Fall 2010 | Illumination: the Undergraduate Journal of Humanities

i l lu mination art

literature

essays

THE UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES

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Staff

Mission

Editor-in-Chief: Carolyn Lucas Assitant Editor-in-Chief: Brit Estrada Art Editor: Olivia Baldwin Essays Editor: Katie Witham Prose Editor: Anna Wehrwein Poetry Editor: Adi Lev-Er Wisconsin Idea Editor: Gayle Cottrill Layout Editor: Mallory Cybulski Head Copyeditor: Cailly Morris Layout Assistants: Kelsey Easton, Marine Hamersma Prose Staff: Cara Dorzok, Logan Middle-

The mission of Illumination is to provide the undergraduate student body of the University of Wisconsin-Madison a chance to publish work in the fields of the humanities and to display some of the school’s best talent. As an approachable portal for creative writing, art, and scholarly essays, the diverse content in the journal will be a valuable addition to the intellectual community of the University and all of the people it affects.

ton, Michelle Czarnecki, Gabriella Bonamici, Justin Melde Poetry Staff: Chloe Clark, Brooke Appe, Brian Kramer, Ryan Lehrman, Savannah Camplin, Caelin Ross Essay Staff: Clare Courchane, Emily Ayres, Diana Rube, Emily Rossmeissl Art Staff: Elizabeth Newman, Jennifer Clark, Nicole Rodriguez Copyediting Staff: Kate Neuens, Kiran Gosal, Brit Estrada Publicity Director: Carly Ettinger Finances Director: Kate Neuens WUD Publications Committee Director: Sarah Mathews

Jenny Klalia, Vicki Tobias, Andrew Gough, Eliot Finkelstein, Kelli Keclik, Adam Blackbourn, Gary Sandefur, The Font Bureau, Inc., Pamela O’Donnell, Tom Garver, William Giles, Danez Smith, and Biddy Martin.

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Illumination would like to thank the following poeple:

Illumination would like to extend a special thank you to John D. Wiley and the Friends of the Library Assocation

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Table of Contents Page 4

Chagall’s Ceiling, Jamie Utphall

Page 5

Watercolor Eyedrops, Jessica Erbs

Page 6 Odysseus Minus, or specific thoughts on taking the

late bus home every night, Joshua David Atkins Page 7 Walking home from a bar in a quiet sunday neighborhood during

a college town’s spring break, 1 am, after the end of a two year

prolonged death by relationship and a night of martinis and

onion rings, wearing a fancy dress, Heather Laura Sage

Page 8 An Exchange, Heather Laura Sage Page 9, 10

Nocturne in Wednesday minor, Heather Laura Sage

Page 11, 12

Forever Young, JMJ Brewer

Page 14-20

Dust, Brigid M. Hogan

Page 23, 24

A Brief History of Almon Smith, Danez J. Smith

Page 25-32 The Writing on the (Bathroom) Wall: a Survey of UW Bathroom Graffitti, Justin Charron

Cover

Art Red Moon III, Ben Sperry

Page 4 The Textures of the Fabric Mundane and the

Completely Ephermeral, or Something of that Nature, Patrick Ryan Johnson Page 5

Empty Nest, Patrick Ryan Johnson

Page 8

Shiver, Child, Raeleen Tseng Kao

Page 10

Crinkled Corner, Sarah Jane Ripp

Page 12 Boey, Amanda Cheung Page 13

Draft 30 Seconds, Katie Garth

Page 15

Good David, Ben Sperry

Page 18

Hope No. 1, Ben Sperry

Page 21, 22

Adjusting, Katie Garth

Page 24

Keys for Locks over Home, Sarah Jane Ripp

Page 25

Majesty (Enter Spigot), Katie Garth

Page 29

Two Girls, Caitlin Emiko Kirihara

Page 33

September 27, Katie Garth

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letter from the editor:

Welcome to Illumination, the Undergraduate Journal of the Humanities! I am so happy to see

another wonderful issue makes its’ way into coffee shops and libraries, fresh and printed and ready for your viewing pleasure. With all of the blood, sweat, and tears that the staff put in this semester, I am proud to be the spokesperson that can present the fruits of our labor to you, our loyal readers.

With the economic downturn continuing to hit Illumination, I am happy to add the Associated Students of Madison to our list of supporters. Because of the generosity of the ASM, we are able to continue printing the high quality of poetry, prose, art, essays, and Wisconsin IDEA that we always have!

I would also like to thank First Wave and College Library for a wonderfully successful Open Mic Night – starting what I hope will be a tradition for years to come. However, none of this would be possible without the wonderful support from the Director of the affectionately named PubCom, Sarah Mathews, and our amazing, charismatic advisor, Susan Dibbell. Without these two special ladies, there would be no magazine!

Finally, a very big thank you to my mom and dad for all of their support; also, my Aunt Cathy and Uncle David, who always encouraged me in my own writing; and finally, my amazing fiancé – who cleaned the dishes even when it wasn’t his night so that I could work late at the office!

I encourage you to visit our website at illuminationjournal.com, and submit – maybe your work could be in next semester’s issue! Email illumination@library.wisc.edu to stay in touch!

Cheers!

Carolyn Lucas

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poetry

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Chagall’s Ceiling Jamie Utphall

Looks like ice cream, And that pissed some people off in 1964.

Him plastering his dreamsicle sensations Of blue moon Berlioz, And rainbow sherbet Debussy, Right over the old, peeling mural, Like the way bebop chords stack endlessly On top of standard changes-But no one complained in 1945 When Bird took I Got Rhythm And made Anthropology By piling pulpy scraps And bouncing shards of broken glass From windows thrown at saxophones Into flat nines and sharp elevens Until each crack and crevice was filled With such sweet thundering flavor-Because that’s what music tastes like, And in the grand old opera house Where people perculate and tickle elbows, Chagall has left the last piece Of Papageno’s canary lemon cheesecake, And everyone’s allowed One jaw-popping, Dribbling-down-the-chin, Makes-your-teeth-hurt bite.

