MURAL MATCH 3: Castle Hill Graffitti

Wow! We bit off a little more than we could chew with this one. We hit the mural mother lode! This is both good and bad because we had so many to choose from that we didn't know what to wear in order to "match" any particular wall and ended up flinging three bags of colorful things and random accessories into the car, planning on some luck and a couple of costume changes.

What really happened? We depleted our camera batteries, patience and sweat within fifteen minutes. There were stumble holes crisscrossed with brambles and the ground was spangled with broken glass. There were at least four other groups mugging around with cameras and the kids started choosing their own clothes (my tshirts) instead of matching ones and I was so hot I stopped caring about anything. I think my brain was getting a little melty.

Luckily Sarah was with us and helped me talk the monsters off of the narrow walls (which they were using as balance beams) and took great pictures despite the 2000 degree heat. Check out her lovely design/creative blog and adventures living in a houseboat in Amsterdam. Afterward we bought overpriced smoothies at the hippie yoga place and summer dresses at the thrift store. (cheaper than the smoothies)

There are so many cool murals in this town that it could take years to dance in front of all of them. I might have to come back to Castle Hill because there were three more levels we didn't even get to! Here's an article talking about the public art project.

Happy Wednesday

3 frowns

Colorado

Sweet typography by Simon Walker, via Sarah

Uncle Stan the sport man learning about guns. Note pure delight.

eat your hearts out boys, these ladies are about to be someone's wife

Colorado is weird. We took a whole slew of photos of our family hiking around an aspen/pine forest and some "cool" ones of me driving my dad's new old 1973 Corvette but after going through security our camera was wiped so you'll have to content yourself with an eyeful of my husband, dad and uncles dorking out shooting some evil tree stumps.

Colorado really is weird though. The mountains are full of hippies and Denver comes off kinda blue collar with a very large spare tire of suburbs encircling it. The city planners were crack smokers and every street is one way only and if you cross another street it changes it's name. DON'T ORDER MEXICAN FOOD. The stuff labeled as such is shameful and I'd rather wrap a tortilla around some Alpo. It's even hard to make your own good mexican, they don't know what tomatillos or serranos or corn tortillas are, and Pace picante is the extent of their south of the border selection. Find a good indian joint and go every day.

I did live here for a few years, tending bar at the ski resort and snowboarding on my lunch break. I learned all about nepalese food, how to rock climb, to appreciate micro brews, the names of a bunch of wildflowers during my short stint at the state park and how not to die when you hit a patch of black ice. The thrift stores are treasure troves but the music tends to be jam band-y or bluegrass, the art is limited to hemp necklaces, glass pipes and howling wolf paintings, the fashion is mostly in shades of fleece and hiking boots and there are absolutely no brown people. There are however, tons of dogs and vegetarian restaurants.

 Also, did I mention the nine months of snow? The digging your car out of a snow bank each morning and driving thirty minutes to the nearest anything, trying desperately not to slide off the cliff into a ravine or careen into the side of a mountain? Don't forget the deer! They love to jump in front of your jeep and kill you and your family. Our trash had to be hoarded in the garage because of bears and our family dog Mattie was devoured by an actual mountain lion in the driveway. Really.

The mountains have a stark majestic beauty but I'll take the big swampy trees of Austin any day. I love Texas. Sorry Mam! I like being warm. I'm addicted to tacos. Swimming. Art. Rock'n'roll. Leisurely driving without my brights or four wheel drive. Wearing one layer of clothing. My friend Sarah grew up here and is now living in Amsterdam, writing blogs about how much she misses Texas. Today's post was 10 Reasons why Texas is Awesome and I am honored to be included in the list. Ha! The sky is bigger and the sun yellower in Texas. People are warm and salsa is spicy. There's a mural on the side of every building and a cat on every porch. We eat roasted meats and swim. It's just my style.

Uncle Kevan bomb

flower girl/ ring bearer practice

Grammy, the seed and matron of our huge weird family tree

Grounds for Play

Here are some sun soaked photos of the playground frolics we had while trying to do a mural match shoot. Taken by the sassy and talented Sarah Natsumi Moore.

(and though the long bumpy object my children are climbing on resembles frosted dinosaur bowels, I believe it is a caterpillar)

Hooray Spring!

MURAL MATCH: Brentwood Mosaic

Our second (actually first official) mural in our Mural Match project. Okay okay it's a mosaic. But so big! Getting two squirrelly monsters to stand still in front of a wall when there are slides in sight is something one should probably only do for hard cash but me? I do it for...pure silliness I guess.

Lucky for me I was joined by my friend Sarah (we used to work art department on feature films together) and her sweet Scottish boyfriend Arun and they gamely agreed to be ridiculous with us. These globescamperers have been living in an adorable house boat in Amsterdam for months (fight waves of green jealousy) not only that- they get paid to take exotic vacations together, Sarah taking the pictures and Arun writing articles. Yep. Poor things. Thank your stars we can live vicariously through them, check out Arun's muli-talents with music and writing at arunsood.com and Sarah's beauteous camera skills and my new favorite blog at nats-umi.com. Seriously? I can't believe I didn't know she had one because every last thing she puts up I want to re-post. Art, food, photos, movies, culture, travel, so wonderful! Do yourself a good turn and frequent her corner of the web.

This particular large piece of art I chose because not only is it in my neighborhood but it happens to be at the very playground we frequent, literally a few short leaps away from the same kickball field in which I spent many a dusty Sunday in my twenties forging strong friendships and never scoring goals. Runs? Whatever. This is my neighborhood. I love it. I used to drive to Austin when I was in high school in a car full of waifish girls to try to sneak into rock shows with our older guy pals, go swimming in unchlorinated waters and swing lazily in hammocks with a belly full of tacos.(2 blocks from here) It was the first Austin neighborhood I ever called home when I moved here eleven years ago and now I'm back, family in tow. (only one street over, it's like this barrio owns me)

I tried to look up who did the darn thing and instead I found a charming little 12 minute movie about the history of the hood. Most of the houses were built in the early 1950s and many of the original tenants remain, peppered with young families like mine and tons of character. A woman in the movie gathers her little community together to make a welcome wall mosaic to emblazon the bricks in front of the old mom'n'pop grocery and beauty salon. I wouldn't be surprised if she were behind this one too. It reads "Write peace on your wings and you will fly all over the world." Sappy? yes. You like it anyway.












This mural was easy to match because it had almost every color, and the pictures look great because I didn't take them, Sarah did. Have a hankering to know all about an obscure patch of Texas? No problem: