WordPress Photo Challenge: Hands
As I shot this, I got to thinking about what the artist’s hands look like after he (she?) was done painting this. I mean, it’s about five feet tall, was probably painted at night when an artist is less likely to get caught, and fully spray-painted. I can’t imagine those hands were clean.
Holey Moley!
Lame pun? Check.
Giant concrete supports? Check.
Cool underground circles? Check.
Photo of cool graffiti? Check.
Zombie Triptych
Kris (a friend and colleague) and I went trekking through the mud Monday to check out the recent renovations at our local graffiti venue. The zombies are definitely a new(ish) addition to the area. I posted a photo of the largest portion of the triptych on Monday, but after looking at all the photos, I thought it might be fun, morbid fun, to put them all together.
It’s certainly not something I’d hang on my wall at home, but I think it’s creepy cool.
HERO RESER KORT GUT JOME…
…LESEN…and whatever else it says on the left side there.
I don’t know what “TIO” and “ETC” means, but I like this piece. I stitched this together from about eight photos. Here’s the odd part: I didn’t notice the background to this piece until I saw it through my lens. It’s so weird that the skulls were completely hidden to my naked eye, but, through the lens, the background stood out.
I feel like this might look like an exercise in PhotoShop skills, seeing as I’ve given you nothing to anchor this as a graffiti piece on a concrete wall, but I hope you like it anyway. Someone took his time putting it up – I’m just publicizing it.
Mystic Raccoon!
This may look familiar. I’ve posted this guy before. What I went for on this shot that differs from the rest is this: This is a photomerge of five shots. I took this a week ago. I shot from low to high, correcting the exposure as I went, which did not need much adjustment, actually, as it was a cloudy day with perfectly diffused light.
In previous shots of this same street art, I didn’t get the details quite as clearly. That’s why I went back. Sometimes, there are photo opportunities that haunt the back of my head until I get the shot the way I saw it in real life. Just a little OCD, I guess.
Oh, and sorry about the long scroll-down. Click on the image and it’ll open in a way that fits your browser.
Circles!
“Style is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward” – Robert Frost.
I’ve always loved Frost’s poetry and the image of circles like this brings me back to his imagery.
Garbledygook
Gibberish. Nonsense. Babble. Blahblahblah. Yada yada yada.
I don’t care what you call it, but I don’t understand it. The graffiti above presumably means something and were I a street artist I might even be able to decipher what it means. As it is, I am an English teacher and I haven’t got a clue.
I still appreciate its beauty and artistry. To be able to pull off something this large with spray paint in a short amount of time – it is public property, after all – is amazing to me.
Can anyone read this?
The eye is always watching
The eyes are the windows to the soul.
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into heaven.
I’ve got my eye on you.
An eye for an eye makes the whole world go blind.
Look me straight in the eye.
You never know how you look through the eyes of others.
Um…do you have any to add?
Freaks and geeks…
I managed to get out and shoot some street art today. Despite not feeling well and waking up far too early (4:07 a.m. Really? Stupid brain…go back to sleep at that hour) I ran some stairs and then went for a quick photographic adventure.
I will post, in the next few days, the actual route that I take to get to this underpass. It sits under the Trans-Canada highway and houses two lines of rail. It also houses some of our city’s homeless, who’ve taken refuge at the upper parts of the berms that hold up the highway. It also, conveniently, is just around the corner from Wal-Mart.
Lately, I’ve come to use the term “freak” quite often, so when I found this I had to shoot it. Not the prettiest photo, but definitely a statement. What’s it saying to you?
Photo Friday: Street Art Spirit Raccoon
This is one of my favorite pieces of street art. It’s some kind of “anti-consumerist” comment that I’m not even sure I understand, but I don’t know that exact comprehension is important when it comes to art.
This piece might be about the consumption of native art and the fact that the real meaning of aboriginal painting is lost when it’s purchased by ignorant people. Maybe it’s about aboriginal artists no longer making their art for community and are now making it for the highest bidder. Maybe it’s about raccoons holding people hostage by sitting on their heads. I don’t know.
What I do know? It looks cool.
Photo Friday’s challenge this week is Animal. Spirit raccoon seemed to fit.
Can’t Catch Me
That’s serious arrogance. On the shoe of, presumably, the graffiti artist is the sign of his attitude: ”CAN’T CATCH ME”. I wonder if he actually left his shoe behind on purpose or if he took off so fast that he left them behind by accident. Oh…wait…there’s an option I hadn’t thought about until this moment…
Our local graffiti artist is the…GINGERBREAD MAN! It all makes sense now. I remember how the story goes:
I’ve run away from a little old woman,
A little police man,
And I can run away from you, I can!
You can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man!
Wow. My exam marking exhaustion is making my fevered brain worse by the moment. Let’s stop this before it gets…any…crazzzzzzzzzzzzz
I hereby present, to the world, my first triptych
I was playing with a bunch of photos of this helmeted guy – you can look at yesterday’s post if you want to see the photo all by itself. I’ve been playing at different ways to present a photo and this offered the opportunity to play with perspective. I tried to focus on the art and its context. I also accidentally did the first one in grayscale instead of color, so below is the result of that. What do you think? Am I doing okay?
And, yes, I did play around with the composition of the triptych. Which one worked better?
