Up There
by be.
I’ve talked to a few people about the painters that do the Apple ads at the southeast corner of Spadina and King here in Toronto. I think it’s an incredible sight to see considering the wide usage of vinyl for ads of that size. I stumbled across this short documentary about the artists involved in putting these pieces up, and my opinions haven’t changed. Their job amazes me. And the final product in my opinion is all worth it. Maybe not for most viewers, but for myself, for sure.
- Bryan 'be.' Espiritu
Sitting in traffic southbound on Spadina, I looked up to see faint outlines of bent knees and an arm. I thought to myself, “What is that?”.
The next day, I witnessed people suspended on a scaffold and it took me a minute to register that these people were actually painting the popping blue colour of the jeans. I quickly and awkwardly fumbled to find my phone before the light turned green. SNAP, I took the picture just in time as I proudly drive away knowing that I had captured that moment.
As the days progressed, the realistic folds of the jean material appeared. The shading, blending, the shear size size of the piece and the fact that these people are working 50+ feet above ground outdoors was more than enough to amaze me.
And since that first day I fumbled for my Blackberry camera, I have been locked and load with the phone cam. As I slowly creep up to the intersection, SNAP and repeat.
I can’t agree more with you Be. Thanks for the documentry post, I enjoyed it.
i can’t remember if i sent this to you cause i meant to, if so im happy you saw it cause it reminded me of this blog dead on…inspiration
oh, and also, i think the true impact of this documentary is the respect of art and the craft that these guys have. They were built into amazing artists through discipline and respect, and i think those two traits are hard to find these days.
It amazed me to see how these painters could look at one area at a time knowing how it fits with the rest of the picture. Like how aware they are of the bigger picture. That just blew me away. I can barely draw a straight line down a piece of paper so for me this is genious. I really respect what they do.
A couple things stood out for me:
- how content they are in what they do. How they truly appreciate the art and are ok with doing what they do, for life. That’s a good place to be in if you can get there.
- how they learned patiently to do what they do now. One of the guys talked about not being allowed to paint until two years after really learning what needed to be learned. I think nowadays too many of us consider ourselves experts in something and well past the learning stage because we were able to google it. It’s as if people don’t want to learn anymore, they just want to ‘do’ w/o properly knowing how to ‘do’.
- and when one of the guys said, “Yea yellow and blue makes green but we paint with green so it comes out richer” in regards to the quality of the vinyl I was kind of in awe. Sometimes the best way to do something is the way it’s already been done, like people who keep tryna invent the wheel.
I dunno Bryan, but this video is really great. Thanx.