iT'S STreeT arT THurSDay! with Malibu morning picture of the day - Thursday, May 28, 2015

Dear Street Art Lovers, Friends, Family, and Gentle Readers.

For some reason today's featured work reminds me of the endless hours of Donkey Kong Country that my kids logged on over the weekends of the 1990s, and which I absorbed as the background music to my life at the time. These are NOT the Nintendo characters, but they certainly have that video game playfulness and joy to them.

Artists: DATCIK, PRECISE, and SIZE, Heliotrope Jungle, Detail 1, paint on stucco, 2000.

Detail 2, sneaky sun

Detail 3, monkey on a preponderance of names...

This is an old one. It has a production date of 2000 on it, so it's at least 15 years old. It's pretty weather beaten and faded, but still vibrates with a lot of life.


It's located on the side a building that used to a Security Pacific Bank branch at the corner of Melrose and Heliotrope. Directly inside this wall is Scoops Ice Cream--a terrific craft ice cream store. Unfortunately I can't eat there since I'm lactose intolerant. There's also a high-end stylist, a tattoo parlor, and other boutiques.

Detail 4, artist mark

Facing this is a athletic stadium for LA City College, but that only went up a two years ago, so this used to be much more prominent. Now it's barely ornament for a seldom seen alleyway. There are at least three artists' marks on here that I can see. The one on the first detail is hard for me to read but it looks sort of like DATCIK. The other two are PRECISE and SIZE.

Detail 5, native oogah boogah man

The main personality character here is Donkey Kong here in Detail 1. Secondary monkey characters are also here. The guy in the jungle mask looks to me like someone from Banjo Kazooie, but such a guy is a pretty stock trope-in-trade-guy in a cartoon jungle scene.

I think it's very interesting that wooden pallets are leaned up against this guy, echoing the wooden crates that are in the background art behind him. In a photo, it's hard to tell when the stuff of reality ends and where the imagined world picks up.

Detail 6, Horton trippin' out ...

And here we have sort of a brand marker for this "Seeking Heaven" production company with the 2000 date. The drunk or dead elephant (x's for eyes) reminds me of Seuss's Horton. And of course, depictions of bananas to his right.

All in all, this has held up pretty well. Lots of fun to look at.








AND NOW BACK TO YOUR SEASCAPE OF THE DAY!

[I'm writing this up the day before. I'm guessing that it's be another May Gray Day...]

Sure enough, more grey. It was blue in Woodland Hills/Calabasas, so it'll be hot in the Valley today I'm sure.

OK, that's the happening for today. Let me give as much of the mural I could get in a total picture shot.

The angle is so oblique and there's chain link fence over obscuring the bottom. Best I could do. Check it out when you're in the area.

Love,
Pops