ATLANTA — The Atlanta BeltLine is celebrating the influence of style writing. It's a form of graffiti art that came to Atlanta in the 1980s along with the Hip-Hop movement.
"It's the visual language," said Rodney Wills.
Wills is part of the first Hip-Hop graffiti art crew in Atlanta. It started after Marcus Wallace and his cousins were introduced to the culture.
"We just saw that it wasn't being done in the early days here in Atlanta, and so we just went hard with it," Wallace said. "Our goal at that time was to be all over the city, so we wrote everywhere within 285."
At the time, they were painting alone and in the dark.
Now, they're painting alongside other artists in the daylight as a part of the ATL Style Writing Jam.
"Graffiti is not this crime anymore," Wallace said. "Of course, it was a crime when we was doing it, but we didn't think of it as defacing. It was all about the culture."
The BeltLine event "aims to show appreciation to the first generations of individuals who painted on public walls here in the city. " It's the second time The United Kings are participating.
"It brings so much pleasure and joy to me to know that The United Kings and I were a part of introducing graffiti to Atlanta," Wallace said. "We're going to do something extravagant, something different, something that has a lot of wild style in it."
More than 25 "style masters" who primarily painted from the 1980s to the mid-2000s will paint this weekend at the ATL Jam.
It's free to attend and located primarily on the Westside trail.