Promises Promises

Two pieces I put up last weekend. The second one is fairly new. 

The idea behind it relates to the emotions that we feel require permission to experience. Happiness being the most obvious. Too often we assume there are a constant series of prerequisites to feel happy or content. This is probably because advertisers have spent most of the last two centuries convincing us of this myth. Buy these products and WE PROMISE you'll stop feeling so empty. WE PROMISE you won't feel ugly anymore. WE PROMISE you'll feel special. Happiness is not a product to be purchased and you don't need anyone's permission to embrace it. See also faith. See also change. See also a voice that makes a difference.

Da Da Doo Doom

...Even if the song is by Maroon 5.

 (click image to enlarge)

To strive, To seek, To find.

“We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

- Alfred Lord Tennyson

(I've posted this quote in the past but damn if it's not one of the greatest series of words ever written.)

Cut It Out

On Saturday I went out with Greg from Melrose&Fairfax and a pair of super cool documentarians that filmed me putting up a posters. A great time was had by all despite the fact that by the end of the day I was worried that blood would start dripping from their ears from hearing me yammer on endlessly. M&F is working with Blue Bunny Productions to do a series of videos following various artists around town. It sounds like a great project and I look forward to following it. I will of course post the video here once it's live. 

This was actually the last piece I put up that day. By this point we'd driven all the way to Santa Monica. I don't put up a ton of these Cut Out pasters but thought it'd be a fitting way to end the video. 

Thanks for showing me a good time guys! And I mean that in the John Travolta Massage Parlor kinda way.

No I don't.

OCCIDERE SOMNIUM

The gratification one derives from knowing that someone who rejected them in some way regrets it is one of the more potent sensations in life. This led me to fantasize about a formal organization made up of every person who ever rejected you, and their collective regret being communicated in something resembling a government correspondence. 

I mailed 50 of these letters to addresses picked randomly from the phonebook.

The Latin phrase written across the flag in the eagle’s mouth is OCCIDERE SOMNIUM, which translates to “Killing the Dream”, a phrase that felt apropos for an organization built on rejection. Also, the address of the society is actually the address of my old high school. This also seemed appropriate.