The Textures of the Fabric Mundane and the Completely Ephemeral, or Something of that Nature, Patrick Ryan Johnson, Natural Household Ingredients illumination

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poetry

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Watercolor Eyedrops Jessica Erbs

Empty Nest 2, Patrick Ryan Johnson, Found Objects

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one step, two step, four a face reflected store window, maybe or rain puddle stained don’t remember, don’t mind, don’t prepare yet know, looking back a broken well grants no wishes stars wink out behind blinds in apartment windows things unsaid open hands with fingers curled like claws maybe for nothing but always for something we remember that we can’t just let up and go, not when that morning you there on the floor if I help you up, promise that come winter in Spring rabbits on the moon you’ll know how to find our footsteps back our breadcrumb trail to a time of words unspoken bend and break ground glass to sand you caught our voice in a jar put it on the sill but knocked it to the floor and don’t, don’t look inward, there’s no need just listen to me watch the windshield splinter, watch the wheels spin round summer days rolling back becoming autumn nights and it’s like we’re growing old growing old growing young in reverse

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poetry

Odysseus minus, or specific thoughts on taking the late bus home every night Joshua David Atkins i manifest destiny daily. little sojourner steps light. at night, i’m carried west on a third titan, roaring covered wagon homeward bound. on and on, in my nightly routine: pioneer minor, odysseus minus. i’m homeric, kind of. little stops at red light. my flight, it has no risk to me. just hazy blocks i won’t walk if i’m on a lesser penelope. on and on, in this domestic odyssey. in this mini-fest destiny.

6

call me fringe epic. it’s imitation heroic. these circadian moves on the fence of legend and innocence, in a sense, i display a quite frodo-ish edge. a lewisy feel, clarkian vibe, akin, but not twin to what virgil described. bones of a mayflower-maybe. and hell, if promised lands were west, then i’m of moses’s finest. well, moses minus. i manifest destiny daily. odysseus with a bus pass, that’s me.

Toast crumbs wait on the counter.

Receipts from cafes soften and fade in the wash, and so the rooms fill up and fill up with space.

Floor cleaners, porcelain dolls, summer dresses and seersucker suits languish in bulging closets.

The house fills and empties, and does not change. illumination

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poetry

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Walking home

from a bar in a quiet sunday neighborhood during a college town’s spring break, 1 am, after the end of a two year prolonged death by relationship and a night of martinis and onion rings, wearing a fancy dress Heather Laura Sage

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when the sky is saturated with blue this is only blue it is not blue that becomes black ever but blue that darkens into a cloak and the sound of the last blue bird past midnight it is the blue of air water over lake, lake on lake, stars lost the arm wrestle and sulk over mars, this is the blue of an acrylic paint my mother dreamed of, a sky the color of a final aubade, of a lover’s hardening shell, which is cobalt, navy underwater in a submarine of sweat and songs distorted by the weight of water and whales this is the reason the japanese have no word for blue: ineffable, it reaches deep into the earth, which is not molten orange but the color of the last words we said to each other I don’t remember what they were but I remember the color of them more pigment than carrier, more prism blue collector than I could ever contain

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poetry Child, Raeleen Tseng Kao, Ebony Pencil

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An Exchange Heather Laura Sage Climbing into sunlight, climbing into sunlight, what did you give your mother when you came out of her, (stinking of bindweed, bitter as a tarnished fork in her mouth)?

I gave my mother dandelion crowns, once and always.

I gave my mother a glass of poison. I gave my mother nothing.

A thimble of stardust to chew on: she cracked a tooth. A stray bit of dust migrated up her nose and drove her into the deep where I could not follow.

Me mother taught me to suck tea bags dry, with her cheeks a shiny pitted moon apple.

She tried to teach me to be less sensitive. And how to scare off bears from the blackberry patch.

Shiver, Raeleen Tseng Kao, Ebony Pencil

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She would say: I don’t care if you grow up to hate me, or if you are happy, but I want you to be a good person.

Her good person is a narrow sharp sliver. Her good person is herself. illumination

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poetry

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Nocturne in Wednesday

minor

Heather Laura Sage

I. Wednesday night, and the ghost is a house.

Absence is a word that matters here, sure, and the slow ticking of that deaf clock, and the way people have muttered about their mothers or their lovers over the sound of spinning laundry.

The low drone of the radio half-tuned between blues and blacks - and the crack of heavy branches out the window make writing letters and looking for passages behind walls obsolete.

II. I came to this house with a broom and confidence, found a pantry of rotting potatoes, wanted to prepare this place for life again.

How could I know so many had tried and failed, so many had turned to salt in it?

My first night I began crying, inexplicably, over a painting that fell off the wall.

In this house, there is no one to sing goodnight to, sleep is staring at the ceiling, and a thousand gold finches cannot brighten those mornings.

Prayers for a good year of zucchinis and forgetfulness brought nothing but the drip of the faucet.

Mud from puddles is carried in and cakes and dries.

Even the forlorn call of the microwave door ajar is a repetend that cannot stop.

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III. I resorted to naps at odd hours, while fog gathered its belongings, while night-spent fireflies banked their green coals.

IV. I learned the song on my last night there, lying in the claw-footed bath, laughing at myself while night passed over.

I dreamt of honeyed ears, a talking cat offering chocolate, a morning kettle waiting to wail upon my waking.

The bare light bulb clucked its tongue at my harsh staccato.

And I would wake with a sick taste coating my tongue.

I became a writer without writing, drank red wine, painted the bookshelves with the windows closed.

The water cooled and parted and murmured around my singing flesh.

Nothing could surprise me.

This song is the drip of candle wax unattended, somehow the pilgrims’s lives repeating through me on a vast continent, the circular chorus of dust, we’ve heard, we’ve heard, and I’ve listened, I’ve learned.

Crinkled Corner, Sarah Jane Ripp, digital print

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poetry

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Forever Young

JMJ Brewer

We aren’t so different, you and I, from our parents thirty years ago.

They weren’t unlike those cats in the 60s with their Florida honeymoons and bunk habits.

They bled the same blood, those hip movers and shakers Crawling down the hallways with vomit in their longhair, just old enough to vote And we say “We are the Lost Generation, all we have is the Internet.”

We say: “They had issues and protests. They had the Russians and the Koreans and the Vietnamese.

All we have are the Terrorists.”

Those brazen sparrows had Bob Dylan, and all Generation Y has is The Black Eyed Peas.

We should be saying Fuck That. We all have sat in dank basements with beer flowing down our

throats like an unholy baptism.

Crowding moody rooms with smoke cloying our nostrils and bloodshot eyes, holding out our

hands or arms for that drag or prick.

That’s every generation. That’s the religion of the masses. 20 years old is the same in the 60s as

in the 2000s.

We stumble down ill lit streets just the same as they did. We’re sinhouds and our love is almost

as free as theirs was.

One thing holds us all together- that yearning sense you get when you wake up in the morning

after a night of filthy extravagance.

Or right after a moment of ecstasy where you just want to get out of the bed and run as far as you can.

The feeling when your toes and fingers tingle, and you can just close your jaded eyes and know

there is light streaming out of every single one of your pores.

When some boulevard virtuoso hits the right cord, and you can’t help but shed a tear when no

one is looking.

