean Beach, police realized that taggers tend to live in the community, as opposed to gangs showing up to flex their muscle. Offenders range from teenagers to 35-year olds. Police are often able to apprehend the repeat offenders. It’s more difficult to find the group of teenagers – mostly boys – who get their hands on a box of spray cans and go on a graffiti spree for a few weeks. “If we stop seeing a moniker, then we’re content with that,” Surwilo said. “That’s crime prevention at its best. That doesn’t mean that we won’t go after them.” The scribbles and monikers are a huge headache for community groups that strive to stay on the heels of taggers. In Ocean Beach, community activists carry around $20 graffiti removal kits they’ve purchased themselves to remove graffiti as soon as it appears. If the community waited for the city to clean the fresh graffiti, the problem would escalate, according to Bill Klees, Chair of the Point Loma Association. “As soon as we see it, it’s gone,” Klees said. “We don’t call [the city]. To wait for it to go through the channels of the city, it stays up too long and then it appears more and more.” In La Jolla, a Ramerio Drive resident has had to clean graffiti off a retaining wall at the bottom of an empty lot five times. The city does not own the property and so is not responsible for scrubbing the wall. Residents who wish to report graffiti vandalism can call the graffiti hotline at (619) 525 8522 Public Art Solberg’s artistic expression is far and above tagging empty lots or playground equipment, but some graffiti vandalism is pure art. The coastal communities, however, tend to exhibit the more sanctioned variety. Not surprisingly, mural art is everywhere in an environment where people live perpetually outdoors. It serves as community art, advertisement and decoration. Ocean Beach icon Rich James embodies the essence of coastal artwork. James’ murals of undersea life can be seen all over OB from octopuses to diving dolphins. Utility boxes portray his love for the underwater world. “Art, you just do it!” James is quoted on a website dedicated to his memory, richjames.org. “The action has magic, grace and power.” James, who passed away last April, was famous for riding around OB in his baby blue, ‘65 Chevy convertible, dubbed the dolphinmobile, that he continuously painted and repainted and treated like a moving canvas. James decided to involve the community in the mural making process. Every year at the OB street fair, individuals paint a square of the community mural that have appeared on the sides of stores and as a backdrop for parking lots. In La Jolla, Belle Goldschlager Baranceanu painted a mural for the La Jolla Post Office of homes scattered above the La Jolla Cove. She painted murals for the Roosevelt Junior and La Jolla Senior schools as part of a government program in the 1930s to keep artists employed, according to the San Diego Historical Society. A challenge for muralists is ensuring their work remains intact. In the seventies, Baranceanu’s murals were destroyed as the Roosevelt and La Jolla high schools were demolished for seismic safety concerns. La Jolla High School later erected a copy of her work in its auditorium. Murals also bring art to people that would likely never see it otherwise. Most people will never set foot in the Mary, Star of the Sea Catholic Church in La Jolla, but everyone can appreciate the fresco of the Virgin Mother that Mexican artist Ramos Martinez painted above the portal in 1937. Ocean Beach resident Janis Ambrosiani runs Walls With A View, Inc. that paints murals for businesses. Ambrosiani painted a 50-foot long history of electricity for Mission Electronics in Ocean Beach. Outside Hodad’s hamburger restaurant on Newport Avenue, Ambrosiani painted a picture of the Hodad logo, a frumpy man, surfing atop a hamburger. “Ocean Beach gave me a lift off when I first started my business,” Ambrosiani said. “They opened all their walls to me and it was great.”