progress on the prairie

And so does pretty graffiti! Femme9 is a graffiti artist from our neighbor to the North, Kansas!  Here is some of her work:

I have always been fascinated by the way really good graffiti artists use their world around them, which is usually the concrete and brick of a metropolis, as a canvas.  I imagine, to grow up as a little speck of a kid surrounded and walled-in by grey towering buildings, sidewalks, alleys, dumpsters, lightpoles, man-hole covers, chain-link fence, scaffolding, aah!, how much I might want to grab paint and start adding bright colors, to leave my mark. I think the idea is so poetic and powerful. I don’t think of it as vandalism or property destruction. Granted, some graffiti is just ugly and/or lazy, but good graffiti, for whatever reason, grabs me.

And then there is Femme9 from Kansas. Who takes the landscape of the Midwest prairie- massive wheatfields, golds and browns everywhere, blue sky as far as you can see- and turns it, in all unlikeliness, into a perfect spot for graffiti art. That one broken down, rusty mailtruck in the middle of the field needs graffiti! Who takes the landscape of broken down, small town Midwest Main Street- empty storefronts, beautiful but abandoned brick- and paints a nice little pin-up posing with her spray paint can. In memory of a bygone era. Who takes the tough-ass graffiti man-world and beside her tag signs off : “Hearts and Swirls RULE!”

Aaaaaaaaawe…so cute! Wouldn’t you agree? 

Unicorns and puffy clouds and tea-parties 4-EVA,

Spring