National Park Service agents are looking into a string of paintings defacing parks from Crater Lake to Zion/Screen grab via Modern Hiker
A wandering artist with an affinity for using slices of national parks for her palettes, an apparent disregard for the law, and a penchant for documenting her works via social media channels, has drawn the attention of the National Park Service.
From Death Valley to Crater Lake, from Yosemite to Zion, a woman who goes by the nom de plume "creepytings" has evidently left a trail of acrylic paintings on rock outcrops in the parks. With strokes of blue, white, brown and red paint, as well as markers, she sketches faces for all to see.
A bald-headed face with a snake for a tongue was apparently painted on a rock near the Mist Trail in Yosemite. Another of a blue-haired dude appears on an outcrop with Crater Lake in the distance, while another face -- with zig-zagging lines not unlike those you might see on prehistoric rock art -- is said to have been placed on a rock atop Telescope Peak in Death Valley.
The story, which was brought to light Tuesday by Modern Hiker, quickly made it over to Reddit, where a poster referred it to a ranger at Yosemite National Park. The investigation might not take long, as the artist signed the paintings with her creepytings moniker.
Pictures of the images were posted on creepytings' Instagram feed, which was closed to the public Tuesday...but not before Modern Hiker Founder and Editor Casey Schreiner was able to grab them. He also was able to grab an Instagram chat creepytings had in which she admitted the images were painted with acrylics.
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Let's hope that undue publicity about this act of serial art-vandalism in our parks will not spawn copycats. This situation will have to be handled delicately.
If you follow the various links included in the story above, the woman who is responsible for this vandalism in multiple parks was fully aware she was "doing wrong." Let's hope for a vigorous and successful prosecution - and as Owen notes, also hope to avoid copycats.
Yes, this is not art. This is vandalism. But hey, it's all the rage these days, don't you know? A few months ago, I was sitting outside Kelso Depot in the Mojave National Preserve when a big Union Pacific freight train came rumbling through. Practically all of the cars were covered with grafiti, as most of them are these days. But you know what? The adult teacher of a school class sitting next to me pronounced the grafiti "artistic." I suggested otherwise and he just got mad at me. Who was I not to agree with him that young people deserved to "express themselves" in this way?
You can imagine what I said, something to the effect that if I bought a can of spray paint and "expressed myself" all over his school bus, I trusted his principal wouldn't mind. "That's different," he said. Right. He would get in trouble for it. So long as the vandalism was on railroad property, he didn't care.
Well, this "artist" should be made to remove every one of her images with a rusty spoon. She removes them--and she pays for it. That is how you handle vandalism. Litter and you pick up five miles of garbage along the roadside. But you see where the problem lies. We are a nation of enablers, and more of this is coming, unless we have the discipline to distinguish vandalism from art. The railroads have virtually thrown in the towel--as have many communities. That has to stop before the national parks can be considered safe from the vandals, too.
I agree with everyone above, including the fact that she should be made to clean them all and "make it right", at her own expense. Let her buy her own rocks at a quarry if she just wants to paint on rock.
I like the pun in the caption--"defacing."
It is only art if it was done a few hundred years ago. LOL
I too hope this can be stopped without encouraging more vandalism. It is more than just train cars that seem to be accepted these days. Urban areas are filled with walls, bridges etc. and are often now accepted as art rather than vandalism. I'd hate to see that come to the parks.
Thanks for bringing these acts of vandalism to public attention. I read about this first in National Parks Traveler and clicked through on the links to the reddit.com and modernhiker.com sites for more information.
National Park Service just issued a press release on investigation into the graffiti in at least 10 western parks, which we link to at www.facebook.com/acadiaonmymind.