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poetry

12 A hot numbness in your loins that makes the hairs on your arms and the back of your neck brush

the heavens.

The tight beating of your heart when it’s got a line around it leading to someone else. And when

that line is cut like an umbilical cord.

They had it too- those 60s Jacks and Jills with their headbands and flowers behind their ears.

A bright neon streak like a liquor store sign weaves from my heart to yours, to people who you

know that I will never.

All the way back- far past the flower children.

And if you look hard enough, really look- you can see its trail.

How that vein stretches ahead and behind you, it’s a twilight traffic elapse in real time.

That line is the religion of the world. Of all the youth in every society and every social class.

It couldn’t give a shit about creed or color or sexuality or any other lines our society has force

fed us.

To it, Joan Baez and Jay-Z are just dust motes in a cosmic orgasm.

And as that streak coalesces like two sets of DNA, filling your body and mind anew with the

vigorous ache of life.

The emotional and intellectual twinge that pulses with the sweet throb of both change and complacency, Because it’s all been done before, yet is being done for the first time every single day.

ˆBoey, Amanda Cheung, Painting

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Draft 30 Seconds, Katie Garth, Digital Print

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dust

Brigid M. Hogan jeans

“If you could be anything,” the end of the sentence was left open.

Life had seemingly become endlessly cyclical. Cappuccino blurred into espresso into cigarettes into wine into bed sheets, day after day. The only thing more excruciating than the mornings of brutal sunlight and her jarring alarm were the long nights spent memorizing the wrinkles of her pillowcase and cracks on the ceiling. Days passed without markings of time.

She carried a book with her, unread.

Nothing ever seemed to happen, but perhaps she just didn’t notice through her nearlysleepless haze. Dust gathered on her record player and along the tops of her books. And it was summer, and she was nineteen, alone for the first time.

Her tiny purse contained no cash. She dealt solely in checks, and her pretty little checkbook nestled with lipstick, a lighter, and loose cigarettes. Her hair was short, not neat like it had been in her schoolgirl days, but it curled slightly-sweetly around her ears and along the nape of her neck.

It was warm as she sat there in her jeans.

Too warm, actually, to be wearing jeans at this time of year, but they concealed that her knees were still chubby like a child’s against her skinny legs. So she sat amid the bustle, the backs of her legs growing damp under denim, toes selfconsciously turned in, ankles rolling out so the soles of her sandals faced each other. She toyed with the zipper on her purse, trying to move it just one tooth at a time. An untouched coffee sat next to her, and steam rose out of the flimsy

paper cup.

“I think I’d like to be a Faberge egg,” she said. “Gilded and jeweled outside but inside, too. Perfect all the way through and faultless. People would wonder how something like me could really exist without breaking.” She turned her cup of coffee clockwise, halfway around. “But I don’t think I could ever be without ugliness inside. And if someone ever cracked the shell, it would all be ruined. ice

She had always hated summer. Laying on her back in the swelter of her bedroom, she listened as her fan sputtered and clicked in the window.

“It’s going to die,” he told her from the chair in the corner where he slouched, shirt off. “I swear to God, it’s about to die.”

She rolled onto her stomach and took the sweating glass of ice water from her nightstand to press it to her cheek. “And I swear to God, it has been doing that for years, my whole life. It’ll be fine. It’s a box fan – it’s indestructible.”

When she stopped talking, the room was mysteriously quiet. The box fan whined once more, pathetically, and sputtered. The blades stilled. All the air in the room, which had been barely circulating before, seemed to settle on their skin.

With a groan of despair, she dropped her face onto the bare mattress. The sheet had been lost to the couch a few days prior when she had discovered it is nearly impossible to sit on wool cushions when sweating. “There is no way I can do anything now. Not sleep, illumination

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15 not move, not eat, not anything. It’s just too hot.”

He stood and pushed a sweat-coated strand of hair off the back of her neck. “I’ve got it,” he said.

“Don’t worry. I’ve got it.”

After he left the apartment, time moved even more slowly, if that was even possible. She lay on her mattress for what seemed an eternity, but there is only so long a bare mattress on a bare floor is a decent place to be in the heat of high August in a fifth floor walk-up without a fan.

She had never known heat like this before.

Sweat built layer upon layer, like a second skin she couldn’t shed. She wandered the uneven wood floor of the apartment in her threadbare cotton underwear and an oversized Hanes tee that may have once belonged to her father. In the haze, her boyish frame and skinny legs were transformed back into the body of a little girl, and her thoughts were muffled into simplicity.

At least the strip of linoleum that distinguished the kitchen from the rest of the main room was cold against her feet. She opened the refrigerator and stuck her face inside. The automatic light was out, but she didn’t need help to know that the refrigerator was largely empty – the personal assistant job wouldn’t pay until next Thursday, and she hadn’t been getting enough hours at the florist’s.

It didn’t matter anyway. Too hot to eat.

With a mind for the electric bill, she closed the fridge again and ran some cold water into the sink. As usual, it sputtered a bit before settling into a steady stream, but she liked that. It reminded her of the plumbing back home, in that rickety old house. She let the water run over her wrists and she sighed. Again she thought of the bills and splashed some water onto her face before shutting off the tap. She instinctually wiped her hand under her eyes to avoid mascara running into raccoon circles, forgetting that had she put makeillumination

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up on at all today, it would have melted off long ago.

She smoothed the sheet on the couch and lay down once more (on her back, arms flat against her sides, eyes closed, hair piled on top of her head) to wait for him and whatever he would return with.

As night fell, cracks of heat thunder teased her with the thought of rain. She let herself fall asleep.

She woke to what sounded like glass breaking in the bathroom. His shoes were abandoned near the door. “What are you doing?” she called across the room without moving from where she lay.

Good David, Ben Sperry, 5.5’’ x 8’’, Ink and Found Paper

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16

“Come see,” he responded over more crystal echoes. She shuffled across to the bathroom.

He stood there surrounded by ripped and empty plastic sacks, and in the tub, ice to the brim. She looked at him. “Get in,” he said.

She stepped one foot into the tub and shivered. A second foot in, another shudder.

And as she slipped herself into the ice, the thunder came again – and with it, rain. fire escape

It was that deceptive time of year. The days were hot, but the leaves were turning.

She would spend all day convincing herself it was Indian summer, until she was forced out of her inevitable blanket-cocoon in the middle of the night to scurry around the tiny apartment shutting windows. Another mindless routine.

But now it was afternoon, and they were sitting out on the rickety fire escape of her building. Her legs dangled between the bars of the rail, her skirt hiked up to allow it.

