True? Not? Does it matter?

So, the Banksy movie, Exit Through the Gift Shop.
True?
A hoax?
Does it matter?
Debating this with friends, I say no. True or not, it's art. Provocative. Fun. (Great soundtrack.)
Some things matter--treating old folks and kids right, oil gushing from a wound five thousand feet underwater.
I say this doesn't matter.
I like that we just don't know.

Roger that

I see this tag all over town.
LetGo
These were snapped on different days, on a parking paybox on lower Queen Anne, along Highway 99, and on a bus stop in the U-district.
Same tagger? I dunno.
The message is the same though.

Ciao ciao

Welp, I'm going out of town for a few days, back to where my people come from.
What? Oh, ha, very funny. No, not jail. Not Planet Crazy.
Here.

In the meantime, look around. Take some pictures. Eavesdrop. Listen to cool music. Read something funny, delicious, profane, lovely, thought-provoking, polemical, or downright irritating.

If you're up to the challenge, noodle on this from George Saunders: Don’t be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end, amen.

See you in a few.

Before the jump

Last week my hike around town took me across the Aurora Bridge, which has spectacular mountain and ocean views, and is apparently 2nd only to the Golden Gate Bridge in facilitating suicide jumps.
Hotline signs are posted about every 10 yards across the entire cruddily-painted span and mais oui, have been (un)suitably defaced.

Ephemeral

Sometimes I worry that I'm missing the point.

I'm a heady person, I think; I spend beaucoup time musing over my stories, eavesdropping, daydreaming, wondering, making up narratives about people, a girl with prematurely gray hair, razor cut and tinged with purple; or the tall dude at Rudy's wearing shoes that looked like they were made from red felt.

So many lovely, subtle details and yet the big picture eludes me. Why such a horde of shoppers at Value Village on President's Day? Hm, because everything in the store was 50% off--as announced by the truck-sized sign at the entrance. Which I missed because I had something on my mind.

There's little subtlety in this graffiti I snapped at Stone Way and Bridge, bordering a gaping construction zone hole.
What is art?
Love life.
Already painted over. Already gone.

The Power

I captured this upraised fist at Tubs last year.
The dark, gnarled branches didn't seem so significant at first.
But now that time has passed and my mindset is altered, I think they mean everything: the power of the organic, of nature, of raw human strength plus a darker less forthright force.
It's stark and still so beautiful.

Tree fitty and an octopologist

My sis just got back from six days in Knoxville (sounds like the first line of a country song don't it)--and brought with her pictures of local graffiti. It warms my cynical heart that others find street art amusing and provocative and worth preserving. I have pictures of some tags that were up at Bridge and Stone Way and recently painted over--more when I can get those posted.

For now, enjoy some Knawksville graffiti:

Tagger: Note to Self

I spotted this tag in a little-used doorway in Port Angeles this weekend.

I'd spent the morning digging a new hole for an ailing tree, then couldn't manage to evict the tree from its too-shallow home without doing residual damage to the roots. So, I cleaned up and headed into town and spotted this graffiti on Front Street.

The parenthetical makes me laugh. Plus, if you're running out of ink, why waste more ink saying so?

Splot

What you notice walking across the I-5 overpass on NE 45th is that someone has systematically applied paint splotches to the top of each metal balustrade, and given the eight lanes of traffic humming along below, there are quite a few metal posts. Each splotch is about the same size and shape. Some are green, others blue like this one.
*
What you also notice is that when you stop to take a photo of the splotches, drivers above and below start nervously braking and looking at you: Is she a terrorist? What's she doing taking pictures of a bridge? Is she going to jump?

Auntie Up

So here's where my head is -- when I saw this tag today I read "Auntie Up," as in I'm an auntie and "up with aunties." Something along those lines. Because, it is all about me, no?
*
The non-aunties among you may read it differently.
Ante up, I guess, or up the ante, in 2 different adjacent tags down on 1st Avenue South.

The evolution of vest

I spotted this series in the U-district, as though the tagger were trying to figure out his or her signature. Puffy letters, vertical, horizontal with a flourish.
Continuing on up 45th, I spotted the tag every few blocks on street signs and light poles. I felt like an urban Daniel (Danielle?) Boone had gone before me, but I lost the trail around Meridian St.

Graffiti NYC

More graffiti from my trip last month.
1) Chelsea mural in black and white--love the stark simplicity
2) Brick wall in Chelsea near the Piers--here I love the random raggedy layers
3) En route to Moma--love love love

Graffitifever--catch it

Check out my sister's blog by lynn krestel for photos of Canadian graffiti. My sis is as creative as they come but until now her interests hadn't extended to street art. (You might remember my memento pendant, which is her handiwork.)

