Friday, February 2, 2007

Paint the Town 'till it Falls Down


As I look around me I see more of the beautiful flaws in the streets of the United States. Some of the wonderfully horrible art, the seering graffiti, and the failing buildings that they adorn. I really begin to notice the effect of the imagery whether it be positive or negative.
Recently I happened upon a post on the Wooster Collective that made so much sense to me. It is a seemingly simple artistic statement but it really goes beyond tagging a few walls. In an effort to change the urban landscape a group of artists, going by the name "Object Orange", has undertaken a nearly impossible task. With Paint rollers on massive extensions and buckets of bright orange paint they have set out to make the streets of Detroit safer for the children and cleaner for the world. Over night these skeletal homes become glowing celebrities, everyone stops to wonder and the flash bulbs immortalize their new orange coats. Object Orange is successful everytime a frame of film is developed, revealing the now obvious sore thumbs in what could be beautiful neighborhoods. These houses, once painted, will no longer be a safe haven for drugs and they will no longer be a danger to curious children. In many cases the city has demolished the day glow disasters soon after they were painted. Object Orange takes graffiti to an almost ironic level. In most cases graffiti is buffed in order to clean up the wall or building it is residing on, in the case of the orange houses, the walls of the building are taken down to clean up the graffiti, thus cleaning up the city.

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