Though Harris will be the target of graffiti artists this Saturday, there’s no reason to call the police. The Graffiti Art Showcase is wholly legitimate and sponsored by the Pioneer Diversity Council.
“We’re going to have Harris set up like an alley and have four different student graffiti artists doing 15 minutes of live presentation,” said Ki Harris ’14, President of the Pioneer Diversity Council.
The Showcase is the Diversity Council’s year-end capstone event. Nick Hinojosa ’14 wanted to make the show themed around graffiti to dispel some of the negative connotations that the art form carries.
“[We wanted] graffiti [to be a part of the show] because it’s a big part of the culture back home (Corpus Christi, Texas) and it’s something that Grinnell lacks,” Hinojosa said in an email. “Also, there are a lot of negative connotations about graffiti, it is often affiliated with gangs and tagging and it’s not appreciated as an art.”
Various performance artists will accompany the artists as they paint.
“We asked each artist to find a performance artist,” Hinojosa said. “There will be a guitarist, ballet dancer, spoken word [artist] and a DJ mix prepared by Will Jackson.”
The theme of the event is GC Pride, but “it’s a surprise about how it’s going to turn out exactly,” Harris said. The showcase starts at 2pm this Saturday.
“Everyone we’ve mentioned [the show to] is planning on going,” Harris said. “It’s going to be big.”