Post Graffiti Cont.

Here is a new direction for the work I have been doing that focuses on the parts of Reno that the public would rather ignore--derelict buildings and the homeless.

When the Aces ball stadium came to Reno, the city "cleaned" up the near broken area around Fourth St. to encourage tourism, but if you travel in one block in any direction from that point, the city returns to its previous, derelict, true, state. It is only window dressing, implemented in the hope that we would forget about the poor state of our city.

Last year the city of Reno came in with dump-trucks to tear down the homeless "tent city" just off of fourth St. Presumably, to discourage the growing number of homeless in this city. 

The purpose of this series is to bring those that the city would like to ignore, into a more visible and semi-permanent place--turning the invisible into visible, so to speak.

This is Anthony. He is fifty one, and although born in another state, has been living in this city for nearly ten years--through the aid of our Missions. 

Here is a stencil that I made of him: first in the location that I met him, in the hopes that he may return and see it for himself, and the second is right off of the Fourth St. area. 

More to come in the future. 

Post Graffiti

The stencil I produced for this project was designed to play with the space of an area to capture the attention of passersby, hopefully creating a connection to the derelict and ignored spaces of our city.

The idea is along the lines of, "can you ignore what is staring right at you, or staring at a third party that you would rather not pay attention to."

To play with this idea I made a stencil of a wide unblinking eyeball, a perfect sphere, and left the iris free floating from the stencil, so that whatever location I put it up at, I would be able to guide the direction of the viewers focus to what I wanted them to see.

It is a simple stencil, in both design and execution. But I think that it does what I wanted to accomplish wonderfully.

Here are photos of one location.

I plan to put more of these up around the city, in the eastern 4th St area, the next night we have that is decently warm.

Failed Snow Project

I intended to gather and store some snow in my freezer, and wait until all the snow around the city had melted before putting it back into the community.

I had made a snowman and intended to hide him in the freezer section of a nearby gas station. I had hand painted his nose and stick arms, which came out better than expected. However, where it all went horribly wrong was when I dipped fabric lint in archival ink to die them, then attached them to the snowman and left him alone in the freezer for four days.

And then THIS!

I, like an idiot, did not think about the ink bleeding into the snow. At least I have learned from my naive mistake, and the next time it snows I will attempt this again. But, as for this snowman, I would like to recycle the painted limbs and nose, so he wont be greeting you from the freezer section anytime soon.

Humor Flyers

I decided to make a series of flyers that create a narrative of an assumed character that continues to buy exotic pets to rid himself of a previously existing pet problem.

I originally wanted to place ALL of the flyers in and outside of local pet shops. And I did this for half of them. But, as I was out in the city putting these up, more humorous options presented themselves. In the area that I live, the local shops are primarily spanish-speaking, as are their clientele. Being able to hide the flyers amongst all of the existing phone card ads is what drew me to these locations, and I felt that if those entering the establishment could not read english, then they may relate these flyers to "wanted posters" rather than flyers requesting the item pictured. If one guy out there thought that a bobcat was loose in the neighborhood (or if someone actually asked for the fictional Tito) I will die a happy man.

I apologize for the quality of my location photographs

Snow Ideas

I think that doing a 2-Dimentional, stencil type, design or portrait on the black top of a basketball court would be a fun venture. The impermanence of snow would make for such a design to be a worthwhile venture, as they can be accomplished relatively quickly.

I also think that recreating a Calvin and Hobbes snowman scene would be terrific.

There is a park on Plumas St., where the hill slopes down before the fencing (leaving whatever is constructed in perfect view of the passing traffic, without obstruction), that could be perfect for such a venture. And there are hundreds of scenes to choose from, and a great amount of room for improvisation with this idea.

Public Art Idea

I was thinking of setting up a transparent grid of fishing wire in a long rectangular construction between posts, and using that grid as a template to recreate what is on the other side of the construction with a few extravagant changes. This could be done by using yarn to bring a lot of color to a site that the people of Reno pass by without paying much attention on a daily basis. This would not be a full on (woven) banner however, as being able to line up the skyline behind it would be the interactive element to this venture, its transparency and color would only work to augment what is already present.

The Idea would be to recreate the landscape to encourage people to look at the little pockets of beauty that we have all over this city, by bringing some more eye catching elements into the scenery (Perhaps mountains of vibrant color with Godzilla attacking planes in the skyline?) .  There could also be several constructions existing on the same post; lining up different parts of the scenery at different angles and perspectives--which could include parts of the neighborhoods, or looking in the other direction, parts of the city.

I will continue polishing this idea, and testing on a smaller scale to see how feasible this idea would be.

Opening Post

ALthough this example is lessened by the fact that it is used for commercial and advertising purposes, there is still a great thing happening in this video. The main part that catches my attention is the willingness of (supposed) strangers to try this experiment, and to see it through, with the concern of viewing the display in its full form at the heart of their involvement--the mystery of what is breaking the norm in plain sight. A wide open area is made into an interactive piece of art for few to create, and all to watch. Regardless of the questionable nature of this advert, I think that this level of involvement and sense of community over this one instance can be applied to public art, or even devolope a co-dependent relationship. 

Plus, It's still fun.