There is something interesting unfolding in my city right now.

Rapid City, South Dakota is a funny place, it isn’t quite big and it isn’t quite small. Within that conundrum we find ourselves with problems that no one has ever really dealt with before. Our current turmoil seems to be bubbling over a (not so) secret gem located in the heart of our downtown: Art Alley.

Back in 2003(ish) a group of people decided to combat a vandalism problem in an alley through encouragement. This story was recently told by Dennis Halterman at an Art Ally Guild meeting: (forgive me Dennis, I am paraphrasing because I didn’t take very good notes)

“There has always been vandalism back there. I was talking to a gentleman the other day who was telling me he was spraying anti-Vietnam stuff on the walls in that exact alley back in the 70’s. It [vandalism… art… expression] has always been there and it had just gotten painted over with grey paint every time it showed up.  We marveled at the irony of considering grey squares to be more appealing to look at than the “graffiti”. We also chuckled about how Andy Warhol would have loved such a thing. One day in the spring of 2003, back in the alley, two tombstones appeared rather than paint them over with ugly grey squares of paint, a group of us who lived and worked back there decided to add to them and paint more. We wanted shift what was a (all be it a poorly executed) statement into something that was now, simply, “better”. “

Dennis credits this as one of the first actions that started what is now Art Alley.

That loosely gathered team began to paint more stuff in the ally and slowly the efforts gained momentum and the alley has evolved into something truly remarkable. I will quote Dennis again and say “I’ve seen it look better and I’ve seen it look worse”.  In the beginning, there was a very rag-tag management system. A crew of dedicated caretakers would spend warm summer days with a paint brush and white latex paint and they would brush out the inappropriate or the unappealing. Once a year in March they would go back there and “wash out” whole walls and clean it out to create fresh new space for new art. But some of those folks have moved on or grown tired and the unstructured maintenance has slowed dramatically. The painting hasn’t however and without that magic eraser there to blot out the unpleasant, the unpleasant has become more visible and the visibility has gotten noticed.

There are lots of people who are frustrated with what the alley has become. There are complaints that it’s not “art” anymore, that the only thing painted on the walls now is vandalism and tagging. This isn’t true however, there are some of the best pieces I have ever seen down there on the walls right now. There are complaints from the business owners that their property is being destroyed and their historical buildings and rooftops are being damaged. There are complaints from citizens who are greeted not only by bright colors in the alley but by drunken people and filth. There are complaints from artists that their hard work gets covered by someone else’s scribbles faster than the paint can dry. All of these complaints are valid but the solution is simple. If people can just behave like decent human beings back there, then all of these problems go away. Now, is that practical, no – but the challenge becomes: how do you spread the message that Art Alley is a place for good behavior, a place to be treasured and a place where people want to come to be inspired?

It’s not enough to say “Art Alley is cool”, but it is also not that hard to respect something. I myself am planning to take some ownership of the alley as I will encourage the rest of my community to do. The interesting thing about placing value on something is that you have to, then, care for it. You can’t just say “this thing, this thing right here, is worth something to me.“ and then cast it aside. If it’s a trinket or a trophy, you put it in a case; if it is a nice car you get it tuned up. I’m not going to say you have to go down there and paint, or that we need a 24-7 watch team to protect it from vandals, but I think things that are treated with respect tend to get respected and things that are neglected tend to fall and decay. There is an excellent discussion going on right now and an exciting experiment in collaborative open source creativity is being conducted right here in this funny town in South Dakota. If you are so inclined, I strongly encourage you to join the conversation.

I rode my bike through the alley last night after attending a meeting about how to handle this goliath of an intangible thing and one thing I noticed was that there were about 5 groups of the usual “lookers” going through it and not one of them was complaining about anything – to the contrary, they were marveling, oohing and aaahing. They weren’t looking at the “crime” or the “vandalism” or the “politics” they just saw the alley, they saw the colors and they saw the art … and in that, to me, there’s hope.

For roughly 10 years now, a relatively small amount of space has given so much to so many. For the artists, it is a place to not only express themselves, but to develop skill and practice and become whatever it is we are all striving to be. It is a place where the lost have been able to find their light, change their lives and in turn touch the lives of others. [If you don’t know about the Lakota Voice Project, I strongly encourage you to do some reading up on what those guys are doing. It’s a truly remarkable story as well as an incredibly enlightening example of how we as people can handle the responsibility of being there for each other. ]

Art Alley is so much more than paint on walls, it’s not just a place for the lost to get found or the young to grow; it is a place to find things you didn’t know you were looking for. Art Alley is a place where impossible things happen, a place of vulnerable beauty, organic creation and endless potential.

… And how can you not love something like that?

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The slidesow at the top of this page is a collection of some of the many photographs I have taken over the years. Its been a fun journey to go back and look at what has caught my eye.