Bathroom art is off the wall

Makin' the Alley Cat bathroom look sexy. (Credit: Matt Kryger / Metromix)

Oranje

Crashing Oranje.

“If you really want your parents to hate you, become an artist.”

These words of wisdom are just one example of the countless poems, non-sequiturs and personal confessions found scribbled on the bathroom walls of bars and clubs around the country.

Photographer and Indianapolis local Rachel Rubenstein, 26, recently decided to take bathroom graffiti to the next level. She spent the past year taking pictures of the best (and worst) bar bathroom art in Indy, Nashville and Chicago. She debuted her work at this year’s Oranje.

“I had three walls that I built into two bathroom stalls,” she explained. “I had a bunch of Sharpies where people could come up and do their own graffiti. There were toilets, urinals, actual bathroom stall walls, markers and spray paint.”

The exhibit became one of the most popular displays at Oranje, and Rubenstein made more than $500 from her photographs.

The idea to photograph bar graffiti came to Rubenstein while she was spending an evening at Broad Ripple’s Alley Cat Lounge. “I was like, ‘We should start taking pictures of bathroom wall graffiti,’” she said. “‘Some of this stuff is really funny.’”

Rubenstein began snapping  pictures of any bathroom graffiti that was interesting — whether it was vulgar or “something that really made you think.” She has photographed the bathrooms of bars and clubs like the Chatterbox and The Melody Inn.

Rubenstein hopes to  turn her work into a coffee-table book. She said many people  told her they would buy a book with graffiti art pictures.

“The bathroom wall pictures were a cool idea because it’s something that everyone could relate to,” she said. “Most people have seen graffiti, and most people have written on a bathroom wall.”

The real question is — out of all the photos she’s taken, what is Rubenstein’s favorite bathroom wall confession?

“My favorite one so far is something written on my Oranje booth,” she said. “It said: ‘I know I’m in love when I wear condoms with the other girls.’”