Whacko attacks graffiti artists

The AJC reports today on a man who hid in a tree near the Krog Street tunnel over the weekend and ambushed two young graffiti artists. The man, 43-year-old Rodney Bowman, apparently flipped out and punched one of the “vandals” twice in the face, a police report states.

One of the men, 21-year-old Jesse Jaeger, is an artist who’s exhibited at Youngblood Gallery who participated in a group show curated by Travis Smith and hosted by Young Blood Gallery last year. Both Jaegar and Joshua Ward, 19, were ticketed for defacing a building. Bowman was ticketed for disorderly conduct.

According to the story:

When an officer arrived, Bowman told him that “he had been watching the area closely” and “jumped out of the tree” to confront the vandals, the report said.

The story’s photo caption describes the Krog tunnel as the city’s “scariest” free art gallery — an alarmist characterization, to be sure, but not nearly so off-mark as calling Krog an “eyesore,” which the AJC did last year.

(Photo courtesy “Shaft’s bigscorehttp://flickr.com/photos/shaftbigscore/” from CL’s Flickr group)