In 2006 an art gallery in North Baltimore called Load of Fun (LOF) negotiated an agreement with the City to allow legal graffiti writing in the Alley behind LOF. When LOF began there were already a lot of tags and other graffiti in the alley.  One of the reasons for initiating legal writing in the alley was to concentrate graffiti in one area of Station North rather than have it all over the area as was the case at the time.  Another reason was to encourage the development of the art by giving writers a legal forum where they could practice at length without fear of prosecution.

Part of the issue since 2006 has been that, while the graffiti has been mostly contained to this Alley, the tags have been mostly battles between graffiti artists and not necessarily art that is representative of Baltimore.

THE SOLUTION

The LOF solution is to make this area a forum for revolving murals rather than graffiti spill over from the Alley.  In general people tend to respect murals as evidenced on 28th street where Ellsberry's 'Crocodile' has remained untouched for over 20 years.

For the past 6 months LOF has been soliciting proposals from a number of local artists for the Motel mural. They chose the easiest one to execute to get the process started.

Special thanks to: 

Sherwin Mark