Week 6 Blogpost

I chose this idea because when I walked past it, the fact that someone would burn out a cigarette on a statue was shocking to me. At the time, I was not particularly thinking about this weeks activity, but after realizing how seeing this made me feel, I decided to go back and take a picture of it. While it is not technically vandalism, whoever decided to do it did not have any respect for the statue, the artist, or what it represents. To me, the statue of the man represents the relaxed and at home feeling you should get when walking through that part of the mall. The comfort it is trying to convey was taken away by whoever decided to put out their cigarette into it. I hoped to communicate that disrespecting art should not be accepted and hurts the reputation of the community. I think I was successful in showing that people do shocking things without thinking about others. I am sure a lot of time and effort went into making the statue, and whoever did it took away its purpose. If I did it again, I would drive to a city that had more going on than where I am from. Although I live five minutes away from Cal Arts, my town is not very creative, unlike downtown Long Beach. There is a lot of street art in Long Beach, some that could be considered controversial, and might have been more shocking than what I saw. Regardless, disrespecting someones art should not be accepted in any community. Another idea I might explore through shocking art is murals, by someone like Banksy.