• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

SLA Media

SLAMedia is a publication of the news for the Science Leadership Academy community. Writers come from the student body in 10th, 11th, and 12th grades. We work in unison to create a functioning paper with biweekly postings on a variety of events.

  • News
  • Features
  • Sports
  • A&E
  • Op/Ed
  • Multimedia
  • About

Misguided Masterpiece: Student Street Art

December 7, 2011 by lpahomov Leave a Comment

By Ryan Harris
Staff Writer
Photo Credit: Ryan Harris
Philadelphia is a vast city full of its fair share of attractions. Yet sometimes if you delve a bit deeper into the city you’ll find neighborhoods in disarray due to things such as poverty or gang violence. Things like that can make Philadelphia seem depressing.
Many citizens of Philadelphia have made it their mission to somehow breathe new life into Philadelphia’s neighborhoods. How? Through street art and organizations such as Philadelphia Mural Arts Program. Senior Ian McClendon is one those people trying to revitalize Philadelphia thought his art.
McClendon like many other teenagers participate in stencil art, in which a person takes a piece paper or cardboard, cut it into a design, and then spray paint over it.

Although he has been creating street art for several years, McClendon does not consider himself a great natural artist. “I guess like a lot of us, we all say that we can’t draw, or I don’t know how to draw,” he stated. “I said that to myself but when I was introduced to graffiti by a willing friend to teach me. I took the opportunity to create work like his.”

Art teacher Marcie Hull is enthusiastic about this work. “I LOVE STREET ART! My neighborhood now, I see street art at the train station. On an electrical box across the tracks from my house is an awesome Darth Vader stencil. I love seeing it.”

While it has garnered lots of popularity amongst younger children, many adults tend to view stencil art as graffiti but it’s an issue that is often debated.

“I feel that street art and graffiti are two different subjects but can be represented in the same style,” McClendon said. “Graffiti is that stuff you see on a wall and it looks like large scribbles, incomprehensible, and placed in a area that it can’t be related to in a sense. But then again there is a time and a place for the misunderstood art.”

Many others forms of art have often been misunderstood or misinterpreted by the mass media. But then again, there always people who abuse it. “I love graffiti,” said McClendon, “but I hate the noobs who want to throw up some random word that no one can understand or even read.”

The type of graffiti McClendon mentioned is the very opposite approach to street art in Philadelphia. They’re trying to bring life to the least lively places of the cities. Hopefully more can do like Ian McClendon.

Filed Under: Features

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

* Copy This Password *

* Type Or Paste Password Here *

95,135 Spam Comments Blocked so far by Spam Free Wordpress

Primary Sidebar

FacebookInstagramTwitter Snapchat

Features

Wardrobe of SLA

By Harper Leary Staff Writer Philadelphia is a diverse city, and the student population of Science Leadership Academy reflects that fact— not just with their identities, but also with their fashion choices. If you walk down the hallways of SLA, your head will turn every which way to get a glimpse of all the different […]

How the Pandemic has Changed Live Events

By Maya Smelser & Anouk Ghosh-Poulshock Staff Writers Everyone remembers their first concert. But when the pandemic hit, many tours were canceled or rescheduled. There was a hiatus from live music as people adjusted to their new lives– so many teens missed out on their early concert experiences..  In the past few months, however, concerts […]

How Are SLA Students Are Dealing With Their Last Quarter?

Leticia Desouza Staff Writer After a long yet quick year at SLA, students from different grades have experienced many new things they weren’t able to experience during the 2020-2021 online academic year. After almost 10 months of being back in school, students have encountered difficulties and new experiences that further molded how the rest of […]

Philadelphia High Schools Now Starting At 9am

Lia Dunakin Staff Writer The School District of Philadelphia recently announced that all Philly high schools will start their instructional day at 9AM beginning in the 2022-2023 school year.  The reason given for this huge change is simply, sleep. Teenagers tend to get tired later  at night, and starting school at early hours can be […]

Shared Facilities: SLA, and Benjamin Franklin High School Encounters

Andre Doyle, Cameron Booker, & Leticia Desouza Staff Writers SLA and Ben Franklin began their co-location in the Fall of 2019 — but only this year have the two schools started to truly operate in the same space.  Not all of the facilities are used by both schools — most academic spaces are entirely separate. […]

Copyright © 2022 · Metro Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in