“She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her… I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little stratagems. Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her…”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Deep Ellum Art Park
Dallas, Texas
Deep Ellum Art Park
Dallas, Texas
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
Something
In front of
Braindead Brewing
Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas
“How is the birdhouse coming along, Charlie Brown?”
“Well, I’m a lousy carpenter, I can’t nail straight, I can’t saw straight and I always split the wood… I’m nervous, I lack confidence, I’m stupid, I have poor taste and absolutely no sense of design… So, all things considered, it’s coming along okay!”
—- Charles M. Schulz, The Complete Peanuts
Wry Birdhouse
Main Street
Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas
“A human being without the proper empathy or feeling is the same as an android built so as to lack it, either by design or mistake. We mean, basically, someone who does not care about the fate which his fellow living creatures fall victim to; he stands detached, a spectator, acting out by his indifference John Donne’s theorem that ‘No man is an island,’ but giving that theorem a twist: that which is a mental and a moral island is not a man.”
― Philip K. Dick, The Dark-Haired Girl
Rusted with Gun
Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas
“Oh it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh. The trombones crunched redgold under my bed, and behind my gulliver the trumpets three-wise silverflamed, and there by the door the timps rolling through my guts and out again crunched like candy thunder. Oh, it was wonder of wonders.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas
When looking at street art – murals especially – there is a thin line between art and graffiti and advertisement.
For example, this one – is obviously an advertisement for the band The Orange and their new album, Sharing Vitamins.
But it’s still cool – first, because it is cool. Second, because it is actually painted by the leader of the group, Scott Tucker, and he is a second generation professional mural painter, as well as a musician.
It doesn’t get an better than that… now does it my droogs.
Rodeo clown vibrations are crackin’ the skulls of false gods.
—-written in blue Sharpie on the side of an abandoned computer monitor
I am, of course, a fan of street art – the odder the better – and of guerrilla publishing. In my wanderings around town, I once stumbled across an interesting piece of text plastered up on a wall in Deep Ellum – Text on the Streets.
Stuck on a plywood-covered window. Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Then, over a year later, I found the same work stuck in a bottle on a park table in Oak Cliff – Message in a Bottle – Shazam!
Message in a Bottle
I have wondered about the artist – and wasn’t able to find out much. Some other folks were looking too, and I found a few examples of his work photographed and posted on the internet.
Here
Here
Here
Here
Then, this weekend, another year later, I found more of the artist’s work in Deep Ellum.
First, I stumbled across a pink decorated metal box on an out-of-the-way stoop.
Box found
Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas
Inside the box was a Xeroxed art work, with writing on the reverse.
Fantastic Cosmic Kismet Vibrations are flowing to you and through you NOW!
Obviously the same person. Walking onward, I found that he had kicked his stuff up a notch. In front of Braindead Brewing I found an old decorated computer monitor. It is good to see that in the last few years he has learned how to spell Hootenanny.
The Future is Now
Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas
The Universal Flow has led you to this exact moment in time and space.
Rodeo Clown Vibrations
Really cool stuff. I bow down.
Oh, and by the way, on the piece of paper found in the box, I discovered a clue that led me to find the artist… they even have a Facebook Page.
So who is it? I don’t think I’ll let on. Find it yourself. The clues are there.
“Any startling piece of work has a subversive element in it, a delicious element often. Subversion is only disagreeable when it manifests in political or social activity.”
—-Leonard Cohen
Rat Fink – painted on a firewall
Invasion Car Show
Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas
When I was a little kid – I used to put together plastic models of airplanes. I really enjoyed it – and I couldn’t imagine buying any kits other than aircraft. Then I met some guy, my age, that bought these weird little Ed Roth car kits – Rat Fink and that sort of stuff. At first it seemed uselessly weird to me, but the more I paid attention to the style and attitude, the more I liked it (though I was not then and never would be – a car person).
Now, I realize that it was my first exposure to subversive ideas – the first, but not the last.
“Sometimes it’s a little better to travel than to arrive”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
When I was a kid, my father bought a piece of property somewhere, I don’t really know where. On that property was a barn and in that barn was an old International Pickup Truck – I’m guessing about 1950 or so. It was black.
If memory holds – all the thing needed was a new battery and fresh fluids and it started and moved. I thought it was so cool to ride around in that thing.
It was cool, but not as cool as this one.
Invasion Car Show
Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas
Invasion Car Show
Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas
“Electronic aids, particularly domestic computers, will help the inner migration, the opting out of reality. Reality is no longer going to be the stuff out there, but the stuff inside your head. It’s going to be commercial and nasty at the same time.”
― J.G. Ballard
Invasion Car Show
Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas
“Some hats can only be worn if you’re willing to be jaunty, to set them at an angle and to walk beneath them with a spring in your stride as if you’re only a step away from dancing. They demand a lot of you.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys
Klyde Warren Park
Dallas, Texas
Bill Chance 