It’s a Follow Up Friday!!

The wall I painted Mr. Harper onto was recently buffed. Whoever was sent to paint over the graffiti generously decided to leave my stencil unmolested! (You can see how they carefully went around the outline of the stencils head, and you can also see the little bit of brown paint on his helmet where a less careful tagger dipped into the stencil- now buffed.)

This could be because the stencil was somehow mistaken for official mural work. It could be because the buffman liked the work or was politically sympathetic- Harper hasn’t made alot of friends in Toronto. But it could also just be Harpers unaccountable knack for escaping normal consequences unscathed.

P.S.: The number “900″ on Harper’s helmet was selected to represent, at the time, the estimated number of arrested: the largest mass arrests in Canada ever. That number is now known to be more than 1000.

Time for a Quick Follow-Up on the Mario Planter Boxes!:

These Two have been broken. One side of each has been kicked(?) off.

These Two have been taken away.

And These Two have been looked after! How do I know? Check out the support that the poor little pumpkin plant has been given by a caring stranger. The lil’ dude had bent over in the wind. Someone put it up and set it right again!

Maybe these boxes are doing better because they are less flashy than the unbopped ones, but whatever the reason, I’m always completely charmed and reassured by the gardening of strangers.

So the wankers put the umbrella back up.

The way the beach umbrella was mounted before wasn’t adequate: It was strapped in a half-assed way to the pillar, requiring that the roof be removed, and presenting real safety problems in the high winds that we’ve been having. It was a PROBLEM. Acting quickly, the umbrella was removed, and as you can see, in short order it was re-installed in a much more sturdy and professional manner. PROBLEM SOLVED. After all, H&M was promised a branded beach umbrella- and there were contracts to uphold- money to be lost.

And those other PROBLEMS that the advertising pillar has with its secret life as a tourist information booth? Like the has-never-once-been-functional touch screen? Don’t worry. As you can see, they sent someone around right away to take care of that too. PROBLEM SOLVED. After all, Astral Media has a contract with the city- no, with the people of Toronto themselves- a sacred bond- to provide quality tourist information in exchange for being trusted with the privilege of exploiting our shared streetscape for personal profit.

Original work here.

I didn’t catch a photo in time, but when they undid my repairs to the tourist information stand, they not only replaced the interesting information with uninformative & underfed bikini-clad vixens, but also strapped a full-sized, H & M branded Beach Umbrella to the damn thing. They even took off the roof to accommodate it. I couldn’t take a photo of this “Tourist Station Domination” because I could locate my friggin camera that day. You ever have one of those days? frig. Anyways, by the time I located my camera and returned to the spot, the offending umbrella had been removed- presumably because the high winds we’ve been having made the umbrella a safety risk. Hopefully it was removed preemptively, and nobody had to be hurt for this lesson to be learned.

If anyone caught a photo, I’d love to get ahold of it.

Here’s a Follow-Up I forgot to post!

If you recall, when the two phone kiosks that housed pine trees in Astoria were removed, I simply shifted the surviving pine tree, “Calgary”, up the street and reinstalled her in the very next empty phone Kiosk!

Well, after featuring her in her new perch on the site, the empty kiosk was again removed, and Calgary, again spared.

So, well stocked with snark, I got ready to move her further and further around the streets of Astoria, fully prepared to play this game of Cat and Mouse until all of the empty Kiosks were removed- and that might take awhile as there was no shortage of empty phone kiosks!

But Telebeam was a step ahead of me! They removed them all! Every. Last. One.

Well done, friends! Here is my overdue congratulations and thanks!

If you’re curious- Calgary got retired to a deck, where I hope she is well watered and has overwintered well.

So, through direct action street art (Street Artivism? ) two public space issues in Astoria have been resolved- the junky phone kiosks littering the streets, and the scum river, Right? Well, no quite. The scum river has been diverted and dried up, yes, but work on the site has seemingly stalled. More on that soon from my partner in slime, Jason Eppink.

In the meantime, If you like urban guerrilla gardening, like Calgary and Edmonton the lil’ pines, then you will almost certianly LOVE this new shirt of mine:

Inspired by the most famous entrepreneurial guerrilla gardener to ever walk America, Johnny Appleseed, comes this modern, post-apocalyptic flavored update: Jack Appleseed!

