Large graffiti

Giant graffitiMy son is stand­ing next to giant let­ters that some­one sprayed on this con­struc­tion site in a major city.

I can’t remem­ber see­ing graf­fiti that big before.

(You can click on the image to enlarge it.)

Anonymous photography

People I will never meetOne thing I love about pho­tog­ra­phy is that you can take pho­tos and have them for a while.

We took a long trip this sum­mer, and I’ve thor­oughly enjoyed look­ing at the pho­tos I took, over and over.

This fam­ily was in the Harrod’s Store in Lon­don. I will never know who they are. They will never know who I am. We will never meet. But I can won­der about what their lives might be like.

Graffiti good and bad

As I’ve said before, I love graf­fiti.

In Paris, I saw both the good and the bad. I think the left exam­ple is bad. A really pic­turesque neigh­bor­hood was hurt by that per­sonal expres­sion. (And inter­est­ingly, it was about six sto­ries above street level, so very few peo­ple see it.)

The poster, how­ever, had very cre­atively applied graffiti.

What are some exam­ples of good and bad graf­fiti you’ve seen?

An early SUV

Dig­ging through boxes last week­end, I came across this draw­ing from yours truly — circa a long time ago.

Yes, I did invent the idea of SUVs. (Sadly, the roy­alty pay­ments are way behind.)

Go see some art

Art is a won­der­ful way to look at our world dif­fer­ently. I know if I had seen the actual head of this par­tic­u­lar high school stu­dent, she would look dif­fer­ent. But in dif­fer­ence is found beauty.

The week­end approa­cheth. Go out to see some art. It’s often free, if you look in the right places.

Hidden beauty inside

My daugh­ter cut up an apple dif­fer­ently than usual.

I had never seen an apple in that way before.

The developing world converges

jeepneyJeep­neys are the main way peo­ple get around in the Philip­pines. In East Africa, peo­ple ride in Mata­tus. I liked them so much I fea­tured them a fair amount when I lived in Nairobi.

So I came across this photo of a Jeep­ney in a mis­sion­ary mag­a­zine* — and I was struck by how the art­work was so sim­i­lar to what could be found on Mata­tus in down­town Nairobi! It’s just amaz­ing that the influ­ences that shape how artists do their craft are sim­i­lar, even 6,000 miles (9,500 km) apart!

Not only does matatu art reflect the lat­est trends in soci­ety, it always shows the cutting-edge of young artists’ cre­ativ­ity. (How­ever, some matatu artists are bet­ter than oth­ers!) Often the sev­eral ran­dom say­ings on one matatu pro­vide a good laugh. One of my fan­tasies while liv­ing in Nairobi was to hire a pho­tog­ra­pher to take a mil­lion pho­tos of mata­tus — and then I would cre­ate a cof­fee table book out of the best pix. Any angel investors out there will­ing to chip in?

* (Sorry, there was no credit given to the pho­tog­ra­pher, or I would have passed that on.)

Root woman

root-womanI had to share her with you. We went on a fam­ily hike yes­ter­day near Boul­der, Col­orado. (That’s about an hour from our home.) I saw this lit­tle lady sit­ting by the edge of the trail. She was beg­ging to be pho­tographed. I obliged.

Art here

r-shadow-artI was amazed when I saw Rachel doing this the other day — she was trac­ing the shad­ows with chalk on our porch. I never would have thought of doing that — but (I thought) it was very creative.

Advice that should be given

horse-head2One of the most mem­o­rable moments of design school was when the lead pro­fes­sor (Frank Cheatham) said, “If you are here to learn to draw bet­ter horses, then you are in the wrong place.”

That always stuck with me. When we enter a learn­ing expe­ri­ence with too strong an idea of what we want to get out of it, we will prob­a­bly not learn very much.

Some­how I wanted to work that thought around to my next idea, but I couldn’t fig­ure out how. Maybe it’s that the above advice should have been given a long time ago to a young per­son I know. They are in a pro­gram that is just not suited to them. They are so far down the road that it’s too late to do some­thing else. They seem to be happy enough (though the course of study is quite a chal­lenge), but no one has ever given that advice.

They are (prover­bially) draw­ing a lot of horses. Hours and hours, days and days, spent draw­ing more horses.

I’m a bit ashamed that I did not have the courage to say something.

Would you have said something?

The horse paint­ing — it’s copyright-free from Dover Pub­li­ca­tions. And the artist must have enjoyed cre­at­ing it.