When light posts and bathroom stalls become too mundane for graffiti artists to express their work, they go underground.

Humans have this innate desire to communicate or exist long beyond themselves and to let the world know that they existed here at some point. It transcends time and space. There’s something really special about being in those chill spots and really weird places filled with graffiti. The art form transcends time and space, you’re in a spot painting with all of the other artists who were there before you and all the artists that will be there in the future.

Santa Cruz, like many other communities, is home to talented artists who use spray paint as their medium and concrete as their canvas. This art culture is seen on our very own campus, with several areas being designated as graffiti spaces or what the community calls, “chill spots” for artists in Santa Cruz and UC Santa Cruz. These sites are cherished and protected by graffiti artists, as spaces where the community can meet each other, admire everyone’s work, and be a part of a scene that has been active in UCSC for several years. 

Icicl piece (Blue).

By displaying their art out of public view, these artists demonstrate they are not seeking recognition from the general public, but from their peers. To respect the community members and preserve their pieces for as long as possible, I made the intentional choice to keep the location of these spaces hidden.

In these hidden spaces, different sizes, fonts, and colors can be seen crowding the same wall, creating a collage of spray-painted art. 

These pieces by Esper depict how artists experiment and create varying art styles that evolve.

A regular annoyance for artists is seeing their pieces tampered with by people unaware of the rules of street art and the expected courtesy to others’ work. They do not want their work to be corrupted with smiley faces, flowers, or other low-effort sketches. 

Pestr piece. 

These spaces have the potential to be found, discovered, and admired by anyone as an outdoor gallery. The owner of the @ucsc_graffiti Instagram account said, “The best way to find them is to just look for them. Part of the joy is stumbling upon them.”

@ucsc_graffiti on Instagram has been showcasing the work of community artists for several years now and features a much wider variety of graffiti work than I have included here. 

The owner created the account in 2019 after being introduced to the world of graffiti.

“I was 18 at the time and I was just so obsessed that I wanted to track everybody on campus. I wanted to know — ‘Who are the writers around me? How can I find them?’ In my head it was kind of like Pokémon. I was so set on taking pictures of every single piece of graffiti so I could go back and reference it and study it, and there was a point that there was just so many pictures of graffiti on my phone that I was like, OK, let me do something with these and I just started to post them.” 

Base piece. According to the owner of @ucsc_graffiti instagram, “The culture itself is really, really deep in Santa Cruz and it holds a lot of cultural value and a lot of people don’t see that. I’d say for people who are curious about it, to give it a chance to learn a little bit, to get acquainted with the history, and to let yourself be amazed rather than angry.”

The account, now with over 1,800 followers, became a staple in the graffiti community at UCSC, not only as a place to showcase work to a wider audience but to interact with other artists and create friendships in the community. 

“The community has an obsession with documenting. There’s a lot of people that make graffiti zines and graffiti photo archives. Because graffiti is such a temporary and fading thing it’s important that the culture and the community is documented, because one day your painting’s up, the next day it’s gone forever. You never know if it’s gonna get buffed. You never know if someone’s going to cover it up,” said the owner of the @ucsc_graffiti Instagram.

The mortality of a piece demonstrates the importance of photography in graffiti, enabling the preservation of art that could never be replicated. I had the pleasure of being a part of this partnership between photography and graffiti. The experience instilled a sense of contentment within me, knowing the artworks are immortalized.

Estr piece.