Graffiti to Confetti - Gair Hemphill Crutcher

[Larry Robinson]

Graffiti to Confetti 

Their prayer flag is to haunt the highway underbellies; the down-in-the-mouth recesses of homeless tenters.
 
Graffiti is the key. It keeps most people away; it attracts them.

“It’s multi-layered performance art--urban cave messages, human glyphs, social narrative, cultural venting,”  comments Khanh.

Jango is taken by the high Andean practice of hucha. Hucha is not evil or curse, it’s density. Quecha medicine people say the Earth’s favorite food is hucha. Hucha—that which blocks life force—is only generated by humans.  What if nourishment came from composting pain and clog?

Ethnobotanists of street art, they collect graffiti and turn it into confetti.

“Here’s a good one”: GIRAFFITI: VANDALISM PAINTED REAL HIGH

"Here’s another," he responds: DOWN WITH PANTS

I ask: Do you ever add your own? Great question! The temptation is definitely there. We’re all about transmutation. And anyway we don’t taint the raw material by adding our own. But I do use it in poems and editorials sometimes. 

Does your practice regularly take you into danger? Everyone asks that—have we stepped on used needles, has someone unpacked a gun, has a crazy person mistaken us for the cops? Nope. We generate a field of kindredness and joy, that’s our best protection.

What’s your favorite “GRAFFITI TO CONFETTI” story?

One day we were under the West Seattle Bridge.. Khanh was attracted to the accent of some Vietnamese squatters. “That’s my grandmother’s dialect,” she says in her grandmother’s dialect, adding: “May your rice be sweet and plump.” The recipient of her benediction emerges. He is covered in whimsically colored designs. His outer clothing is canvas he’s continuously refining. 

Khanh asks if he wants to make some graffiti for our project. He does. It’s a mystical mural featuring the urban jungle and the jungle in Vietnam. We capture it on our phone, take it home and print it on a color printer. Then we put the printout through a paper shredder. 

On New Year’s Eve we go back. He’s still there. “Happy new year,” we say in English and Vietnamese, raining confetti down on him. He says thank you in several languages: Vietnamese, Ethiopian and Samoan. 

	- Gair Hemphill Crutcher
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