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10. Murals and Graffiti

M2: Yes. The one before that. Because this is at the [inaudible]. It's a beautiful, beautiful job. This young man is from San Francisco. There's a gallery that attracts people from all over. They come and they do something. Then somebody comes and does something. They [inaudible], necessarily. This is organized by Higher Glyphs. It's meant to be this kind of a wall that people do something on and they [inaudible] over it. This whole thing is set in a matter of maybe four hours. It's a style where speed is…

V2: It's necessary for self-preservation.

Olivia Gude: They develop these things very, very carefully in their art books, and then they... I did a series of pieces with spray-can artists. It was fun but also hard. Because I was someone who as a teacher yelled at a million kids for writing on their desk, it was hard. For me it was an example of a cultural gap that I needed to bridge. You just have to kind of figure out how to negotiate across that.

M2: Some of them do a lot of work in notebooks, and some of them don't. This one did not. This one the work was done out of his head.

Olivia Gude: What I found really interesting in the way the kids worked was that they did all these pictures in notebooks and they trained their hands. They trained their sensibility. Then it's almost like a dancer dancing. Then you come out and you have this gesture. For me the thing that was hard to recognize was that part of the gesture is all of that endless, senseless, repetitive tagging that's messing everything up. It's exactly that activity that gives them the incredible control and style to do stuff like this. So it's just a real paradox for loving this, but not particularly wanting to see my world covered with men's names. As a feminist, I think there are gender issues involved with the whole issue of tagging.

M2: That's another one from [inaudible].

Olivia Gude: But this notion of [inaudible] but again, this is a mural that I would love to see. Part of this is just being damaged now because they're doing the work. I'm hoping that once the train stuff is done, maybe we can get in there and see about getting something going. But I like this. It's such a quirky mural. You know?

V2: Yes.

M2: Yes. This is the only one I know of Albert [Zeno.]

Olivia Gude: And you know what? No one knows where he is; no one has seen him for years, that I know of. I don't know if you have any. But as far as I know, he's just like gone. I mean I'm always asking people, "Have you seen Albert [Zeno]?" you know. But a lot of times when we do restorations, they're not done by the person who did the piece. The person who did the piece isn't always up to it. But we always consult that person and even pay them as a consultant, if they're available to do that.

M2: This is such a great image.

V2: Yes.

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