iT'S STreeT arT THurSDay! with Malibu morning picture of the day - March 26, 2015

Hello again Street Art fans.

At my band concert this last Sunday we played music from Jurassic Park so I'm thinking I have dinosaurs on the brain. This last Monday I gave a you all a fanciful dino pic you will recall (or check the link). Carrying on that theme, I decided to reach into the collection and share this:

Artist: unattributed, Primeval Collage, paint on stucco, left detail.

Central detail.

Located across the street from the Bruce Lee mural I shared with you on Chinese New Year, we have a very naturalistic (at least of certain tangible elements) treatment of both prehistoric reptiles and mammals. I have chosen to call it Primeval Collage for the purposes of this blog based on its subject matter.

It is impossible to get far away enough to capture the whole thing without a lot of obstruction (it faces into an alley) so I have to present this piecemeal.

Right detail.

There is a central figurehead of a sabre-toothed cat, of which many roamed ancient Los Angeles. Concentric circles of contrasting color emanate outward like a crystalline kaleidoscope. In the first outward circle of magenta and pink, skeletal humans stand poised with spear and torch, facing off against triceratops, T-Rex, and a crystallized woolly mammoth.

There are lots of little detailed "snapshots" of prehistoric life and landscape: a volcano, ancient ferns, and monocot plant life, giant insects, and even view of a natural bridge formation.

This work is just great fun to look at, and if you're heading up La Brea toward Santa Monica like I do much of the time to go to the Target or Best Buy there, it always catches your eye.

I have to say though that this is a pretty good contrast against practically everything I have shown you up until now.

Now THIS is a single vision.

I can very easily see this being something that would be on a wall inside a natural history museum--a work commissioned and vetted by a place with managers, a board of directors, a science review board, very involved donors, and where children and parents spend weekends. It looks like art that made it through a committee, if not several. Compare it to what I showed you on Monday.

Highly foreshortened, but pretty close to the whole thing.

Part of the aesthetic of street art is that they are for the most part products of a single artistic vision with a particular point of view. If a committee reviewed our mounted figure in sketch roughs, I can just hear the feedback: "Why does he have a cell phone? Why is he upset? That dinosaur looks more like a dragon to me. I think the dinosaur should be brown. I think the cowboy should be a female person of color. yada yada yada.

If this work was not reviewed by eyes other than the artist I would be surprised, OR that this is an artist who has worked with so MANY committees, he or she has been conditioned to operate within safe parameters of taste.

I do not say that as judgment against the artist, but a note to you creative people who have had your chops busted and cut back over and over and over. At some point your internal compass is set by others--I think it's inevitable. I call it conditioning your "creative muscle memory"so that now you think the way a committee thinks. It makes you probably quite trustworthy and sale-able, but it's a good thing to keep in mind, and guard against.

Advice to all: Do what you need to do to pay the rent, but guard your identity and your integrity and express it fully when you can give it free rein. Your soul will rejoice and your stomach can be happy too.

AND HERE'S THE MALIBU MORNING PICTURE OF THE DAY:

Have a wonderful Thursday,

Love,
Pops