More than any other type of local media, wall murals command attention in an enduring manner. Billboards and advertisements on television and radio only hope to capture a brief moment of our attention, but a well constructed mural that is properly maintained and preserved can be appreciated for years while also possibly communicating a local agenda or providing ancillary uses.

An anti-drug mural has been restored in Vallejo, CA. The original artist wanted to make a loud and enduring statement after his friend was killed in a drug related incident. A community in New Zealand just today reported about the commanding attention of wall murals — one is effective for speed bumps. “Smeaton Drive now had “natural speed bumps,” said one of the residences. “Everyone who drives past slows down to look at it.” An art collective group called Visual Love and artist Erik Beltran recently finished a huge mural in a mall in Fresno, CA. “Every time someone walks by, whether its kids to senior citizens, they just smile when they look up” says the building owner.

I’ve increasingly noticed a trend of creating murals where ugly, defacing graffiti used to be. Here in San Diego where I live this trend has been growing for some time, and it seems to be growing elsewhere as this story from Canada states – see “Police turn to artists to stop writing on the wall.”

Graffiti is the “sleazy side of murals” and I’ve always wondered why anyone would do it. I was on a recent trip by train from Atlantic City to Philadelphia, PA and noticed all the graffiti covering railway underpasses. Who does this? And with barely any of it understandable, what are they trying to convey? My only understanding up to this point is that it is to “mark territory” for gangs and the like, but it seems so creepy.

As I struggle to understand how the mind of someone that does this type of thing works, I also find it curious that the one thing that has been found to curb and even stop repeated graffiti tagging is to replace it with actual mural art — and that this works consistently and with most taggers. Is this a statement that even the criminal mind as a social group has a collective boundary to not destroy art?