Spray-painted words and pictures, a usually clandestine and often illegal art, are now getting erased by a Rhode Island group tagging itself “Anti-Graffiti Vigilantes.” However, the method they employ is an art in itself.
The founder of the grassroots organization is artist Holley Flagg. She said she loves the picturesque rocks that define the 400 miles of Rhode Island’s coastline.
“They’re my friends. I’ve known them forever,” Flagg said. “And so I take it very personally when people deface them and put terrible things on them.”
Flagg has good reason to be protective.
The geologic gems make up the view outside the window of her third-floor studio where her family has lived for generations. It was her childhood playground.
“I grew up there, picnicked there, ran all over the rocks, know them like the back of my hand,” Flagg said. “And also, I’m an artist, so I really love the beauty of them.”
Raw, natural beauty is the bedrock of Flagg’s watercolors. She is a watercolorist and a graphic artist, creating designs for the Metropolitan Opera and the Museum of Natural History in New York. But when so-called street art, spray-painted graffiti, began proliferating along the rocks in her neighborhood, the artist became angry.
“When you see somebody defacing them and writing their personal messages, which they think are going to be immortal, all over the rocks, it’s really upsetting to me,” said Flagg, who added that the action was visceral.
Armed with only a brush and cans of paint, she began taking a swipe at what she views as crimes against nature.
When asked what critics might think of attempts to obscure the colorful doodles of others, Flagg said, " Go somewhere else and do your urban art. And some people do really fabulous art and I respect that and I admire it, just not in nature, let nature be nature.
A small posse of like-minded volunteers has now taken up the charge. Their restoration requires wiping out the words and pictures by matching the texture and color of the rocks so that they trick the eye. Instead of just a cover-up, they camouflage the rocks to magically appear as they once were.
One volunteer is Joan Pavlinsky. She is a social worker, artist and ardent Anti-Graffiti Vigilante.
“It’s just a way of making my own mark in a way, by marking over other people’s work. If you think about what art really is, it’s mark making, and hopefully we’re creating an environment so that it’s not going to be vandalized again,” Pavlinsky said. “The last thing you want to do when you had a hard day at work, you’re out with your dog, you’re out with kids, you’re walking along the path and you see a large pink profanity written on a rock. It creates this energy that drains you.’
The Anti-Graffiti Vigilantes said those who come to stroll along the shoreline often voice their appreciation and sometimes offer to help.
“They sympathize and they totally agree with how we feel. And then other people are totally blank,” Flagg said. “They have no clue what we’re doing. And they just think there’s a bunch of weird people.”
Undaunted, the Anti-Graffiti Vigilantes keep chipping away, true rock stars of the Rhode Island shore.
