Graffiti Art in Christiania

When I visited Copenhagen, Denmark a few years ago, my friend and I stumbled upon a neighborhood called Christiania. We were freezing cold and our trip had, up to that point, been uneventful, so we were thrilled to find something interesting to lift our spirits.

Christiania, also known as Freetown, is a self-proclaimed autonomous neighborhood of about 850 residents. It was founded in 1971 when a group of citizens knocked down the fence to an abandoned military area and set up a new hippie community, completely independent of the Danish government. Since it’s inception, Christiania has been famous for its open cannabis trade (until 2004 when it was outlawed), but today, what really stands out to visitors is the interesting graffiti art that covers nearly every square inch of commune.

Before visiting, I can’t say that I saw much beauty in graffiti, but now I understand. The talented people who do graffiti are truly artists. In Christiania, the graffiti artwork is elaborate, expressive, and fully of imagination. The images, the lettering, and the colors come together and POP! Sometimes it’s humorous, sometimes it’s serious; always it’s art. It brings life to this community, and it absolutely made my day that afternoon in November : ) 

Project 2

Wow! I had no idea how tricky this project would be. I’m not much of an artist, but I am a bit of a perfectionist – so it was definitely a challenge. For Part A, once I got the hang of drawing my object, I tried to play with the positive and negative space, and with the concept of “zooming in and out” to change the perspective. I also tried to change the angle at which I viewed the object. How do you think I did?

During my visit to the CADE lab to scan my drawings, I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone and attempt to do the Illustrator work for Part B that night as well. Four hours later and still all I had were scanned images. Something wasn’t clicking for me, so I decided to sleep on it and take the next few days to play around in my older version of Illustrator that my college roommate gave to me.

And it clicked! Finally, after hours of frustration during my first attempt, I had it. I don’t know what changed, but somehow I managed to design something that looked like my drawings.

I tried to choose three images that would balance each other out and that showed different parts and angles of my object. I also did my best to position the three images within the set in a sequence that leads your eye through the images, from left to right. I think my favorite is the center image. If you haven’t already guessed, my object is a hanger, and the center image shows the back of the hanger clip.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you like my work : )