He sat on the step just below her, looking directly into the windows of a kitchen (kosher stickers on the cabinets) in the next building over and spitting apple seeds through the grated metal of the steps.

She held a round, un-sliced loaf of bread on her lap, inside of the rail, and was picking sesame seeds off the top and chewing them deliberately and slowly. Across the pathetic courtyard behind her building, she watched a woman putting a baby down for a nap with a tender caress and a kiss, starting a tape of lullabyes that floated toward them, though broken by the white noise of a fan in the window. As the woman left the room, the baby fussed for a moment before settling into

its afternoon sanctuary.

“Christ,” she said to him. “I wish this was like A Little Princess, and that mom was going to come across the eaves tonight and transform my depressing little hovel of an apartment into a pretty little room full of love, like that nursery over there.”

He leaned around and laughed once, softly.

“Yeah, it’s be nice,” he agreed. “But you’re just going to have to settle for being Francie instead of Sara Crewe. I mean, this might as well be Williamsburg.”

“There is nothing green back here,” she said. “And if I was Francie, what does that make you, Neeley?”

He thought for a moment, resting on his forearm. “Okay, forget A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. We’ve got to be able to find a better story.”

She frowned. “I can’t remember the last book I read.” oranges

It was morning, and light was streaming through the streaky windows and ricocheting off dust that hung in the kitchen air.

“Do you ever feel kind of empty?” The question lingered over the scattered dishes on the table.

She moved from where she was slouching in the chair, hair standing up in the back while her eyelashes caught in her bangs every time she blinked. She shrugged as she stood and gathered the empty milk-glass cereal bowl and half-empty cup of cold coffee that had been sitting in front of her. The bowl dropped with a clatter of the spoon into the sink, and the coffee cup was topped off before she sat down again to tie a stray scarf around her disheveled head. illumination

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“I guess I’d say that,” she agreed, picking up a smoldering cigarette from the ashtray for the few final moments that it had left. One last long drag left her coughing for a moment as she ground the remains back into the ashes it had left. “I guess I’d say that sometimes I feel like an empty bottle. A colored bottle, like red wine or the green kind for sparkling water.”

She paused again and rolled an orange across the table toward herself, the ripe flesh spitting at her cheek and chin when her nails broke through the skin as she began to peel.

“Because with those you can’t really tell if it’s full or not. I mean, you can when it’s half empty. But if it’s all the way full or all the way empty, it looks kind of the same as long as it’s not in the light.”

She separated a segment of the orange out, though it was only partially peeled, and bit into it, letting the juice drip off her lower lip onto her chin. “It’s like people might look at me on the street and have no idea whether I’m doing something that matters or just sitting here in this dirty apartment smoking and drinking coffee. Only I know whether I’m empty or full. Maybe sometimes I’m both.”

She abandoned the orange and lit another cigarette. parliament

They sat there, looking across the table but not quite at each other. She was perfectly still, but for her eyes flicking from the window to her hands to his shoulder and back.

“Are you all right?” he asked, trying to trap her into meeting his gaze. She shrugged and tapped all ten of her fingers against the table in succession.

He frowned at her and stood up. “More coffee?” he asked. illumination

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She shrugged again. “Cigarette?” she asked in return.

“Just a cigarette or a cigarette and coffee?” She didn’t respond so he poured her a fresh cup of coffee and lit two cigarettes between his lips, passing one to her.

She took a shaky drag and sighed. “You aren’t okay,” he accused her as he balanced his cigarette on the edge of the ashtray that sat halfway between them.

She finally met his eyes and set her cigarette down, the lit tip almost touching his. “I’m fine.” He looked down at her Parliament. The end of the cigarette was bitten flat to the filter. She watched him look.

“I’m fine.” macramé

Her pillow buzzed. She fished out her phone and squinted to make out the words. She was a bit fuzzy on anything she might have said last night but didn’t want to be reminded of it by text message. “Low Battery,” the screen read. There were crumbs on her cheek and in her hair, she realized, easily explained by the stack of Saltines next to her pillow. It had been a bad night.

It was strange, she thought as her eyes scanned the room, how easily she could trace her trajectory from the night before. Her skirt was crumpled next to the bed, half draped over a glass of water. One shoe by the door, the other in the kitchen.

One tall sock in the doorway to the bathroom, and her jacket flung over the arm of the couch.

She collected the individual items of clothing scattered around the apartment and dropped them on the end of the bed.

Her phone buzzed again, this time with a

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Hope No. 1, Ben Sperry, 42’’ x 30’’, Graphite calendar reminder: “Take Your Meds.”

She stood at the kitchen sink, eyeing the pill bottles lined up on the spice rack.

Fluoxetine. (For the imbalance.) Excedrin. (For the headache.) Zolpidem. (For later.) Hydrocodone. (For that old shoulder thing.) The multivitamins and the vitamin D. (For everything else.) She carefully shook pills into her hand.

She filled a glass that might have been clean from the tap and downed the morning cocktail.

The day was slow as usual, existing outside of deadlines; she did not work today.

It was mundane minute after minute – stitching a button back on her jacket (one had gone missing last night), boiling water for tea, eating stale crackers with processed American cheese slices, and taking a long, lukewarm shower mid-afternoon.

Dusk settled on the apartment. The little rooms never looked better than at this time of evening. In soft light, the kitchen looked quaint and the closet-turned-bedroom cozy, though the dingy bathroom was perpetually unchanged. The day had been long enough, she decided and returned to the kitchen for her single evening dose of Zolpidem.

She lay there on the old couch and knew she wasn’t going to be moving for a long time. It

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was dark in the apartment, and as her face pressed into the back of the couch, she could pretend she was a little girl taking a nap in her grandmother’s front room with the curtains drawn. Once she thought it, she could feel the tired tears behind her eyelids.

“I look like I could be,” she told the empty room, voice muffled by the cushion. “I have my same short hair as ever. I’m dressed like a kid taking a nap.” She tugged the hem of her t-shirt down and adjusted the elastic of her cotton underwear.

Sighing, she rolled onto her stomach, reaching down with one arm to grope for a blanket under the couch and coming up with a macramé throw pillow. She picked up her head and slipped the pillow underneath. A draft of night air blew in through the crack in the window that let the cable router in, scattering week-old newspaper. She shivered, but she wasn’t sure whether it was because of the wind or the sound it made rattling the paper.

She curled up on her side as protection from the chill and fell asleep.

She woke to the weak, white light of early morning and an insistent knock on the door.

It took all her will to get up off the couch and wrap herself half-into a stray cotton robe hanging nearby on one of the mismatched kitchen chairs. There was no need to look through the peek-hole. She knew who was out there and unlocked the door.

