LEWISTON – Be quick, or be caught.

It’s the motto of street artists, nocturnal urchins who trip lightly through the streets of Lewiston and Auburn looking for premium spots to paint. Sometimes they run in packs, sometimes in pairs: an artist and a lookout.

“We call ourselves the writers,” says Brian Serfes, 20, one of the Twin Cities’ noted – or notorious – graffiti artists, depending on which side of the law one sits. “We write to try and get our message out, if that makes sense.”

It does to Serfes and his ilk. There are about a dozen serious graffiti artists plying Lewiston-Auburn, he said, ranging in age from 15 to 30, male and female. They all have street names, which they lovingly sign on every attractive wall or building they can.

Serfes is paying the price for his art. He’s working at a local fast-food restaurant to pay off several thousand dollars in restitution for a building he tagged in Auburn. Last fall, in Lewiston, he was caught tagging an industrial building when a passing police cruiser shined a spotlight on him.

“I had some extra paint, it looked like a pretty sweet spot, next thing I know, whoop-whoop!” says Serfes, imitating the sound of short police siren bursts. “So now I go out later. Any time I have paint, I’m out.”

Not that he likes the criminal life. Serfes, of Lewiston, yearns for a graffiti artist’s dream: a dedicated wall, on which he and his companions can paint without intrusion. A wall, he said, would allow true artists to abandon illegal tagging and focus on improving their artistic styles, techniques and messages.

“If there’s a way to get a wall, within a day, it’ll be covered from head to toe,” Serfes says. “Artists are going to be down there left and right, and it’ll be local kids. And these kids will blow people’s minds away, because they’ll actually be given a chance to show what they can do.”

Officials willing to listen

City officials are leery, but amenable to listening to the idea. Graffiti is a serious issue within Maine’s urban centers. South Portland earlier this year enacted a strict graffiti-control ordinance that allows police to charge minors with possession of graffiti tools, such as spray paint, without proof of its use.

Since 2000, Portland has had a designated graffiti wall, a 180-foot section near the municipal wastewater plant on the Eastern Promenade.

In Lewiston, city officials point to the scourge of graffiti inside the bus shelters as blight. Phil Nadeau, the deputy city administrator, said the Lewiston-Auburn Transit Committee wants a permanent solution for clearing shelters of graffiti.

“Everything I’ve read says the quicker you get to it, the better off you are,” Nadeau said. “The least successful (prevention method) is taking an entirely different color of paint and painting over the spot. Those get retagged.”

Nadeau sees comparisons between graffiti artists and skateboarders, who have been given their own “spot” in Kennedy Park. “It’s somewhat analogous to the skate park,” he said. “Give them an opportunity to do the thing they want to do, and you’re going to see a lot more of them do it there.”

It may not eliminate graffiti completely, he added, but could mitigate the problem.

Anecdotal evidence about the skatepark is proving this theory out, according to Lewiston police Chief William Welch. Since the facility opened, the chief said, police have noticed fewer reports of illicit skateboarding in previous hot spots, such as Courthouse Plaza. Welch, however, has mixed feelings about a graffiti wall in Lewiston.

Other cities have tried it, he said, with inconclusive results. Some cities have found that legal walls have actually increased illegal graffiti, as artists practice their work on available buildings en route to the legal area.

‘My view’

Local graffiti artists have their proving grounds, usually quiet sides of sprawling industrial buildings or walls tucked away along railroad tracks. There’s a big one in Auburn, hidden from view and one of the few places in the Twin Cities that artists can paint during daylight hours.

“There’s some impressive artwork here,” said Serfes, while walking toward the spot. It’s a long cement wall near Auburn’s downtown, peppered with multicolored expressions of youthful ego. Serfes pointed to developing work by his protege, a 15-year-old from Lewiston, who’s just learning the trade.

“I do it to prove a point, mostly, and have fun,” the 15-year-old said. “I want people to see it my way, try to get them to look at (the world) from my view.”

Also on the wall is a large farewell mural by the Famous International Playboys, a group of veteran Lewiston-Auburn artists who Serfes said introduced him to painting. They taught him how to shade, and how to color, and which methods are best to draw the attention of fellow graffiti artists but not the curiosity of law enforcement.

Serfes and others look at their work as true art. They are harsh critics who disdain juvenile scribblings and vulgar scrawls. If given a wall, Serfes said, the serious graffiti artists around Lewiston-Auburn would be happy to police it and keep the substandard stuff away.

“All I want to do is find a place for my artwork. Because right now, there isn’t a place for me to do it. We’re hoping someday, someone will hear us and give us a place to do it, let us put our artwork to the fullest we can do, without having any restraints,” he said.

“The only way we know how to be heard is to paint.”