AS HE lay in his Kaitoke jail cell, 18-year-old Uriah Wallace found himself thinking long and hard about where he was and how he had got there.
Remanded in custody to be sentenced on 12 charges of willful damage, the teenager was reaping the consequences for his part in a graffiti spree that chalked up a civic price tag of more than $14,000.
The 23 days had felt like a year, he said.
"It was hard to get used to that environment, because the toilet was in your bedroom, and I wasn't used to living like that, and it's pretty horrible," he told the Wanganui Chronicle.
The flak from inmates made it hard to sleep at nights.
"They were reading the paper while I was in there & they'd say, 'You're the little tagger, eh?' and were sort of hassling me & I guess they were just making fun of it," he said.
Although relieved to be out of prison, Uriah was still clearly shaken from his time inside yesterday.
"It was a big wake-up call. It gave me a good time to think where I was and made me realise I should find another way to express my feelings and not do it out on the street," he said.
Uriah had been into art since he was six, but two years ago his interest took a different turn when he started doing graffiti and tagging, after dropping out of school at 15.
It became a kind of culture, a lifestyle painting "throw-ups" on rooftops and in "forever spots" where they wouldn't be rubbed out.
"I just found it another way to express what I really felt inside," he said.
His tag, "ora" - meaning the atmosphere around someone or something - was a representation of himself, his own passion.
Soon the adrenalin rush became addictive, as did the need for peer recognition.
"I guess it's the craving that smokers get for a puff," he said. 'I guess the more people talk about you, [the more] you get that feeling of fame: 'Oh, yeah, people are talking about me - I might do it some more so they keep talking about me'."
In May, he gained a different sort of fame in the wake of newspaper reports that drew a clamour of public indignation. He found it hard to answer when asked how the community reaction had affected him, but nodded when asked if he was sorry he had damaged property.
It wasn't the purpose behind his tagging, but he knew it was wrong, he said.
While contrite and determined to "play by the rules" and stay out of jail, Uriah remains passionate about the value of street art, which he says won't go away.
"I'm going to try to go to UCOL to get in a course of graphics and design and see if that works out, so I can prove to the Government it's art, not just scribble," he said.
He believed the solution to reducing willful damage would be for council to provide youth with a legal board where they could do graffiti art. This would also mean street artists produced better art and not rubbish, as they would stay longer if they didn't have to worry about getting caught.
Dubbed the "ringleader" of a graffiti gang, Uriah now hopes he can now turn the role into something positive through leading by example.
"I'm their role model. Maybe, if I take a step forward, they'll follow me; if I do something good, they'll do something good," he said.
As for himself, he intends to get a job and pay the reparation.
"And if the sky's the limit, [art will] take me round the world."
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