“You have…” he told her, touching his own cheek. She mirrored his motion with her hand and ran her fingers across her face with something like wonder in her eyes, but it might have just been something other than nothing.

She traced the indentations that the pillow had left on her face. “It’s imprinted all over me.” illumination

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19 aftershave

It always seemed to snow on Thanksgiving in her revisionist memory.

Riding the bus home on Wednesday, she had sat between an old man that smelled perfectly of good cigars and aftershave like her father’s and Altoid mints and the bus window, which just smelled cold in that way before it snows.

But it was already snowing, and she spent the three hour ride looking out into the darkening sky of late afternoon in November while a book lay open on her lap, pages idling.

“Are you on your way home from college?” the old man asked her about an hour into the trip.

She startled in her seat, eyes snapping from the window to the man to the book in her lap. “No.” She faltered. “I mean, yes.” She blinked. “I mean, not college. But I’m on my way home, I guess.”

He smiled, understandingly. “Took me six years after graduating high school to decide I wanted to go back to school. They must put something in the water over at the high school now and then. I’m kind of hoping my grandkids don’t catch it while they’re there, I hope you understand.” He patted her hand where it lay on the rest between them.

“I went to boarding school.” She slid her hand onto her book and pretended to read, though her fingers were obscuring the words. He shook his head, still with his old-man smile, and ate a gingersnap from a paper bag sitting between himself and the aisle.

And here she was, home two hours later,

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as the bus groaned to a stop outside of the college. She waited until the bus was empty but for an elderly couple who were bickering quietly in the back, still in their seats.

She grabbed her bag from overhead and went to find her ride. She slipped when she stepped onto the fresh layer of snow that coated the sidewalk, bracing herself with bare hands and tights ripping on the curb where her knees hit, blood from the scrape staining the snow.

Capable hands lifted her at the elbows and brushed flurries from the shoulders of her wool coat. “Come on, sweetheart,” her father said, taking the old carpetbag from her with one hand and tucking her hand into the crook of his other arm. “You’re all right, and you’re home now.”

She got into the aging sedan where it was parked along the street, the leather seat cold against the back of her legs. Her father started the car after putting her bag in the backseat and wetted a napkin from a half-frozen water bottle. “For your knee,” he said, handing it to her. Pressing the cold napkin against the scrape, she winced.

“Are you all right?” he asked, no longer quite so sure.

“I’m all right,” she confirmed. “I’m home now.” cable

Sometimes it was hard to meet his eyes.

They were on her mangy couch, watching a slightly dated comedy on cable

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20 stolen from the mystery splitter dangling outside her apartment window. The room was cold from where the window was cracked to let the cable cord in, but it didn’t really matter.

She was warm as she lounged with her feet tucked under her, wearing at least four layers of clothes including a wool dress and an oversized athletic sweatshirt of unknown origin. He was wrapped up in two almost-unraveling afghans.

And for once she was laughing.

Each inane joke from the vaguely handsome leading man caused at least a giggle, and at one point, her amusement had piled up too quickly and almost caused her to fall off the couch in laughter. He watched her in the flickering half-light of the television, something between a smirk and a smile playing at the corners of his eyes and mouth.

At the commercial break, she took a deep breath and leaned back on her elbows against the armrest. She looked across the couch at him as he looked at her. She never knew when the feeling would spring upon her, when she couldn’t quite look back at him.

She tried not to admit it to herself, blaming her own insecurity and weird emotions that she couldn’t explain, but she knew something lay behind his nonchalance and careless way of talking. Sometimes it seemed like he was judging what she said and didn’t say or knew something about her that she didn’t quite understand yet.

She rolled to her side.

“What?” he asked, not looking away.

“It’s funny,” she informed him. “I’m not allowed to laugh because the humor is cheap and juvenile, but not low-brow and bad enough for it to be ironic.”

He laughed at this. “Not what I was asking.”

“If you would just stop looking at me like that,” she said. “You’re making me uncomfortable. I don’t like it.” She nudged him with her bare foot. He ran a soft hand along the sole. She pulled it back and looked down.

“Stop.”

He looked away, back at the television and another thing he almost wanted to buy, then back at her. “I might be in love with you.”

She looked back up. stories

She pressed her nose into the crease of the binding. “It’s the best smelling book I have,” she said, looking over the top of the spine.

“Can you even read French?” he asked her, doubtfully. “Actually, better question, have you read a word of that book?”

“Yes and no.” She closed the book, caressing the embossed gold lettering that still glimmered on the faded blue fabric. “I can read French,” she clarified. “I went to prep school, I know all sorts of mostly useless things. But I’ve only read the cover of this.

It’s too perfect to actually read. A collection of eighteenth century short stories republished in 1909? If I read it, I’d probably hate it, so I just open it and turn the pages and fill it in with my own stories.”

He smiled at her and balanced his chair on the two back legs, hands on the table for support. “Read one to me,” he said, somewhere between pleading and commanding.

“All right,” she conceded and began. “If I could be anything…”

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A Brief History of Almon Smith Danez J. Smith

Leaves in hair. Mama’s Boy. Mama died. Alabama Backwoods and a hiked up skirt. Mud on the back of thighs. Pipes on the playground. Brother died. Marching bands and military jackets at an all black college.

Late nights with her. Her become wife. Wife become babies mom. Family become boring.

Move.

Broken condoms and old suitcases.

Dead beat poet daddies. The refugees of your nutsack. Flick women like cigarettes buts. Your past is ashes. Sweated sheets with names too soggy to remember. Children with faces too symmetrical to deny. Phone numbers lost in pockets and haze. Photos of cheeks you’ve never kissed.

Move.

A small bedroom in your father’s house.

Journals full of confessions and prayers. Trash cans full of Trojan armies and the organs of cigars emptied. Smoke hanging around your neck. Some woman’s scream under your nails.

Some child around the corner begs to hug you.

Some women tries to ignore you when she see’s you in the street.

Move.

Eyes made from roses, the world is on fire, the burning no longer hurts. The ash just collects.

Dusty Dick Daddy loves to give women the pipe dreams. Funnel a dream into her belly.

She dreams you daddy. You nightmare her stupid. illumination

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What happens in midnight stays in her womb and stays hers alone.

Move.

Luck be a rock tonight. Lips kiss crystal. Your lungs shine.

Tongue sparkle. Tooth rot. Cotton mouth. Your children’s names have dried up in your mouth.

Move.

