SPAIN-

I spent about a week between Barcelona and Costa Brava.  The work was much more sporadic and less refined among the smaller coastal towns, but Barcelona was very cool.  All of the businesses had metal roll up doors, and every single one was full of graffiti ranging from pretty refined burns to scrappy scrawls.  Strolling through the city at various times of the day provided different views of the work as businesses would open or close their doors with their businesses.  On sunday, nearly everything was closed and the city was an incredible graffiti gallery.  On the last day in Barcelona we stumbled into a park of extremely well executed work that I captured every single piece of.  Kim got frustrated as I walked like a zombie through a park mesmerized by this spectacular show; the park was home to the homeless and she’ll never let me forget the human feces on the sidewalk.  I told her to focus on the positives.

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….