New Haven Independent

Now here is a variant on a portrait head, perhaps what Lewis Carroll’s walrus had in mind when he paired “cabbages and kings.” Or this is the squashed cabbage leaf out of the gutter, transformed — as in Pygmalion — into an unexpected icon. Perhaps it is an apparition from the open-air markets of what was once Oak Street, a raucous neighborhood reduced to scrap by the voracious urban renewal for which we now repent, but too late.

This is a species of meta-graffiti, not without pretension, but still a gift to the urban landscape. Obviously reproducible (although I have come across no other examples as yet), it is absolutely free of economics. There is no exchange but the encounter, and no question of ownership. And its anonymity frees the imagination.

Several years ago, I came across a series of large photographs, unattributed, in an Elm Street storefront. The mystery was everything. It was a disappointment when a label offering the artist’s name along with titles for the works was later pasted on the glass.

But criticism can be direct and violent in such cases of open display. A piece of it has been torn away since I first saw it. This is a fragility to be embraced. One of my favorite paper posters on a Prospect Street wall lasted over two years, vanishing gradually, overwritten with spray paint and shredded in increments; it was a mortal, evocative story, just as this one will be.

Previous installments:

Object Lessons #5 & #6
Object Lesson #4
Object Lesson #3
Object Lesson#2
Object Lesson #1