As if it has grown out of nowhere suddenly it is there, a tree, in the middle of the cities concrete, steel and glass. Usually nature prevails over urban landscape by penetrating through concrete. In this case I'm talking about man-made nature. Overnight somebody has created the illustration of a tree by inserting cuttings of plastic-foam tube into a stretched metal fence. It makes me smile. It makes me think. It makes me wonder. Maybe it's not just the tree in itself, it's the fact that somebody has made it. Somebody has come up with this idea and has had the courage to actually create it. Officially it would probably be tagged as vandalism. Which makes it a sort of paradox, urban art is good for us, it triggers our imagination, makes us think, it makes us feel good, maybe it even makes us a bit happier? But it's against the law.
I would plea that illegal urban art makes city life better. Blank walls and fences should be released for urban intervention. Streets should be proclaimed to be galleries. Street artists should be celebrated, we should thank them, they are bringing art back to the people. All the people. Not just the elite that visits galleries and museums.
First, I think you would have many agreements among urban dwellers, especially those who traverse on foot or bike or similar. Makes the landscape more interesting, less monotonous and gets them out of the vegged-out-on-iphone mode. Second, one need simply observe nature's own pattern of chaos to order to chaos to order (etc) to see that a fresh, flat city surface invites this next step in expansion of creation. Perhaps most obvious, city walls and such are to urban artists as blank canvas to painter: an urgent invitation to creative expression.
ReplyDeletehi Rhonda, thanks for your always thoughtful comments. I have been thinking about this some more and it would be interesting to get to the bottom of why or how it is that the soothing qualities of nature really work. Is it because it's alive? Is it because nothing happens, or only very slowly? Is it chaos, pattern and order? Which reminds me of this really interesting documentary where all natural growth patterns are all based on the same equation or algorithm. so maybe it's beauty?
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