Lisa Solberg paints murals that are raw and 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 Rastafarian Capt. Jack Sparrow with thick dreads on a wall on Garnet Avenue in Pacific Beach. 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 fa\u00e7ade. 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\u2019s 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\u2019t commissioned to spray their art over public walls, and the issue soon lands in the lap of police and community activists when art slides into destructive tagging \u2014 including Ocean Beach and Point Loma. “The problem is when people who are trying to become good [graffiti artists] are damaging other people\u2019s properties,” said community relations officer David Surwilo, who works in the Western Division. Many graffiti taggers seem most concerned with making their presence known or marking their territory. “Sometimes people get discouraged and wonder how [the police] are going to catch them,” said 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 estimates the Graffiti Strike Force arrests an average of 30 offenders out of the 80 to 100 cases the unit handles each month. Violators can be charged with a felony if their graffiti damage exceeds $400. Most offenders, however, 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\u2019re 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 muscles. Offenders range from teenagers to 35-year-olds. Police are often able to apprehend repeat offenders. It\u2019s more difficult to find the group of teenagers \u2014 mostly boys \u2014 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\u2019re content with that,” Surwilo said. “That\u2019s crime prevention at its best. That doesn\u2019t mean that we won\u2019t 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\u2019ve 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 that is charged with community beautification and service. “As soon as we see it, it\u2019s gone,” Klees said. “We don\u2019t 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.” Residents who wish to report graffiti vandalism can call the graffiti hotline at (619) 525-8522. Public art Solberg\u2019s artistic expression is far and above tagging empty lots or playground equipment, but some graffiti vandalism is considered 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. The late Rich James, an Ocean Beach icon, embodied the essence of coastal artwork. James\u2019 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 in April, was famous for riding around OB in his baby blue 1965 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 and Chili Cook-Off, individuals paint a square of the community murals that have appeared on the sides of stores and as a backdrop for parking lots. The public display of art is as ancient as the Catacombs of Rome. 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\u2019s hamburger restaurant on Newport Avenue, Ambrosiani painted a picture of the Hodad logo \u2014 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.”<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lisa Solberg paints murals that are raw and 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 Rastafarian Capt. Jack Sparrow with thick dreads on a wall on Garnet Avenue in Pacific Beach. Solberg said she […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11561","_seopress_titles_title":"Graffiti: Wall scrawl or a thing of beauty in eyes of beholder?","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11593,11561],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-300349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-no-images","category-peninsula-beacon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}