Graffiti in the Wilderness: Rock Climbing in a Granite Museum
Yesterday afternoon, my father took my sister and me out rock climbing in the Quincy Quarries. He has climbed nearly every weekend for the past seven years. My sister never had, and I’d only climbed indoors and that was a few years ago.
The rocks in this suburban Boston climbing park are completely covered in graffiti, unfortunate as it makes the surface slippery and more difficult to grip. Visually though, it is interesting.
We think of graffiti as an urban thing. And nature as something separate. But the nature that exists not too far from the city is usually a pale substitute. Graffiti is always found in transportation centers — subways, trains, bus stations — the stations, the bathrooms, or the cars themselves. Marking a place you’ve been and don’t intend to return for a sense of permanence.
But we also unintentionally leave traces of ourselves in the near wilderness. Maybe JG Ballard’s themes are the concerns of children. As a child in suburbia, the same woods that seemed so expansive, contained random traces of civilizations like long abandoned rusty tricycles with the tires removed and moss growing over the handles. Trash and shattered glass, a bobby pin, a sock, a condom wrapper — the outside world is rarely experienced as something pristine — people always leave something behind. This may be why the longer you live in the city, the more likely you are to shun nature entirely. It is never as pure as you imagine it to be.
Rock climbers become obsessed with the surface textures, not unlike how in bicycling you are much more aware of little bumps or pieces of gravel in the road. It is similarly an individual’s journey and an intellectual sport. Just like you dodge the cars on your bike, you need to think about where to position yourself and how to grip. I wouldn’t be surprised if this were to become a fad the way biking is now.
Plus, it’s emotional. It’s fear rather that physical exhaustion that prevents me from ascending any higher than 20 feet. When we visited my grandmother a half-hour later for blueberry pie and ice cream, I was still feeling the rush. My hand was shaking as I lifted my fork like I had too much coffee.
In May, I read the quarries were cleaned of graffiti in order to film a Tina Fey movie. Can they really clean the paint off? Or do you paint the rocks granite grey?
Anyway, they didn’t do much of a job. I can’t imagine this much graffiti only collected in the two months since. But I’m not complaining. If only it were less haphazard — really beautiful work that respects it’s surrounding, and is mindful of those good nooks climbers need to get their feet in. Like, what I wrote about tagging houses, if only it were work as good as Swoon, Imminent Disaster, Conor Harrington, Armsrock… If the rocks will be covered with paint, why not graffiti that’s really great? The state could turn it into a legal graffiti park and maybe attract real talent. Think of it as an induced-Stendhal Syndrome.
Quincy quarries images by The Urban Pantheist, art by Swoon
Previously:
Urban Safaris: Graffiti Sites Considered for Heritage Protection
With Speed Graphic Cameras, Art is a Crime [Scene]
Related links:
- Quincy Quarry Panorama
- The Battle Over Central Park, New York magazine.
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2 Responses to “Graffiti in the Wilderness: Rock Climbing in a Granite Museum”
Posted by: TLM80209 - 07/15/2008
These images remind me of the ancient images found on cave walls and other petroglyphs around the Southwestern U.S. They too told of the society from which they were born. I do have to agree about the quality of graffiti art though. Their is a difference between art and random doodling, on any scale.
Posted by: thatguy - 08/14/2008
it seems like wilderness graffiti would be something done for practice, since law enforcement isn’t as much of a problem, from the pictures it seems like the artists are still dealing with can control
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