Reverse graffiti time!

Reverse Graffiti’s greatest hits
From the website:

“Welcome to the world of reverse graffiti, where the artist’s weapons are cleaning materials and where the enemy is the elements: wind, rain, pollution and decay. It’s an art form that removes dust or dirt rather than adding paint. Some find it intriguing, beguiling, beautiful and imaginative, whereas others look upon it in much the same way as traditional graffiti – a complete lack of respect for the law. Reverse graffiti challenges ideals and perceptions while at the same time shapes and changes the environment in which we live, whether people think for the better, or not.”

What a wonderful combination of street art and environmental themes…it’s well worth checking out. All you need to pull something like this off is a bucket of water and a rag of some sort.

And in the interest of promoting local artists here in Ottawa, check out Pascale Conspiracy

A chair-back squid and urban farming musings

Well, about a week or so ago I was making my rounds on my bike when I stumbled upon an old, half-rotted wood chair being tossed away and decided to take it back to the workshop to salvage as much as I possibly could from it.

If I realized I’d be having these find-junk-and-transform-it adventures so often I’d start taking pictures of the whole process from start to finish. Maybe I’ll do that next time.

Anyways, my original thought was to saw the chair-back free from the rest, sand it down and make some sort of odd animal head, like I’ve done before.

But somewhere along the way it became this, which now hangs on a telephone pole near the Bank/Fourth intersection where it will hopefully brighten a few people’s days.

I’m sure that the connecting ground between street art and urban planning which I’ve been looking for for quite a while will be found in a decentralized, do-it-yourself and fluid approach towards planning. The growing urban farming movement is an example of a place where this line of thought is emerging. Eventually some sort of institutional approach towards locally producing our food will be (and will have to be)implemented, but as it stands now it’s still extremely DIY and collaborative.
Planetizen is a great urban-planning related blog, and their article on Urban Farming in Detroit is worth a read (especially since Detroit is being gutted in more ways than we would imagine. Food Deserts are growing at an alarming rate)

Oh, and take a look at the Reverse Graffiti Project. This is what happens when you selectively clean a dirty surface.