Like many a kid, Clayton Lowe was fascinated by trains. He didn’t, however, spend his youth hunkered down in the garage producing scale-models locomotives. No, Lowe’s trainophilia sparked an enduring vocation of a far more colourful, enamel-based, aerosol-produced kind.

You see, around the age of 15, Lowe became entranced not by the trains themselves but the graffiti marking the cars that passed through a major rail artery close to his Edmonton home. In a sense, he quite literally became a trainspotter.

"But without the drugs at that point," he quips.

What was the appeal of this artform produced by authors unknown? "The mystery of it, for sure," Lowe says. "Where did it come from? Why it was produced? Who did it? Why are there some spots that have it and others that don’t? What level of integration and discourse does this have on your environment?"

Heady questions for a young lad, although it’s likely the last set of questions only surfaced later, once Lowe was pursuing a formal education in illustration and visual communications. (He’s currently the only designer on staff at the Alberta Gallery of Art.) But back in the day, those trains got Lowe rolling to the hardware store for a can of spray paint and then back to the trainyard, where he made his first forays into graffiti culture. Although he recalls his initial attempts as "fairly feeble," through practice Lowe realized he had a knack for the medium–so much so that he eventually earned legitimate commissions around town, much of which can still be seen, if you stroll around the Bissell Centre, the Churchill LRT station, or the overpass crossing 99 Ave and 110 St.

Of course, it took a while for the city to extend the invitation to use its public spaces as a canvas. And Lowe is a bit circumspect about his brushes with the law during his formative years as a "non-commissioned" practicing graffiti artist.

"Well, I won’t get too much into my personal situations," he says, obviously weighing his words. "We’ll just put it this way: it’s tricky to stay out of trouble entirely, but not impossible."

We’re all artists here

"I’m essentially interested in making the city look better, and, as you know, this city could go a long way to looking better," laughs mural painter Ian Mulder. "And we have a real thirst here for good public art, and not just shit public art–grassroots stuff that actually comes from the community."

While Mulder admits that graffiti art isn’t his world. Through his work with the iHuman Society, the Edmonton-based nonprofit organization that works with at-risk youth (he was involved with their crisis intervention and life-skills and mentorship programs), Mulder mentored a young un-comissioned public artist who hadn’t learned the way Lowe had how to stay out of trouble. Mulder asked him to be his assistant on one of his murals.

That experience led to discussions between Mulder and iHuman founder/director Wallace Kendall about addressing what Mulder refers to as "the so-called ‘graffiti problem’ in the city" by offering high-end commissions to young taggers as a way of "channeling that energy into more legitimate and financially rewarding projects."

Hence, State of the Art, a combination workshop/competition that Mulder and Lowe hope will start a dialogue between "fine" artists and their street counterparts. The event will take place over two weekends and will culminate with five commissions being awarded to as many teams; the resulting works will beautify iHuman’s new HQ on Jasper and 95 St.

"The great thing about this is not only is it bringing artists together, but artists of different stripes," enthuses Mulder. "Street artists, more mainstream artists, the university-type crowd–especially those doing the stencils and wheat paste stuff here around town."

"Education and collaboration through practice, whether it’s art or construction or cooking or whatever the fuck it is, it tends to build community," adds Lowe. "Education and collaboration are the things that bring people together: dissemination of knowledge and inspiring and engaging one another. Being involved with iHuman, I couldn’t think of a better forum to have something like State of the Art under, because it reaches out to the novice and the intermediate painters who need it the most, not just to learn but to share what they know and feel like they’re part of something."

Naughty as you wanna be

Though it’s a grand plan, this State of the Art, Mulder and Lowe both acknowledge that it’s not going to end the debate on the validity of street art or lessen the outlaw appeal of illegal, unsanctioned graffiti art. But the way Lowe sees it, that’s part of the dialogue they hope to provoke.

"There’s a level of dissidence, right?" he says. "There’s a level of discourse in the act alone of putting a mark on wall that’s been around since the dawn of man, since the caves of Lascaux. There’s something intrinsic in nature in mark-making and leaving visual communications behind in open spaces, whether it’s on the side of a rock or a building.

"Graffiti tends to be used as a scapegoat for the other sort of issues going on in communities. I know in Edmonton it’s been in and out of the news, and I haven’t really been keeping up on it, but through conversations with other artists... I think it tends to be symbolic of the real problems that are happening in communities, like homelessness or the lack of low-income/low-cost housing. The vacancy rate in Edmonton is something like below three per cent and things like homelessness and addiction are becoming more visible, and a lot of people see graffiti as things getting out of hand and outside of the control of established governing bodies."

For his part, Mulder says State of the Art doesn’t represent any attempt to rehabilitate artists who prefer to work outside the accepted societal parameters; rather, it’s a way of exploring the techniques of a well-defined genre, whether it’s executed with the blessing of a higher authority or not.

"There will be guys who are too cool for school who say this is too public," Mulder says. "That’s fine. But I know there are a lot of street artists that are going to be interested in coming. It’s a safe venue, especially with our connection to iHuman–they’ve lent a lot of street cred to this because they’re basically there for you guys and girls in trouble."

"The discourse has been going on around the world," Lowe concludes. "Europe is flourishing, South America is flourishing, Asia and Australia–graffiti is being disseminated into public art on both legal and illegal platforms. Some of it is appreciated and some of it isn’t. I guess it depends on the ownership of the property. I think it’s extremely valuable to have both ends of the spectrum. It’s good to know that there are people who think differently than the majority. That’s healthy."