Being street artist often invites comments, conversations, unsolicited photographs and strange happenings. Here are a few tales, varying from pimpin to poopin to paint by numbers. Enjoy.
Hatin’ on Frank
During the early stages of my current Guggenheim Painting, a guy wearing a backpack dropped this one on me:
Him: “Yo, yo, who did dis.”
Me: “The painting or the building?”
Him: “Building.”
Me: “It was architected by Frank Lloyd Wright.”
Him: “Word. Word. So yo. Why you hatin’ on Frank Lloyd Wright?”
- After the jump, shitty sidewalks, paint by numbers and a whole lot more.
A Shitty Day in Minneapolis
While painting at the corner of North 1st and North 7th Avenue in downtown Minneapolis, a homeless guy left me an all day treat. Here’s the sitch:
Day two started out with an outline (fun) and a run-in with an urgent street character (less so.) Now, this is horrible, and seeing is believing (at your own risk) – but I must share. Ten minutes after setting up at 10:10AM on a hot summer day, a potentially (definitely) high gentleman came shuffling past my easel. He Sinatra-smooth dropped his pants, deposited his breakfast (and various other substances) in a swift midair leap, lands in it, leaves a perfect footprint, sashays in two more leaps, wipes his bare ass against the wall, pulls up his pants and disappears. This whole thing took 12 seconds, but the joyous smell lasted a lifetime as the thermometer rose to 95. Thank you universe.
Warholian Compliment, or Verbal Bitch Slap?
Whilst painting on 5th Avenue, a well-to-do lady with a nice coif (not pictured below, that is in fact a picture of my Dad and me) snarks:
Her: “Let me guess, paint by numbers.”
Me: “Something like that.”
Pimps Hurt Their Hands When They Hit Stuff, Just Like Us!
Did you know real life pimps hang out in Times Square? One thing I learned from my purple zoot-suit wearing Colombian friend who joined me for three sessions was this: pimpin ain’t, in fact, easy:
Pimp: “So you paint? You’re a painter?”
Me: “Yes, I surely am.”
Pimp: “Dealing with people is hard. You deal with people a lot, do you?”
Me: “True that.”
Pimp: “Sometimes my bitches make me so mad. They don’t do what they have to do, and then I have to slap these bitches, and you know what I mean, my knuckles, they ache. Especially when it rains.”
Me: “Oh.”
- Just the tip of the iceberg. More tales to come another day. Happy Monday.
the pimp story is golden
You know, my high school english teacher once told me; “To live in the city (Manhattan) in itself is truly a gift”. After reading about the pimp, word… haha dealing with people is HARD… that why I stop but I gotta go back outside and paint…
I’m an architect