by PATRICK LEJTENYI

A funny thing happened to Peter Gibson after his Nov. 29 arrest: his profile went way up.

The man behind the creative, tongue-in-cheek stencil drawings that have popped up around the Plateau over the past three years - from giant light switches to zippers to owls - is currently facing 53 counts of mischief. Since news of his arrest was first published in the Dec. 9 issue of the Mirror, after the police showed up at his door with a warrant, Gibson has become something of a cause célèbre. Intellectuals, city officials, lawyers, artists and art fans have revived the debate about the role of art in public spaces and the rights and responsibilities - not to mention penalties - guerilla street artists can expect.

Sitting in a café in Little Italy - outside his court-mandated north-of-Sherbrooke-south-of-Van-Horne-east-of-Parc-west-of-Christophe-Colomb no-go zone - Gibson reflects on his sudden fame. His once-prized (and legally necessary) anonymity is gone. His story has been told in dailies, blogs, magazines and over the airwaves. So how does it feel to be the most notorious stencil artist in Montreal?

"Well, it's not like there's a lot of competition," he says with a slight chuckle. "But it's amazing to see people actively having this dialogue about my activities over the past three years, and raising the question about the use of public space. I'm seeing my initial intention being brought into the public arena, so it's satisfying on that level."

And all the interest may have a windfall. There was never a financial aspect to his work, but since the brouhaha broke, he's been approached by some interested parties for commissions - although he is keeping mum about specific contracts and clearly isn't too comfortable with the subject. "That's kind of made me question my intentions," he says. "What's the purpose here? What do I want to do with this?"

Boundaries and mutations

Gibson realizes that his 15 minutes as a street artist is now. He's trying not to let the coverage he's been getting - which has mostly been sympathetic - go to his head. "Sure, my ego's flattered," he says. "I'd be lying if I pretended to be free from it. At the same time it's made me understand better the nature of the media - being in the middle of it all, how you're being portrayed. Which relates to my inquiry of all this: the understanding of boundaries, and the notion of public opinion and the effect it can have. I know it's a fleeting phenomenon, but it's ironic that I had to get arrested for it to happen."

But when asked why he chose the medium he did - his background is in music, not art - he candidly says that he's still working on that one himself. "I've definitely been asking myself questions all along," he says. "There are reasons that got me started in the first place, but those reasons have mutated over time. But the main reason is to deal with certain things inside myself, understanding how boundaries relate to my external environment.

"I guess I'm dealing with language, the nuts and bolts and foundation of the language of the street," he continues. "The symbols on the street are a method of communication, but in a dry, utilitarian way, so I wanted to inject a little poetry, for lack of a better word. There's this banality and predictability to city life, and that's enhanced by urban planning and the way our movement is directed. I wanted to play with that."

The limits of freedom

Evidently, it's something other people are curious about as well. Besides making public the debate about art versus vandalism, it conjures up issues of stencil versus graffiti, visual chaos versus what Gibson calls the "controlled chaos" of advertising and concrete and Christmas lights, property rights versus freedom of expression and all the rest. The Roadsworth arrest also recalled the Corridart affair, when Quebec artists erected their work along Sherbrooke from Atwater to Pie-IX just before the 1976 Olympics. Then-mayor Jean Drapeau had them unceremoniously torn down.

Awaiting his next court appearance on March 29, Gibson is aware that he enjoys a certain amount of public support, even if it can be at times ambivalent. "There is something that bugs us about the fact that an artist has been arrested," he says. "But those same people are the ones who feel offended by the presence of graffiti, even though graffiti artists are the only ones who are exercising, in a real sense, their freedom of expression."

Whatever the future holds for Peter Gibson, Roadsworth won't be in it. Is Roadsworth dead? "Well, he's definitely on life-support for the time being, at least in terms of the original manifestation. But he's definitely dead in a legal sense, a surreptitious sense. But it was fun while it lasted. The whole process was satisfying on so many levels - just the idea of expressing myself publicly like that. It's satisfying and liberating."

Canvas city >> Surveying stencil art and artists from around the world Most big cities with a strong artist population have at least some stencil artists. Below are sample works from some of them. See www.stencilrevolution.com and www.woostercollective.com for more info on the art form and artist profiles. » Patrick Lejtenyi