Jack Appleseed, born (John Hammer, September 26, 1980), is an American pioneer, a wanderer who walks the sun bleached, lifeless roads of America- stopping only to turn the public parking wastelands he comes across only all too often, into public parks

Based on this stencil.

Here is an older, so-so sticker that I put up in NY and someone buffed by simply spraying the bottom part of the phone kiosk silver!

A solid plan, but something kinda funny happened: the absorbent sticker paper contrasted nicely with the non-absorbent ink I printed with, so the image didn’t really get buffed, it just got a shiny new monotoned colour scheme!

Also funny: the payphone kiosk will certainly outlast the sticker, and when it goes, as all stickers will, there will be a much longer-lasting little square of contrasting silver tones remaining- preserving in hard-wearing enamel paint the evidence of my stickers presence, and by extension, my presence.

Kinda judoesque. My enemies energy turned against them and used to further my own goals.

Also kinda Goldsworthyesque. Reminds me of my favorite scene from Rivers and Tides: We see Andy having a eccentric “Andy Moment”, lying in a rural street, peaceful, seemingly enjoying the summer rain on his face. Then he stands up, and you realize that he’s also been using the rain to print a temporary silhouette of himself onto the street. A basic self-portrait that will begin to fade the moment he stops making it. Magic.

It’s a Follow Up Friday!

I’m sorry that there hasn’t been any updates this week. Work has got me doing very long shifts. I tried to tell my bosses that people count on me to be out there vandalizing things everyday, but no dice.

But I do have something to share with you, because the other day I got an email from Mr. Logan Hicks! It would seem that his son has taken a shining to the Chip doll I sent him:

“Posterchild.

how’s it going? It’s Logan. I was going through my emails and it
dawned on me that I don’t think I ever wrote you to thank you for the
doll. I really apologize, it was rude of me to accept and not hit you
up afterwards. Please accept my apology.

Wanted to say that it is dope. I like it, but now my son seems to have
adopted it! he’s 19 months old, and one day he saw it and cried til I
gave it to him. Now it sits amongst his pile of stuffed animals and he
will occasionally pull it out and lay on it. If i am quick with the
camera I will make sure I snap a pic of him.

Anyway, thanks so much. Hope all is well w you

Logan Hicks”

Adorable pics, no?

Original work here. More Product testing here.

And hey, Logan is coming to Toronto to do a show called “PARALLEL UNIVERSE” with fellow stencil artist C215! They will be at Show and Tell! Don’t miss it!

Can I just say how happy I am that Toronto has a gallery like Show And Tell? They are bringing some great artists to Toronto, and representing some great Toronto talent. And thier new space is beautiful.

My Dadaist work; A Baa Fetched Finny Ring Roll Romp is actually now completely gone. It was recently removed as construction on this building proceeded, but for a long while it hung, silenced, while the weather slowly pulled off it’s paint- like a dog tugging at a tablecloth, pulling it off in slow motion. Even though it’s now completely mute- It still seems to me to hang immense and heavy in some way; like an old war machine unceremoniously pinned to corkboard, waiting for the weather to strip it of colour.

Forgive the flowery language, I thought it was rather striking. I suppose the Dadaist influence is giving me gas; I’m all artsy-fartsy here.

Though, to be fair, I suppose a true Dadaist would describe it more like “A fornicating breakfast, laid waste inside a tomb surrounded by soap and shoe polish, forever circling the lampshaded door.”

This piece has lasted way longer than I thought it would.

Also,

I’ve decided that I don’t like this stencil. Time has changed my opinion of it. I no longer like it- at least in its original state.

So, I was pleased to see its evolution. I quite like where it is at now…

The street, and time, and taggers can rescue a bad work- it would seem.

The lovely silhouettes that TEETH and I made;

They have not been buffed!

Indeed, as this picture illustrates, other sorts of graffiti have been buffed regularly (In this case, perhaps someone added a word or thought bubble above the head of our male lover? I wonder, what was on his mind?) but our silhouettes remain. Whosoever is the guardian of this vacant property has decided to allow and protect the “Ghost House” ghosts. All other colonists have been dealt with in the usual, harsh manner.

It’s always very gratifying when this sort of thing happens.

Making a GOOD work that can also pass the litmus test of a community and a caretaker- that’s tricky. It’s one of the hardest tests a street artist can pass.

Congrats to us, TEETH!