by Spencer Buell
Boston Globe
CAMBRIDGE — There’s no putting the paint back in the can.
The Lynch Family Skatepark has been a graffiti destination for years. Bubble-lettered tags coat its jumps and staircases, and have turned the walls of its skateable concrete bowls into an ever-changing street art collage.
In most other public parks, graffiti artists are chased away, and their work covered up as fast as park staff can manage it. Here, in the sprawling park along the Charles River, there has been an informal policy to look the other way.
Now, say the skatepark’s overseers, it’s time to make it official.
This summer, they hope to designate it a “free wall” space, where graffiti is encouraged — and hire its first-ever graffiti artist-in-residence to promote and teach the art form they feel is too often misunderstood.
Read full article online (May 13, 2025).