Wall Tape Dispenser

 

Mural by Norm Kirby is how this was titled for its debut on a JC Fridays Friday earlier this month. Kirby is a artist and sometime street artist with a fun and engaging illustrative style. As Jersey City murals go, this one’s minimalist, the starkness of the black and white colors and the focus on a sole object stands in contrast to the other murals not just around town but at this address, 172 Newark Avenue, one of the most art friendly buildings in downtown, which also wears murals of a whale and tigers.

This piece of exterior did sport this stencil from  an anonymous street artist for a while.

“Why a mural of a tape dispenser,” I asked.

“It’s something I see everyday,” Kirby told me. Now we all do, but of course we all already we had. You don’t even need to work in an office to know a tape dispenser and even those who never work in an office still have been in an office and who says the tape dispenser has to be limited to an office? I can’t think of an object more common, which makes it an object worth objectivity in art. I’m not sure if this painting makes the ordinary scotch tape dispenser more extraordinary, but it certainly makes this ordinary brick wall a little more extraordinary.

Of course any great painting is just the end result that follows a succession of sketches, but how to do a useable exterior mural on a pad? Luckily, there are abandoned buildings available in Town providing useful exterior canvases.

The ladies treat me kindly/and they furnish me with tape/but deep inside my heart/I know I can’t escape -- Bob Dylan