Today was a successful picture taking day. First of all, it was gorgeous. Secondly, I got a lot of good shots. However, some concerns were brought to my attention in regards to the abandoned building project I proposed in my last post. While I was out taking photos, I was questioned by a couple people from the neighborhood about what I was doing. Of course I explained innocently enough that I'm just taking photos, which is true for this moment. But it just shows that these buildings may be vacant, or look vacant but certainly aren't abandoned and forgotten by the neighborhood folk. This poses a challenge for if I go ahead with my idea to put up some kind of art work on these buildings. I have to take the community into consideration and perhaps earn their support. I'm sure there is a lot of concern about gang tags and vandalistic graffiti but that is not my angle here. I want to beautify an ugly eye sore, I want to engage the community in a peaceful harmonious way. Perhaps a good building to start with is one on my street that all the kids draw on with chalk. Clearly, it's become an accepted place for children to leave a mark so it shouldn't be a problem leaving my own. I like this idea of chalk too. It's non-permanent, ephemeral. I could paint the wood with a chalk board paint that would help the chalk stand out more. But I don't want the children to feel like I'm taking over their space so maybe I get them involved some how. Maybe all I need to do is prepare the surface and leave a big bucket of chalk for them to play with.... This needs more thought....













Starts to be a series of doors... there's a metaphor in that...


The Bike Shrines might be an easier place to start. They really are abandoned and not going anywhere. And i really like the idea of personifying them and creating a memorial.




Still taking pictures of shoes... its interesting to find them in clusters... i still don't fully understand why people do this.




I found myself getting really interested in No Parking signs for some reason.




Here are more Home tags.



and some other graffiti...

"I hate yo-yos because mine doesn't work."