WSU Building's Zen Stairwell Is `Cultural Overload, Man'

PULLMAN - The stairway to Zen enlightenment is paved with graffiti.

"I want to run naked through the desert."

"Cobain died that we may live."

"Gilligan's Island rules."

Seven stories high and often reeking of urine spilled in the wee hours, the Zen Stairwell is tucked into the parking lot of the Fine Arts Building at Washington State University.

Once a mono-colored beige, the stairwell now sports every shade of paint and the full spectrum of colorful language.

Profanity covers a railing. A debate about homosexuality rages on a third-floor wall. Declarations of love and desire abound.

Even overhead lights, steps and fire alarms aren't safe from the nocturnal scribbling and spraying.

After years of painting, the stairwell is the equivalent of palimpsest, medieval parchment used again after earlier writing had been erased.

While the visible dates on the wall go back to 1990, some causal Zen historians say the writing and drawing erupted on the walls about seven years ago.

"There's everything from God, drugs, sex, rock 'n' roll and homespun philosophy in here," says Kean Wilcox, a part-time photography instructor whose master's thesis explored graffiti. "You can spend a lot of time on a square yard of this stuff.

"I guess what I find interesting about this is that it's a cultural overload, man."

Wilcox frequently descends the seven stories of steps to peruse the walls and see how the Zen Stairwell is being reincarnated from week to week.

"This was once a portrait of Jim Morrison," he says, pointing to a seventh-floor wall where only the outline of a circle remains discernible under more recent writings.

"It looks like that person just got dumped," Wilcox says, pointing to a saying that reads: "Friendship often ends in love, but love in friendship never."

Depending on where you stand on the stairwell, it's either a recyclable tableau for art and social commentary or a higher education eyesore in Krylon hues of red, black and blue.

"I used to think that it was very creative," says Patricia Watkinson, director of WSU's Museum of Art. "I was surprised by the creativity of the people who had used it as a canvas.

"But one day the wind was taken out of my sails when someone told me that many of the quite lyrical sayings on the walls were from pop songs that I didn't know."

"There was a time," she adds, "when every perpetrator respected the other's space. But now it's a free-for-all, and it's just a mess."

Many observers speculate that the stairwell was christened Zen after someone sprayed the three-letter word somewhere in it.

Years later, commentary revolving around the Far Eastern religious sect is a favorite topic on these Western walls.

One wall asks, "How many ways can you spell Zen?" Among the answers: "Spiritual bonding by candlelight (number 33), "Seven Devils Mountains (73) and "Thin, firm thighs" (80).

Carl Richardson wasn't seeking spiritual enlightenment when he first took a can of spray paint to the walls.

"I just stumbled upon it one day when I was parking. And there was a guy in a class I was teaching who introduced me to graffiti, and I would just basically do stuff with him," says Richardson, who received his master's of fine arts degree in the spring.

"We didn't do anything fancy. We would write our names and draw caricatures of ourselves."

While the stairwell is always open from the outside, it doesn't offer access into the Fine Arts Building. People can enter and exit the first, second and third floors, the three levels of the parking garage, but doors to the fourth through seventh floors remain locked.

When Richardson would spray in the stairwell, he had some concerns about being nabbed by campus police.

"You always have that in the back of your head, but I don't think that they enforce it that much. . . ."