Author: BrianR

Three Words

Three Graffiti WordsAbstract art is dream like. Both are foggy and full of potential. These great graffiti works I stumbled upon last week have some literal meaning in there. After all they are words. But I can’t penetrate their meaning so they remain foggy to me.

I have a particular dream that is full of potential. I’d like to teach fine artists how to support themselves using business skills. In my typical unrealistic dreaming way I see it more than casual meetings at coffee shops. But a full fledge school with studios and dorms on a campus.

When I was nineteen and entering college I went to a fine art program to avoid the office. It wasn’t until I was out of school and using a computer to do book design that I thought about business and money beyond paying for rent.

Twenty years later I’ve worked in numerous offices, started my own physical business, and served on several economic development boards. It’s not a group of experiences I expected to have at this point in my life.

My dream is to adopt a new business language outside of the MBA program. Mainly to help young creative people obtains skills to support themselves in our violent capitalist society. I just don’t believe opting out of business completely is an option. At some point we are all confronted with trading cash, physical or digital, for something such as rent.

Red Door with Tags

19970695216_89449b8aa3_cOn the way to meet a friend for coffee I walked by this door. I had to take a picture of it. Because my cell phone camera is shit I had to do a little editing to the photo. So to reveal the magic I will say this red door isn’t this bright red in real life.

I recognize the style of tag on the the very top of the door. It has this angular square handwriting style. Other than that I have no idea what any  of these tags mean. I’ve heard that they can be symbols for gangs. I have no idea. I just appreciate them for their aesthetic beauty.

To me this door is as beautiful as any painting by Franz Klein. He was a abstract expressionist out of NYC. Klein’s work was really a study of formal aesthetics. Stuff like color, texture, stroke, shape, line, etc. It’s fun to look at something that way and try not to read into it.

We are all hyper literal jerks sometimes. I certainly believe we can blame the Internet. Why not? It’s easy to blame this powerful force for everything. Doesn’t mean I don’t love the Internet or that I will stop using it.

For some reason most folks have a really hard time not seeing ducks and bunnies in the clouds. Our brains have evolved to make sense of everything we experience. Especially the visual. In the 21st Century we are inundated by visual imagery like no other time in human existence. Especially the kind of imagery that is man made or in the case of deep dream made by artificial intelligence.

I think this red door is a excellent example of public art. While it was most likely not commissioned but tolerated. Why? I bet it’s because the owners of this door know that within 24 hours of repainting the door there will be fresh tags and marks. Taking the old tags away only eggs on the artists to make more. By leaving the tags it makes it harder and harder to add more. It forces the taggers to write over their fellow artists work. A much harder social act than marking a virgin canvas.

As I edge towards the border of pretentiousness, if I haven’t already crossed it, I’ll end with this. Carrboro, North Carolina is a great place that tolerates and supports the arts in some really interesting places. Especially for a Town of it’s small size. This style is threatened a little more each year with the more new expensive properties with out of town owners that won’t let expression like this happen. I bet marks like this that show up on Greenbridge a block away are gone in a heartbeat.

Architectural & Automotive Inspiration – Tiny House Truck

I’ve been daydreaming for awhile about building a tiny house on wheels. A lot of them are built on trailers. Makes sense. This way you can tow it with whatever truck you want. Seems smart to be able to decouple the vehicle and stow the house in a small spot.

But for some reason I’m really fascinated with permanently attaching a tiny house to a flatbed truck. Part of the reason is my love of cars and trucks. I’ve been working on them on and off since I was fourteen. Lots of stories about those days. Another time. Another reason is the sculptural possibilities and the travel nature of it. More RV than shed out back.

You may have noticed I put images up here to keep a record of my inspiration. Here are two more.

I want to put a tiny house version of this awesome church…

2014-11-02 13.42.40
Love the curved ceiling! Like an old Roma caravan.

2014-11-02 13.42.29 2014-11-02 13.42.36

(I’m pretty sure I found the images of this church on the Facebook blog Abandoned, Old & Interesting Places – North Carolina.)

On the top of a old truck like this.

