This slogan’s been a bit tough to nail down, and the reason it’s displayed in one long line has more to do with re-editing than aesthetics or legibility. As an artist, my struggle isn’t keeping The Perfect from becoming the enemy of The Good, it’s the simmering tensions between The Lackluster and The Adequate that keeps me up nights. Fortunately, as Eno observed, “As struggles go, being an artist isn’t much of one.”
I came up with Version #1 (top left, clockwise) way back in February, but then forgot about it after the invasion of Ukraine. Fortunately, the relentless efforts by the Republican party to destroy our democracy reminded me how ludicrous the idea was of voting for them, so I put up version #2 two weeks ago and replaced it with the less-nuanced ”This party sucks” after it’d stayed up for four days.
Version #3, like the two before it, didn’t seem quite right to me — it sounded too abrupt and the cadence was slightly off — so I added the “try to”s just to make it flow. As Mark Twain said “The difference between the right word and almost the right word is like the difference between the lightning and the lightning rug.”
(I know, I know… he said “bug” not “rug.” But rug is even funnier if you think about it.)
(Yes, it is.)
Language is just about the only part of the art form that calls for precision though, and even that’s optional really. It’s the immediacy and spontaneity of signposting I’ve begun to appreciate more than ever. Despite the incredibly negative, even shameful light it was always presented to me growing up, the concept of immediate gratification has always struck me as being positive. Two reasons mostly: maybe you can guess what they are. That dynamic occurs in every aspect of this medium. From the way the paint goes on the cardboard to the way the cardboard goes on the freeway. An idea becomes words, words get painted, then stuck in front of eyeballs, then the words get read. It’s a pity that the cycle stops there, but you can’t have everything. The point is I can hear about something and then be complaining about it within an hour. I think my record so far is 23 minutes. Compare that turnaround time to joining an organized demonstration. That can be weeks, which is lightning fast compared to voting.
Focusing on just one metro area has opened my eyes to a lot of things I’d been missing in earlier years, and one of the big ones was garbage. Have you seen it? It’s everywhere! Especially alongside freeways and usually it’s quite conveniently located right by your feet! The incorporation of garbage into the art form decreases the reliance on overpasses and fencing and puts more of otherwise empty areas into play. While hammer and nails and a couple of spring clamps might come in handy, all you really need to turn cast off furniture, car parts, building materials etc. into eye-catching billboard infrastructure is coat hanger wire and duct-tape! Most of all what I’ve found is that the utilization of refuse adds a whole new creative dimension to the enterprise, that of ad hoc structural engineering. Does that sound like fun?
Probably not.
Is it fun?
Hell yeah. It’s gratifying anyway. And immediately so. Garbage isn’t something you’ve got to wait around for.
For example, about a mile south of there I saw some shelving dumped in some bushes next to an offramp. By carrying some of it about 200 feet, clamping a cardboard sign to it and placing a small flashlight on the ground in front of it...Voila! I just made, for all intents and purposes, a small billboard. It’s beautifully lit, it’s in a prime location... and it’s a project that’s been successfully completed and I never have to think about again if I don’t want to. But the best thing of all? Four minutes before I hadn’t even been thinking of making a billboard. From conceptualization to completion in just under four minutes. Using garbage.
It was gorgeous just on its own, but knowing the total lack of commitment behind it made it even majestic in its way — a work of art not unlike the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, except for being unlike it in every single way it could possibly be.
That thing was up for three days with 170,000 cars passing by each day, much of the time at a crawl. Then, on the third day, some unsung Republican hero — or possibly a Democrat who felt sorry for them - remembered what it was you were supposed to do if you wanted a job done right, and pulled over, walked forty feet, and knocked it down.
When I drove by sometime later I could’ve easily just put it back up just the way it was, but an audience that size deserves respect so I changed things around a bit. The old cardboard went to an overpass
and I moved the shelving up to the bridge where it held a larger and more austere version of the same sign for the next four days.*
*And yes, to the Republicans and Communists who’ve been pointing out that neither the GOP nor the Russian Federation are communist enterprises, we are aware of your concerns and will be addressing them shortly.
Here’s another view of the title sign. That arch in the back ground is brand new and looks like the bridge they’re building will mirror the one I took this picture from. (below) So in the future I may finally start doing some of those Burma Shave signs people keep mentioning.
Because of the uncanny number of dissimilarities between the miniature billboard and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, I thought I’d detail the route taken should future art historians want to catalogue my not-at-all-massive undertaking in a sort of ADHD version of “The Agony and the Ecstasy.”
While marking the beginning and ending of my journey, A & B, I happened to notice C. And zooming in on that, I noticed D. I quickly found that by using GoogleEarth I had the rest of the alphabet covered as well, and will add these, as well as other sign pictures to the end of this diary post-publication.