Aaron De La Cruz keeps his eyes to the sky, not searching for Heaven but for the perfect place to display his art.

Street art captivated his creative mind as a kid. What the law considers an act of vandalism springboards for the 25-year-old visual artist’s imagination. Brick walls, freeway overpasses, rooftops and bridges became his canvas.

When he went to college, he took classes in traditional art, but that only introduced a new spot to bomb—galleries.

The same malicious mischief that put De La Cruz’s wrists in handcuffs now helps him make a living. He incorporates what he learned on the streets into his studio art and his soon-to-be-launched clothing line, Foreign Label.

“I grew up in a really small town [Fresno] where art still, to this day, isn’t really that big," De La Cruz says. "I was never really exposed to art. Graffiti was my first form of art and that’s how I fell in love with art and it kinda led me into other aspects of art from there.”

If marijuana is a gateway to mind-altering horizon expansion, then street art is a gateway to creative artistry. From writing your name with a marker to caulking tiles onto a wall in the shape of the Space Invader videogame monster, there are a million and one different things a midnight marauder can do on a single city block.

Street art is slowly becoming recognized as a legitimate art form. Many artists are making careers out of what they once did illegally on rooftops, especially here in San Francisco. Multiple venues provide outlets for street artists to show their work, such as Future Primitive Sound, the Low Gallery and Upper Playground’s FIFTY24SF art gallery.

“Graffiti is just a new movement of art,” says Mark Herlihy, owner of Future Primitive Sound, an art gallery/music store/clothing store/record label. “Street art is our modern art, it’s all throughout our culture.”

De La Cruz’s introduction to the graffiti world came at age five when his older brother took him to the side of a freeway and wrote their last name. In middle school, he took it up on his own.

He still hits the streets, creeping with ninja-like stealth so as not to get caught. Most notably, he led a stencil/sticker campaign in which he writes “CRE8 JOB5,” spawning from the question someone once asked him: What are you doing graffiti for?

“I’m creating jobs for people that have to clean it up,” is De La Cruz’s joking reply.

From commercial design gigs to murals, a wide range of jobs within the art field are opening up for street artists as it becomes more accepted by the masses.

“There’s different genres of art and I think street art is just one. It’s different with each artist,” says Ben Belsky, gallery director at Fifty24SF, an all-encompassing art gallery. “Some artists are just about the street. Some artists started on the street and took what they learned about painting, layering, coloring, composition; what they learned from doing graf on the street and then took it to another level.”

Kofie and Greg “Craola” Simkins, two Los Angeles-based artists currently showing their work at Fifty24SF, are examples of taking street art to another level. If you looked at their paintings, you wouldn’t guess they did graffiti because, like many street artists, they had been creating art their whole lives and got into graffiti in high school.

"Grover," who has been doing graffiti for only three years but has the aerosol skills of a seasoned veteran, is a jack of all art trades. “I try to encompass all forms of art: paintings, graphic design, film, and music,” he says.

A crowd of people stops, gawks and takes pictures of the young artist as he spray paints an abstract piece in the alley next to Amoeba Music on Haight Street. Grover, Kofie, Craola and members of the Lords crew are repainting the entire wall.

Similar murals, legal and illegal, can be found throughout San Francisco. The city is a bulletin board and the graffiti are notices for the public.

“The streets are telling San Franciscans that we need to create art in these frustrating times. Give us walls, give us galleries,” Herlihy says. “There are people out there that have no voice. People want to express themselves.”

This desire for self-expression is manifested through the writings on the walls, which are now part of the landscape as much as the homeless man holding a cup asking for change. Street artists from all over come to San Francisco because they know more people will see their work.

“Everybody wants to come to San Francisco. It’s a tourist destination. That’s one of the benefits of having our business here,” Belsky says. “Artists from all over the world want to show here. Not because our gallery’s the dopest or the biggest—it’s not the biggest—but it’s in San Francisco.”

Ironically, San Francisco doesn’t have the support in terms of art buyers, according to Herlihy.

Future Primitive Sound has hosted some of the largest international post-graffiti artists’ exhibits such as famed European artist Mode 2. Mode 2 had shown his work only twice in the United States and only sold three of his 20 works in San Francisco, Herlihy says. In New York or L.A., where street artists are recognized by the upper echelon, it would have been a sold-out show.

One of San Francisco’s best-known galleries, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, held the Beautiful Losers street art and skateboard exhibit last year. Yet it refuses to show the work of Doze Green, a San Francisco artist who had his work exhibited in the New York Museum of Modern Art.

To prove how bassackwards our country is, the European government subsidizes street art by providing legal walls for artists to bomb. Meanwhile, Future Primitive Sound imports its spray paint from Spain because Montana, the leading brand in Europe, offers about 120 colors compared to America’s leading brand Krylon, which only offers 40 to 50 colors. Herlihy says Montana even sponsors graffiti artists. Krylon insists its product is intended for construction purposes, though most of the company’s money is made off of graffiti artists.

Though Krylon doesn't want to be associated with graffiti, there are many who are passionate about the art form like De La Cruz. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop doing graffiti because I feel like everything I’ve done and am doing I owe to [it],” he says. “Hopefully by me doing it, it might push somebody else to get involved in art or graffiti.”