There is a small place between Atlanta and insanity where you live for the moment. A quilt made of the back sides of women, warm is a body to call yours. There is a voice in your ribcage begging for stillness. There is a woman somewhere being told to push a piece of you out. There is something that made this chaos in you that I have not yet learned to listen to. There is a fire vomiting in your belly that makes you jitter. There is lighting in your veins looking for a way out. There is a bullet inside slowly ripping. There is a song inside, off key and could give a fuck. There is a toothless lion inside trying to make someone tremble. There is a father with no arms to hold his children. There is a child inside throwing a temper-tantrum because he can not draw his mother’s face.

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Keys for Locks over Home, Sarah Jane Ripp, Digital Print

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25 Majesty (Enter Spigot), Katie Garth, Digital Print

The Writing on the (Bathroom) Wall: A Survey of UW Bathroom Grafitti Justin Charron

In a stall of one of the many restrooms on the University of Wisconsin campus, an unknown student scrawled an intriguing question for his peers: “What’s my evolutionary motive for writing on bathroom walls?” The response came matter-a-factly, written by another anonymous student’s hand, one linoleum wall tile to the right: “Cultural exchange … preservation of consciousness in thoughts, beliefs, or pictures.”1

It would be nice if this were the case - if bathroom graffitists were really some sort of cultural guardians, ensuring our generation’s historical relevance by means of the philosophical musings they scribble next to toilets. These ideas seem lofty however, considering the subject at hand. There are many questions not asked on that particular wall. What can we accurately take away from the graffiti strewn about UW campus restrooms? Do we honestly believe that bathroom graffitists are motivated by the preservation of some cultural consciousness? Why the restroom then? Why wouldn’t these students share their thoughts in a more traditional, perhaps public, forum, where their thoughts couldn’t be edited, crossed-out, or whitewashed?

In this essay, I do not accept the student’s response, and I am not interested in evolution or biology’s influence on UW bathroom graffiti, as the original graffitist pondered self-reflexively. I am interested instead in his idea of motive. What motive is there for a UW student to write on a bathroom wall? And more generally, what can graffiti tell us about the people writing it? illumination

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26 CONTEXT

Graffiti is not a recent phenomenon, despite the initial intuition one may have that the practice probably debuted along with the modern spray paint can. Graffiti was utilized long before gangs were marking up their territories on the margins of modern metropolises. In fact, one of the first, albeit satirical, depictions of Jesus Christ was in graffiti form. The “Alexamenos graffito” dates back to first century Rome and depicts a Christian worshiping a caricature of Christ, who is represented as a man with a donkey’s head hung upon a crucifix. To go back even further into human history, it could be argued, depending on the limits one places on the term “graffiti,” that some of the earliest examples of it are seen in prehistoric individuals’ iconic depictions of successful hunts, which were painted or etched onto cave walls.2

When new graffiti is discovered, the first question its discoverer may wonder is, “who did this and why did they do it?” To the modern American, graffiti has become tightly associated with gang culture and the hip-hop movement. Ralph Cintron, an associate professor of rhetoric at the University of Illinois at Chicago, described how the counter-discourses of marginalized groups, like the African-American and Latino gangs he researched just outside of Chicago, can become popular discourses. Hot commodities like “gangsta rap” helped spread this counter-discourse across America in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s.3 What was once a reaction to the status quo eventually became part of it. With this movement from counter- to popular discourse came an inevitable loss of authenticity. Spending a few minutes in the halls of a high school makes this loss obvious: “gangster” style clothing has been adopted by middle-class, suburbanite kids and hip-hop or “rap” music dominates today’s top 40 pop music charts. Because we respect things that are authentic and “true”, this loss of authenticity goes hand-in-hand with disrespect.

The popularized versions of what were once counter-discourses seem shallow.

A high-schooler from the suburbs sagging his jeans is not likely to be granted the same respect as a gang member sagging his jeans, just as bathroom graffiti at the University of Wisconsin is not likely to be given the same respect as the graffiti Cintron observed in his gang research outside of Chicago. It is problematic, however, if we only see graffiti as a matter of style and authenticity. They can also be seen simply, and perhaps more importantly, as a form of communication.

Recently, graffiti have become a more relevant topic in various fields of academic research, particularly among those interested in human history, psychology, and sociology. Clinical psychologist David Ley and Temple University professor Roman Crybriwsky wrote in their essay that, “Graffiti have not traditionally been regarded as a societal indicator, but rather as a folk symbol in their own right. Consequently, their diagnostic significance has been neglected, and they have been primarily treated in anecdotal and jocular vein in popular magazines.”4 Even the “authentic” varieties of graffiti have, in the past, been generally disregarded by members of the academic community. We can assume “inauthentic” graffiti garner even less respect.

Ley and Crybriwsky, however, attest that graffiti should be regarded as a societal indicator with relevant diagnostic significance. The understudied, underrepresented individuals of history are being discovered through the genre of graffiti. In his article, “De l’histoire par la caricature”, French journalist John Lemoinne wrote that historians could no longer afford to neglect graffiti because it was “visual journalism”; a fleeting glimpse of life’s events and a window into the daily lives of ordinary people.5 It can be responsibly asserted that the graffitist who created the illumination

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28 “Alexamenos graffito” was not a Christian, but rather a Pagan, likely incensed by the bedlam he saw in the Christian community following the crucifixion of Jesus. The etchings of ancient graffiti can provide a window into a personal, purely individual experience – an individual’s voice cutting through the years that separate the past from the present. Why can’t modern graffiti provide a similar window?

UW BATHROOM GRAFFITI

For my research on campus, I photographed instances of UW bathroom graffiti from 10 campus buildings (21 total restrooms) and organized my findings into three general categories dictated by the graffito’s apparent function, each of which will be described in detail later on: “Sconnies VS. Coasties”, “Self-Promotion and Tagging”, and “Expressive Graffiti.”6

It is important to note that I understand the limitations of my research. I do not intend on providing an all-encompassing categorization of restroom graffiti, I only wish to attempt to explain what I have found, and consider how it fits into the larger academic community’s study of graffiti, whether it is of the bathroom variety or not. Therefore, my analysis will not attempt to be quantitative, but will rather focus on individual instances that seem to represent trends. I am also aware of the fact that all my photographs were taken from men’s restrooms, and because of this, it can be assumed that I will be analyzing male graffitists. Though I am not taking gender into consideration in my research, I did come across articles specifically dealing with sex-research, analyzing the difference between men and women’s restroom graffiti and their particular subject matter.7 This essay is primarily concerned with the motive of the graffitist, however.

One final note: from here on out this essay deals with real graffiti I photographed on the University of Wisconsin’s campus. Many of these graffiti are vulgar in nature and reader discretion is advised.

