Way cool. These very tall paintings (for the scale of the paintings use the black benches at the bottom as a reference) are by Jamie Wyeth and were in the entry area of the San Antonio Museum of Art. They had a terrific show by Jamie Wyeth there and it was well worth the horrendous drive down IH35 to see it.
He's a third-generation Wyeth showing his painting skills The museum had excellent signage with the paintings which always gives you a different way of looking at things. Some of the work in the show was from when he was just a young teenager and he really had the skill showing even then.
An iconic area in Austin is an underpass heading into town just north of the river that bisects Austin. This was painted many years ago (do the math) and there was a huge uproar about a year ago when the city decided to paint over it, even though its presence had been authorized by a previous city council.
At this time I just put a small sweater child there, hoping someone would come to their senses.
Okay, the city workers do try to paint over a lot of graffiti and of course there is debate about what is graffiti and what is street art. This small memorial just seemed to resonate with a lot of people, mainly because it was relatively attractive. And maybe because, thanks to Austin's terrible traffic problems, most people got to see this as they sat and sat and sat in traffic at that particular point. It's only 2 lanes each side and they can't widen it because a train track is over it.
Finally we got the Ivan memorial back.
The top picture shows the two pots I put there, on either side of the piece that says "25" (do the math). The bottom picture shows how people have added to it. Lots of the time when I put ceramic Give-Away art out it disappears in a week or so. These pots have stayed there for about 6 months now. We may try to "Keep Austin Weird" but we do have respect for Ivan Garth. No, I have no idea who painted it years ago or who repainted it recently but the message is right.
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