Whoever wears this helmet, if he be worthy…
…will possess the power of the mighty Thor. No, wait. That’s the hammer to which Odin was referring, not the helmet. Sorry. I got that all wrong.
On the other hand, given the mustache, this could be, say, Don Quixote.
Maybe a steampunk Iron Man, with Tony Stark circa 1981. Actually, now that I think about it, that is much more interesting than the whole “Thor” thing.
It could be, however, that the artist who created this painting had nothing superhero-ish in mind at all. Maybe it’s a comment on the way in which we’re all masked through our use of technology and that “nothing is but what is not.” A sort of post-modern Macbeth-ian interpretation of our Facebooked, texted, Twittered society, wherein we guard ourselves against life by creating insular armor of emoticons and 140 character blurbs about our exercise regimens and bathroom habits. Maybe the artist is begging us to embrace the humanity behind the armor, behind the guarded personalities we project through our use of smartphones and iPhones.
Or, maybe he just thought that a glowing aura helmet guy would look cool.
I wish I had mindreading powers…or…maybe not.
Imagine if you could read the minds of others.
I thought, at first, that it would be awesome. I thought about being able to better understand other people through mind-reading. To better meet others’ needs. To be able to go past the “I’m fine” that is often offered when I ask the question “How are you?” To be able to get the truth instead of the politically correct, socially acceptable half-truth.
Then I remembered that my thoughts are not always the most appropriate. In fact, I’m pretty sure I don’t want others to read my mind.
Mind-reading? Meh.
It’s refreshing to see concern for others (weekly photo challenge)
I don’t know who this “Home Boy” is, but it’s nice to see that someone’s looking out for him. I mean, it could be a personal message from one tagger to another, letting the homeboy know that his bro knows he’s lonesome. It could be just an observation by an objective observer of the human condition.
On the other hand, it could be a lonesome home boy crying out to the world, letting everyone who sees this message know that he, the home boy, is lonesome.
I’m not sure what the point was, but someone felt a strong enough concern that the message had to be spray-painted on a wall. I feel encouraged.
Urban Wilderness: Photo Friday
I’m particularly proud of this shot. Well, it’s actually two shots. I held the camera on the horizontal plane, then merged them in Photoshop. I shot this with a Pentax A 50mm at f8; a higher aperture in order to get a deeper clarity.
As for the content, this is my favorite little spot, under the highway, near the WalMart in Abbotsford, BC. I was just there three weeks ago and some ridiculous tagger left turtles everywhere. Thankfully, it took less than three weeks for someone with real artistic vision to paint right over the turtle. While I was down there, I shot this and a whole lot of other photos. You’ll see them in the next week.
This shot is more of the urban wilderness that exists in the hidden parts of the city. This week’s Photo Friday challenge is “Wilderness” and this is my interpretation. What do you think?
Street cred is wha…ahhh…I’m too tired for this.
I really am too tired. I’ve not taught a student this week and I’m more tired than ever. I’m currently moving my classroom from the third to first floor (at my request) and I’ve been moving the better part of twelve years of teaching around my school. And…ho-ley craaaaaap have I accumulated stuff. I’m using this as a time to cull the stuff I don’t use, but I still have to move it, whether I cull it or not. Yay! Now I know how Sisyphus felt.
Needless to say (so I won’t – haha), I’ve not had a great amount of time to take new photos. Above is a photo from last week’s graffiti photo-fest. I found this one buried among the other photos.
Awkward Turtle: the Donald Trump of street art
I took these two photos back on Monday. What struck me as odd is that this turtle is showing up in so many different places around Abbotsford, BC (where I work). These two identical looking turtles are both in the railway underpass where so many of my graffiti photos have been taken. But, while I was driving home from West Abbotsford on Tuesday, I noticed two more of these guys on the new highway overpass that connects South and Central Abbotsford. Someone’s marking his or her territory with a frightfully cute tag mascot. Just taking over other pieces of art and tags, like some sort of Donald Trump-like street art reptile.
I’m used to seeing tags and street art depicting the hellish and torturous nature of trying to live a life “on the street” and survive. This turtle, as the saying goes, is the “awkward turtle.” I don’t know why he’s showing up where he does, but he is too cute to be tough.
On a side note, this is my first diptych and I think it turned out alright. What do you think?
Bullseye
I teach high school English. This means that I teach poetry. Well, more accurately, I introduce poetry to my students, teach them how to approach poetry and then let them do with it what they can. I never liked the approach most of my teachers used on me: the hunting method of reading poetry. I often imitate Elmer Fudd in my approach to poetry to illustrate the way many teachers teach poetry. They take their students on a hunting trip, during which the students are expected to track down the metaphors, personification and rhyme scheme (if there is one) and then fill in the blanks on a sheet. I feel sad when my students tell me this.
Poetry is about life and when you’ve lived as little as they have, they will not understand what the poem is about. I am always shocked by what a poem says and how it says it and how, years from now, I will re-read a poem I’m teaching right now and see all new things in it. Because by that time I may have lived the content of the poem and now it means something to me.
What does this all have to do with the photo? I love repetition. Repetition can make an element stand out, as it does above. Or it can make an element sound silly (try saying, “Unique New York,” five times). Or it can make you feel reassured, as when my children tell me they love me. Or…well, I think you get the “picture”.