“SCONNIES” VS. “COASTIES”

Throughout the restrooms of UW campus buildings, graffiti reinforces current observations that a distinct and ongoing tension exists between two rival groups of students on campus: the “Sconnies” and the “Coasties.” The term “Sconnie”, at its most basic level, refers to the Midwesterner, or more specifically, to a student who pays in-state tuition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and therefore hails from Wisconsin or Minnesota. The stereotype associated with a Sconnie is that they are overly loyal to the state and are unwilling to be associated with so-called “outsiders.” A “Coastie” then, is the out-of-state variety of UW student, specifically those from New York, New Jersey, and California. The stereotype associated with Coasties is that they are snobbish, upper-class individuals who live in private dorms or Greek housing. In her article for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel titled “The great ‘Coastie’ divide,” reporter Megan Twohey detailed the tension and its relevance to the University’s overall environment.8 She wrote that the issue has penetrated deeply into campus culture, to the point that at freshman orientation for the UW, students are prodded into discussions about “stereotypes of coastal culture VS. Midwest culture.” The divide is being taken seriously by many faculty on campus, although Twohey also reported that many students and faculty see the cultural conflict on campus as “good-natured.” It is hard to deny the fact that the cultural conflict is a local

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29 phenomenon in Madison, particularly among the university’s students. A graffito I photographed in Grainger Hall attests to this. Someone stuck a sticker to the face of a toilet paper dispenser where it functions as an advertisement for a song created by a UW student titled “What’s A Coastie?” The sticker includes a URL link that leads its reader to a myspace page where they can hear the song.

This cultural conflict, regardless of whether it is serious or light-hearted, a phenomenon or not, finds a forum in the restrooms on campus. 13 out of the 42 photos I captured during my research involved “Sconnies” and “Coasties”, and these instances were spread relatively evenly across campus buildings. Grainger Hall held an example of oneupmanship between a student who identified with the “Sconnie” group on campus and a student who identified with the “Coastie” group.

The graffiti took form as a kind of flow chart, with each subsequent response in reply to the previous graffito, connected by an arrow. The initial graffito that instigated this “conversation” was illegible.

The wall’s graffiti transcribed:

“So you are admitting I’m right?”

“Typically Resentful Sconnie”

“Typical coastie business major”

“Get Money, Fuck Bitches” The two groups feed off one another: an authentic Sconnie hates Coasties, an authentic Coastie hates Sconnies. By disrespecting the rival group, one asserts his own group’s greatness. The parallels Two Girls, Caitlin Emiko Kirihara, between this and Ralph Cintron’s analysis of gang water-based oil on canvas graffiti in his book, Angels’ Town: Chero Ways, Gang Life, and Rhetorics of the Everyday, are striking. For Cintron, graffiti is used as weaponry in a war that takes place on a wall. He describes graffiti as a “system of respect and disrespect” and calls attention to how the walls of his aliased community in inner-city Chicago, “Angelstown,” depicted a dense conversation, with layer upon layer of messages in response to one another.9 Graffiti, Cintron writes, allowed for gang members to make their “subjectivity, or ‘heart’, public.”10 If the heart of the Sconnie is filled with contempt for the Coastie, and vice versa, then that seems to be exactly what stuillumination fall 2010

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30 dents are doing in the bathrooms of the UW, although the layers Cintron saw fully developed in Angelstown are definitely in their infancy on the UW campus. No matter what the nature of the Sconnie-Coastie rift, it is clear that it has manifested itself in many restrooms on campus.

Just as the “Alexamenos graffito” opens a window into the individual experience of a Pagan in Jesus’ time, Grainger Hall’s flowchart graffito can do the same for the Sconnie or Coastie enrolled in the UW in the present.

“SELF-PROMOTION AND TAGGING”

If the Sconnie vs. Coastie graffiti found across the UW is evidence of graffiti’s ability to support and contribute to the voice of a group, then there exists another variety on campus that serves to support the individual, the one solely responsible for his or her own graffiti.

These graffito are sometimes stylized, shocking, or can come in the simplest form: an individual’s signature or a “tag.” One individual’s tag is widespread throughout UW campus bathrooms. It appears to say “Journ” and is stylized with a crucifix preceding it and various flourishes throughout, such as the three dots underneath the final arrow flourish of the “n” and the underline. This individual’s tag was widespread, and most frequently cropped up in the Mosse Humanities Building, although it did appear all the way on the opposite side of campus in the Psychology building.11 American journalist Jeff Chang, in his book Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation, describes taggers in his chapter entitled “Making a Name”:

They held no illusions about power...And unlike gang bangers, none would submerge his or her name to the collective. They were doing it to be known amongst their peers, to be recognized for their originality, bravado, daring, and style. Norman Mailer, one of the first to write seriously about graffiti, got it instantly: the writers were composing advertisements for themselves.12

The author responsible for the “Journ” tags scattered across campus restrooms refers only to himself; there is no group affiliation, no submersion into the collective, as Chang puts it. Style and the promotion of the individual are paramount to a “tag” graffitist. It is ironic, then, that the author chooses the restroom as his forum. How much “bravado, daring, and style” is involved in tagging a bathroom stall? Does it truly serve to promote the individual?

The “Journ” tag is most likely an example of self-promotive tagging in its infancy. The bathroom wall serves as a place for aspiring tag graffitists to perfect their style before moving on to bigger, riskier targets.

“EXPRESSIVE GRAFFITI”

Contrasting both the collective graffiti of “gangs” and the individual graffiti of “taggers” is an anonymous variety: “expressive graffiti.” These graffiti communicate notions and ideas not often spoken or written outside the walls of a restroom – they are ideas suppressed by the community, ideas people are oftentimes too afraid to say aloud. For the expressive graffitist, there is no URL link to advertise via a sticker, as the Sconnie was able to do in the Sconnie/Coastie “gang” divide. This is because the subject matter of expressive graffiti in most cases has no link to a public setting: it is against the status quo, oftentimes vulgar, inflammatory, derogatory, or hateful – there is no community forum for these individuals to express themselves without being chastised, and thus, their opinions are left to the walls of anonymous restroom stalls. Bathroom graffiti as a genre allow for these suppressed ideas to become expressed. illumination

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31

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has the reputation of being a liberal, highly-educated, cosmopolitan cultural center in the Midwest. The expressive graffiti found in the restrooms on campus are perhaps a reaction to this status quo. Etched into a toilet paper dispenser in the Social Sciences building, a student wrote, “There is nothing more closed-minded than an open-minded liberal.” Sociologists George Gonos, Virginia Mulkern, and Nicholas Poushinsky wrote in their article Anonymous Expression: A Structural View of Graffiti13, that “graffiti on bathroom walls [air] the values that are being suppressed in more public spaces.” Madison also has a reputation among some conservatives as being stiflingly liberal: Ley S. Dreyfus, Republican governor of Wisconsin from 1979 to 1983, once referred to the city as “78 square miles surrounded by reality.”14 The fact that the author of the “closed-minded liberal” graffiti chose his forum in the restroom suggests an outside, silencing pressure – the liberal status quo of the university, and perhaps even the city as a whole. Gonos, Mulkern, and Poushinsky wrote, “the enforced privacy of the bathroom stall in this society grants would-be graffitists a niche of freedom even within a public institution.” The same goes for the individual responsible for a graffito from the Van Hise building that read “What Diversity?” According to the national census taken in 2000, 83.96% of the population in Madison, WI were Caucasian, and the student, in response to seeing the campus population so predominantly white, was forced to question its public reputation as a cultural center. The graffiti is inflammatory and challenging to those who uphold the status quo, but ironically located in a place with almost no political power.

