Art or vandalism? Neighbors petition against graffiti mural - Gloucester, MA - Wicked Local Gloucester.
Aug 21/09 - Salem Mass. - For a teenager who was arrested two years ago for tagging graffiti around the North Shore, it seemed a strange request. Just three weeks before his 18th birthday, Max Hill was approached by the same Salem police officers who’d earlier charged him with vandalism for leaving graffiti on railroad cars, mailboxes and buildings. And now, they were asking him to paint a mural near Salem’s Bridge Street bypass road. “I didn’t believe them,” the tall, green-eyed Marblehead teenager recalled in a recent interview. “I thought it was funny that the cops that arrested me would let me do a mural and put my tag right there in everybody’s face.” The mural, a kind of welcome sign painted on the March Street Bridge near the Carlton School, bears the word “Salem” in large letters, framed on one side by the words “City of” and on the other side, “The Witch City.” Painted in bold graffiti-style red, black and orange lettering, it also contains his graffiti moniker, Theory. The reasoning behind it, according to police, is twofold. One is to reward Hill, who just finished two years of community service, by “letting him show his ability in a positive way,”
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