Monday, March 25, 2013

Street Art Goes Postal

The image on the bottom reminds of Futurama but I would not be surprised if the reference was something else. Wasn’t there a one eyed sea monster named Cecil? There are only so many pop culture references worth retaining, I guess that’s why smart phones can access google.
The upper image seems a satire on the famed Rolling Stone logo, I guess “Flood” is the name of this local Banksy. The curves on both relate in a stab at symmetry with the curve of the metal mail box.

Jersey City street art – which I am using here for the stencils and such, not graffiti – mostly echo a playful, often irreverent tone, an apparent contrast to the overtly political and more often than not, confrontational attitude seen in similar stencils in London or New York. We can all use a smile seems to the intent. Here the two creatures seem in love, attracted to each other, and the mouth and a squirmy looking phallic form, implies, well, you know…
 
Side by side, the familiar USPS logo looks like street art, a mirror-universe, conformist opposite to the friendly, trippy monsters on the Relay Box.

That’s what they’re called, those green mail boxes. They’re mysterious, used only by postal workers to relay mail to each other. I read somewhere that since most carriers drive their routes, starting each day at the post office, these boxes have little use but you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet.


Pity the poor green mail box. We’re never sure why you were here and it seems even those vague reasons we heard rumors that justified your existence are no longer applicable. The blue mail box, used every day, by civilians and postal workers alike, has no secrets except the confidential letters by those traditionalist sneaks still using snail mail to correspond, bears only faded original paint. Green box has been tagged by spray paint. Maybe that’s you new role in our lives, greenie. To be a canvas.
 
 

No comments:

Post a Comment