Flickr Reviews - Feb 26, 2008

Flickr is a great resource of art and photography, with 2-million-plus images just in the “art” tag as of this writing. To help spur creative discussion and get people to look at designs in a critical way, I will post installments under Flickr Reviews on a periodic basis.

Let’s see what we have today:

Posted by sensesmaybenumbed: photo of graffiti artwork, original graffiti work not copyrighted by photographer.

This is genius. What’s the message behind it? “Oh thank heaven for 9/11?” What a morbid thing to claim. Or is it? Did it take a few buildings and lives to make us aware of our own mortality and position in the world’s popularity contest? I hate to think those lives were lost and we did nothing to learn from the situation. Perhaps this is just a clever adaptation to the popular chain’s logo to remind people all the ways 9/11 affected the economy and social attitudes of America, but it’s a great discussion point for extrapolating the residual impact of the nations worst tragedy since Pearl Harbor.

Posted by greglas, “Dave Sleeping”, sketch.

I really like this sketch. At first, I had to click on it to see it wasn’t a fast sketch of a dead person in some horrific accident. The mouth is ambiguously positioned so it looks either like it’s hanging open or the figure has really big lips. The accents of the strokes and angles suggest a very limp, drooping subject, almost blending into the floor in slumber. A framed sketch like this is ideal as a sleep aid in a bedroom; as humans are biologically suggestible, often people will get more tired if there are others around them sleeping.

Posted by Kai_Lvx, “Brisbane art”, photograph, subject is not created or copyrighted by photographer.

This is an obvious addition to a busy downtown economy. Aussies are the fussy Europeans of the Pacific, and art such as this supports the need for environmental persuasion to be happy about shopping. The structure looks like it is made out of a metalic material, most likely polished steel, and is most prominently identified as a walking figure with arm outstretched. Note how the head is looking up and the arm is curved downward, suggesting it is offering a friendly arm-over-your-shoulder. Seeing this reminds me of the hometown feeling some shopping districts offer, welcoming both tourists and residents a comfortable, hospitable experience in each shop. It also suggests that the local economy wants visitors to feel proud and excited to be a part of that area, whether that is as a worker, volunteer or a consumer. Can we put one of those in downtown Portland?