it’s that time of year again…
…past time, actually. But I’m excited to be working on the Southside Community Land Trust‘s Plant Sale poster again, the fourth one I’ve done so far!
(my past posters for SCLT: 2009–2010–2011)
Sneak preview.
letters (click for larger, in the upper-left-hand corner check out the pinpricks I used to transfer the letters from tracing paper):
more letters, all related:
laying out the drawing on the kitchen floor so I can make a vanishing point that goes *way* off the [very large] page!
The actual imagery of the poster (slightly visible in the photo above) is much more developed now, that photo is from a week or so ago…
I get super melancholic when I think about how many beautiful buildings & places & spaces have disappeared from this city since I moved here (1999).
I’ve (finally?) turned to photography as a consolation for this, and as a way to remember that things are always changing & to be okay with that. I used to really look down on carrying a camera; I was against “instant nostalgia“, against “making memories through taking pictures rather than remembering”, and all: “I can draw it better than I can take a picture, and I’ll learn more about it while I draw it!”. I still mostly believe those things… but at some point I realized that I can’t draw fast enough and ultimately just can’t draw *enough* to document all the beautiful disappearing things that I will want to have a record of in the future. So photography becomes a necessary-yet-incomplete resistance to the constant forgetting that life in a changing city consists of…
But yaknow, it’s also springtime so what better moment to bike around & take pictures of hand-designed, yet still-not-all-obsolete, signs in Providence!
4 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
ps. go to the Wayland Bakery, they have awesome pizza strips & really cheap cookies!
Love the signage photos. When I started spending a lot of time in RI in the early 1970s, I was struck by how much of it looked like the late 1940s. I realized it was the near lack of plastic illuminated signs. Most of them were still the “classic” (why do we think this?) painted ones from that bygone world … which was not gone yet in RI. It was a visually warmer without the illumination, interestingly. I have a slide or photo somewhere of the gorgeous dark green 1948 hand-lettered tanker truck that Hank David used to drive for his home oil deliveries from his tiny service station on Delaine Street (facing Nickerson House).
Whoa. Thanks for capturing the Public Sounds sign! Obviously, if that ever comes down, I’m going to be doing some scurrying to try and get my hands on it. I like the idea of carrying my camera on me but I physically hate doing it (much like I enjoy the idea of not sustaining a massive head injury but I physically hate wearing my bike helmet.)
So, camera phones are a really nice compromise.
This brings up two links/media so-and-so-s that I’d like to add: 1. The Bill Cunningham documentary. Viewable on Netflix! Have you seen it? If not, it does tie into this/extend this discussion of the photograph-as-memory nicely.
2. The Real World is Where You Take Pictures for Facebook:
http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2011/05/14/the-faux-vintage-photo-full-essay-parts-i-ii-and-iii/
Oh. and 3. Wayland Bakery has some great kinda-surly teenage workers. So classic. Love it!
[…] Southside Community Land Trust, a great urban farming organization here in Providence! More on the drawings in progress, & the printing process. I made a large edition for their publicity purposes, which was left […]