Only a few non-Americans would recognize this face and mayby not many of us. It it the engraved portrait of Benjamin Franklin that appears on the US $100 bill. Maybe you've seen a movie showing a briefcase packed full of Bens. I like the artistic embellishments. They remind me of the style of one of my favorite painters, James Rosenquist.
I went back to the flood wall yesterday afternoon. Monday was the Labor Day national holiday (nowadays sometimes a bitter irony) and Paint Louis was officially to run through the afternoon. Almost everything had been wrapped up by the time I arrived. Without crowds, I could cruise up and down, looking for what caught my eye.
An awful lot of it to my old eyes was, as usual, elaborate, illegible tagging. A new trend seems to be block capital letters, three to six to them, that might be initials or acronyms but never with an explanation. Lost on me. A few sections had strong imagery, some blunt, some subtle. That's what I stopped to record.
And this one? Well, this is the United States.
Another section of the flood wall at Paint Louis. I'm not sure what the scarlet pipes are for. Maybe something to do with a natural gas pipeline, but that's a guess. They fit nicely with the new paint job and the cloudless sky.
Preparing a section of wall for this year's work at Paint Louis. The top of the flood wall is several feet / well over a meter from the top of the roller. Since the wall goes on for more than 3 miles / 5 km, it's hard to imagine the volume of paint used on the whole project. Hot work, too, in the harsh sun. Still quite warm here.
First image from Paint Louis 2023, the 27th year for the event. Artists come from all over the world on our Labor Day long weekend to redecorate a 3.5 mile / 5.6 km stretch of the Mississippi River flood wall any way they wish. It was just getting started yesterday and continues through the Monday holiday.
There are still more pictures from The Fringe to work in somewhere but we also have the big Japanese Festival at the botanical garden this weekend.
