Look Who it Was Random video

On Location: Misunderstood: The Art of Jolt (by Kunsmiller Creative Arts Academy, Denver, CO)

446 views · Published 9 July 2018 · 5:43 · Indexed 20 October 2026

Channel: Kennedy Center Education Digital Learning · 2018 · Education

Watch on YouTube

Is graffiti an art form or is it vandalism? Misunderstood takes a look at how one artist is changing the vision of graffiti as an art form and helping to change how it impacts and reflects within the community.

Guerilla Gardens, founded by Graffiti Artist Jeremy Silas Ulibarri, a.k.a Jolt, references a movement of gardening that originated in New York City in the early 1970s. Guerilla gardening was an improvised attempt to beautify a deteriorating landscape. Guerilla Gardens provides an opportunity for Denver’s urban arts core to unite with the general community in an attempt to transform an art form while transforming themselves and their surrounding environment through the fine art of graffiti.

From simple scratching and territory markings to elaborate wall murals, Graffiti as a means of artistic expression has been around since ancient times. Graffiti, a product born from the “streets”, can be widely accepted as one of the most controversial art forms of recent years. Typically, graffiti art and its artists are defined through urban environment and pop-culture. Guerilla Gardens continues to bring legitimacy to the art form by bringing the underground to the surface for all of us to share - one mural at a time.

Kunsmiller proudly serves Denver’s diverse urban population of students. Traditionally underservered in the arts, our middle school population is most interested, engaged and motivated by guerilla art movements that communicate social relevance. Our school’s staff acted upon these student interests and developed a relationship with the local artist’s group, Guerrilla Gardens. Working primarily with the artist Jeremy ‘Silas’ Ulibarri a.k.a JOLT, our students have been learning to differentiate between territorial graffiti or vandalism, and street art that offers meaningful commentary and defines itself as a movement that questions environment, location, and even its own existence within this very urban community.

From 2008-2010, nineteen schools from across the United States created videos as part of the On Location program. A "media studio on wheels" visited each school for two weeks and provided students the gear and training to tell the story of the arts in their community.

From go-go music in Washington DC, to gullah woodburning in Beaufort, South Carolina, to modern dance in Berkley, Michigan, the arts of a community can be as different as it's geography.

The Kennedy Center traveled the country to help students tell the story of the arts in their community, and the result is a video collection reflecting a rich diversity of local artists and art forms across the United States.

The videos in this series were scripted, produced and edited by students using professional equipment, under the supervision of Kennedy Center teaching artists.

More from this channel