Creative Adventures in Portland

I had 3 colors in 6 cans of montana, 3 full and 3 about midway gone.  On the way down to Outside Lands we stopped in Dorris for a bite, and were informed there was a graffiti wall a block away.  Knowing we had to kill about 2 hours in our trip to Sac we spent a minute to hit up the wall.  The owner came out to ensure we weren’t painting gang related work (I look pretty gangster, they were concerned you know)  To keep it small I wrote a new moniker I’m working on “2D”

The story of the wall, as the owner told us, started as a fun thing for the local kids to paint on during halloween.  His wall had been tagged a bunch of times, and he was tired of it so he gave it a fresh clean coat of paint for the kids to play with.  Shortly after, he started receiving complaints from the city.  Irritated he painted the American flag and “REMEMBER THE BILL OF RIGHTS” at the top of the wall.  I can’t tell if I’m more impressed with his stand to protect my rights to graff his wall, or of his painting of the American flag.  Either way, this guy made an impression on me – standing up for artistic expression fits my “Art is Freedom” line I like to include with a lot of my work.

On the way back we needed to make another little stop, I still had quite a bit of paint.  However, I was down to about 2.5 cans after this drippy SIMPLE was done.  I also re-painted one of the characters already on the wall at the suggestion of my buddies.  I hope one of the local kids painted it and sees that his character has more definition and is more vibrant.  Maybe he’ll start buying Montana paint and become a graff artist later in life!  I would love to be someone’s inspiration.

My evaluation of my work:  I think the dimensioning on the 2D piece could/should be better.  It’s a little dis proportioned which makes it pop less.  However, I like it a little more than the SIMPLE piece.  I feel the simple piece lacks a fluid consistency and the dimensions were poor as a result of haste/little paint.  Also, the white outline on the 2D piece makes it jump off the wall a lot better than the orange outline on the simple piece.  I had just barely enough white to get the shine and dimensions on the SIMPLE tag or I would have outlined it in white also.  I wish I would have had all my paint so I could have done a real gnarly big piece.  Oh well, next trip to Cali I shall return….