47Studebaker2ton-front 1947 Studebaker 2 ton truck

Truck image source

Now to save the money. You could help by giving me a grant to get the truck. 😉

Father & Son Bike Diary – Part Four

westoverpark-map-ellerbeecreektrail-OvalPark
We went out on the Xtracycle Edgerunner this weekend for a small exploratory ride. I wasn’t feeling very good after a big allergy attack. But getting out of the house and not riding too hard made a difference. When we got home I felt better.

We went north west with the goal of checking out Westover Park. While there we discovered an entrance to the West Ellerbee Creek Trail. We stopped and got a better look. Then went on down this short stretch of the trail. The boy remarked about the sun shining through the trees making cool shadows on the ground. At the end of this part of the trail we found a small field. Got to take the Edgerunner “off road”. The big knobby tires did well. Even with the boy on the back. He likes the bumps. 🙂

Then we turned around and went south back uphill ending up at Oval Park. The boy eagerly spent an hour looking for bugs to put in his mason jar.

Check out the rest of my Father & Son Bike Diary posts.

Father & Son Bike Diary – Part Three

I licked; she bit right in.

Another fun outing last week was the first father and son bike ride where we both had our own bikes. A big milestone! On previous rides we’d been together on the cargo bike or he rode his bike with training wheels and I walked.

I love taking him to ride his own bike. I usually feel safer being on foot so I can help him cross busy streets, deal with intersections, and cary the bike when we need to hustle or he gets tired. Slowly we’re extending the distance he’ll we’ll ride and walk. But this time he insisted that I ride my own bike. A silver commuter bike I’ve had for years.

Our ride motivation this time was going to Loco Pops. It’s our awesome local paleta store. They’re latin america style ice and cream popsicles made with fresh ingredients. These pops are special to me because Loco Pops helped cater my wedding & the boy LOVES them. We have a long father and son tradition of eating them together. Going on bikes to get them was the new part. It’s a desert that has taken over Triangle and our hearts in a big way. I love it so much I’m the Mayor of Loco Pops in Durham! (A silly but fun Foursquare thing.)

The boy did great on the ride! I was super impressed with his skill. But he’s still learning to bike in a straight line for a long stretch. The only thing I kept harping on was staying on the right side of the road. It’s so fun to just wander all over the small back streets in the neighborhood. There are few cars and lots of pedestrians and bicyclists. But I know how irresponsible some drivers are.

Not long after I told him not to ride on the sidewalk we were forced to. Loco Pops is on Hillsborough Road. The part we had to go down is long and straight where cars go way faster than 35 miles an hour. So as we got off the neighborhood street I advised my son to ride up onto the sidewalk and keep an eye out for people walking. This time of day the sun is low and we were headed due west. But it all worked out fine. It’s sad that there isn’t more room for bikes on this street. Even if there was a big lane I’m not sure I’d take my son on it until he’s done with training wheels and very confident on a bigger bicycle.

Father & Son Bike Diary – Part Two

Penny Farthing
A cool post card I got on my trip. No we didn’t ride a penny-farthing this weekend. Cargo farthing?

For the past few weeks I’ve been ill and super busy. This included a rather long weekend trip to buy a new used efficient gas car. The Mercedes Benz 240D finally died. Well it blew a gasket making it too expensive for me to repair. I’m pretty sad about it. Especially sad about the end of my biodiesel mission to stop buying gasoline. It really sucks how expensive it is to be environmentally responsible in a culture that requires you to drive for work.

After I finally finished the antibiotics and had my son for a weekend we got on our cargo bike named Wilson. Our rather short trip was to a park playdate with his friends from daycare. It was fun. We’re fortunate to live in a City with a grid. So we could take one road east up and down some good hills to get to our park destination and return home for lunch.

Again we received many compliments and questions about the Xtracycle Edgerunner. I discussed the pros and cons of other solutions with another dad. I find the enclosed little trailers for kids really cool. Other travelers on the road can see them. But as this dad pointed out these kid trailers are just nylon and a bit of aluminum. To some extent I feel safer having my son right behind me on the same frame. The Xtracycle certainly does handle really well. Especially with a little extra weight. I give credit to the wheel length. As the boy says, “This is a LONG bicycle.”