Both of these graffiti seem to be in response to the general liberalism of Madison, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a whole.

Not all expressive graffiti are so political. If intellectuality can be considered a norm for campus culture, as I believe it can, it goes along with Gonos, Mulkern, and Poushinsky’s argument that stupidity should run rampant in the bathroom graffiti of hyper-educated UW students. This stupidity manifests itself clearly in the vast examples of vulgar, pornographic, and poop-related graffiti found in the restrooms all around campus.15 One example I draw upon is a graffito I found in Bascom Hall, in which an individual begged the question to his fellow restroom patrons: “here I sit and contemplate, should I shit or Masturbate?” No one would would ask this question, let alone respond to it, in any public setting in the University. It wouldn’t be tolerated by the intellectual community. The question, however, given the private forum of the restroom stall, spawned written responses from five different individuals, assumed members of that same intellectual community, either in the form of tallies underneath the two choices the author had prescribed to himself, or in the response which was scrawled underneath by another graffitist: “make the little man happy.” To quote directly from Anonymous Expression, “as a society proscribes something, as something is deemed ‘inappropriate,’ its frequency in bathroom graffiti will increase.”16 It is important to note that this vulgarity is inappropriate in most public forums, and that explains why it is expressed in the anonymous stall of a bathroom. This also helps explain the reputation bathroom graffiti has of lacking cultural value or worth despite the fact that it almost certainly has both of those things. Consider once again the Alexamenos graffito. The pagan chose the bathroom as his forum because he was enveloped in a community of Christians. The status quo was to revere the crucifixion of Jesus, and he went against it.

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32 CONCLUSIONS

My research of the University of Wisconsin campus’ restrooms indicates the great relevance graffiti has as a tool that can help in the study of communities, past and present. People should not dismiss the inauthentic, the pornographic, the vulgar, or the violent, but should instead attempt to explain it. From restroom graffiti, one can divulge the voice of the commoner, the individual you see everyday washing (or not washing) his hands in the restroom.

One can see the public conflict of communities through those communities’ graffiti; whether it is violent conflict, like that of the street gangs in Ralph Cintron’s “Angelstown”, or the much less sinister cultural divide in Madison between the Sconnies and the Coasties. Also visible in other cases is internal conflict between the individual and their community’s status quo, such as the restroom confessions of a conservative in an overwhelmingly liberal area or a liberal in a conservative area – an individual with no forum to publicize his ideas without reprimand. All types of graffiti, even those seen on the stall walls of a restroom, cannot be dismissed as mere trinkets of our society. Their diagnostic significance can no longer be neglected. There is too much perspective that can be divulged, too many voices made public that would otherwise be kept exclusively private, by graffiti to ignore.

ENDNOTES

1. From Birge Hall, a building associated with science, particularly botany.

2. Specifically, a photo of cave graffiti depicting a successful hunt appears in Aaron Sheon’s article titled The Discovery of Graffiti. Source: Art Journal, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Autumn, 1976), pp.16-22. Published by the College Art association. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/776110. Accessed 11/27/09.

3 From page 173 of Ralph Cintron’s Angels’ Town: Chero Ways, Gang Life, and Rhetorics of the Everyday. Published

by Beacon Press in Boston, MA, in 1997.

4. From page 492 of Urban Graffiti as Territorial Markers by David Ley and Roman Crybriwsky. Source: Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 64, No. 4 (Dec. 1974), pp. 491-505. Published by Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2569491. Accessed 11/27/09.

5. The quote from John Lemoinne is taken from Aaron Sheon’s article The Discovery of Graffiti.

6. The ten campus buildings in which I photographed were the Mosse Humanities building, Helen C. White, Bascom Hall, Birge Hall, Van Vleck, Ingraham Hall, the Social Sciences building, Van Hise, Grainger Hall, and the Psychology building.

7. The article dealing with the differences between men and women’s restroom graffiti that I read was by Jo-Ann H. Farr and Carol Gordon, titled A Parital Replication of Kinsey’s Graffiti Study, from The Journal Of Sex Research, Vol. 11, No. 2 (May, 1975), pp. 158-162.

8. Megan Twohey’s , “The great “Coastie” divide, was published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and posted to JS Online Nov. 14, 2009. Stable URL: http://www3.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=370655. Last accessed: 12/3/09.

9. Cintron, 173.

10. Cintron, 177.

11. Four instances of the “Journ” tag were found in the Humanities building. One instance was found in Bascom Hall, one was in the Psychology building, and one was in Helen C. White.

12. Taken from page 74 of Jeff Chang’s Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation. Published by St. Martin’s Press, United States, 2005.

13. The section of my paper entitled “Expressive Graffiti” incorporates many of the ideas found in George Gonos, Virginia Mulkern, and Nicholas Poushinsky’s Anonymous Expression: A Structural View of Graffiti. Their research revolved around instances of anti-homosexual bathroom graffiti in areas considered tolerant of homosexuality. The source of the article is The Journal of American Folklore, Vol.89, No. 351 (Jan. - Mar., 1976), pp. 40-48. Published by American Folklore Society. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/539545. Last accessed 12/3/09.

14. Dreyfus’ quote was actually lifted from his obituary, titled “Lee S. Dreyfus: 1926-2008.” The article originally appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. It was written by Amy Rabideau Silvers and posted to JS Online Jan. 4, 2008. Stable URL: http://www.jsonline.com/news/obituaries/29416359.html. Last accessed 12/3/09.

15. The majority of what I observed could be placed into this category of graffiti. Out of a total 42 photos taken, I placed 22 into the category “expressing stupidity.”

16. Gonos, Mulkern, and Poushinsky, pp. 41-42.

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September 27, Katie Garth, digital print illumination

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