Then I saw in last Sunday's paper that a new edition of Graffiti World was out. My treehugger self debated for all of seven seconds before I ran down to University Bookstore and handed over my $35. A big glossy book featuring street art from around the world--a treasure, and worth every penny (sorry trees).

Open wide

I see this sign a couple of times a week and it always makes me laugh.

The relationship between the text and the two figures is elusive--are they swallowing the words, or did they just cough them up?

The latter, I think. It feels more meta. "Regurgitate nothing," says the sign, which was itself regurgitated. A text fit for a graduate level literature course.

Or, me, hurrying to my bus and chuckling.

Tweet

I love this bird, markered onto a pillar somewhere on 5th Avenue in downtown Seattle. Is that his head, or a cartoon bomb? Is he whistling, or about to explode? His unwaveringly shiny eye gives no clue.
*
Last week, when it was so hot, I witnessed an act of true seagull savagery. A fat angry male made a feet-first, three point landing on the head of another gull which was in the middle of packing half a bagel down its gullet. Birds are not known for their avian kindnesses but this guerrilla attack was both alarming and merciless. Incoming gull managed, with his sneak-bounce attack, to dislodge part of the bagel. Diner gull scooped up his crumbs and hopped-flew away, swallowing like crazy.

A priority message

Remember I told you to look up when you're walking down the street? (Be safe and all, natch.)
I snapped this series of doodled shipping stickers along a 1/2 mike stretch in Wallingford.

I tried to simply enjoy and not think too hard about what they were or meant -- poetic clues to a scavenger hunt? Coded messages? Or just random, disposable thoughts?

People will talk

I try to walk different routes on my rambles around Seattle. This forces me to pay attention to my surroundings instead of lapsing into a blissed-out travel coma. It also means I do a certain amount of backtracking out of cul-de-sacs and old stone staircases that turn out to be entryways to private yards.

It also doesn't hurt to look up. To notice the graffiti tags and signs and private little posters affixed to nearly all flat surfaces and public objects. Conversations are being conducted all around us. People expressing themselves. Saying what's on their minds--cursing, celebrating, being goofy, talking about sex. All the things that make being a human being so great and so painful.

In the course of an hour, between the U-district and Fremont, I saw these 2 signs and a graffito, which range from Hallmark cheer to menace to despair:





Then I spotted this lovely creature pasted to the site of a utility cabinet. No commentary. No URL. Just being.

Wud up dawg?

You may remember my obsession with street art, and the Tubs/FreeSheepFree project. (Go ahead, stroke my ego--"Remember, how could we forget?")

I love the humor in graffiti--it's raw immediate provocation, laced with wit, satire, and of course crudity. It's why I love hip hop, and hanging out with my little sister (hi sis!). It--graffiti--is also of the moment, thoughtful, sometimes comforting, often lovely. Which reminds me of my other sister (heya).

What I really want to discuss though is hot dogs. These dawgs appeared at Tubs. "Wud up dawg" is my favorite. I had to duck behind a city-use sign and break a couple of branches to get the shot. This cranky looking wiener combines two--no three--of my favorite things: graffiti natch, hot dogs, and phonetic spelling. I come from a long line of librarians, writers and English teachers; if there's one thing embedded in my DNA, it's spelling. So I take special, rebellious delight in the artfully spelled word.

And the fact that, despite this post, I'm again sitting here trying to remember how to spell "misspell" ought to be indicator enough that I fell out of the family English tree and probably broke a branch or two--on my way to take a picture of a dawg.

Picasso and key chains

I brought it on myself, asking "ou est henry?"
Now I know. Turns out, a lot of people know.
It's like when you're a kid and you first see a Picasso painting, maybe one of the still lifes, and you think "Oh my god, he is amazing, I can't believe more people don't know about him," and then you come to realize that yes, people do know about him, and furthermore he's become a capitalist product, that there are Picasso baseball hats and key chains and hey, possibly even a Picasso condom.
Regarding henry: I wish him the best. I'm looking forward to discovering more of his work around Seattle.
And if I can find the birthplace of Sasquatch, I'll let you know.

Snark...and a teaser

Best sign at the U-District Street Market this morning:

Hail Seitan
Go Vegetarian

Here's a teaser--I happened upon a mural finished by henry just yesterday! The paint fresh and sparkly, the nearby grass trampled and swiped with red and blue paint. More soon -- I know now who he is and even got a hint where his next project -- a 3 story Sasquatch--will appear.