Fresh Paint : Public Art in Uncertain Times

There are plenty of conversations about what art is and isn’t, who it is and isn’t for. I’m interested in this conversation, but I can’t answer that question, unless I answer it for myself. This September, I painted a mural that is now one of the first things to greet you when you arrive in downtown Jackson. Nestled just past Grubb’s Grocery and the Jackson Walk on North Highland, it’s a bright and idyllic scene, and I’m not oblivious to the fact that it’s an even more idealistic message: Love your neighborhood.

Stay 731: Simplicity

When I tell people that my family moved from Seattle—and that we didn’t move to Jackson because of family or a job—I often get the response, “Why would you move here?” Really it all started with woods. As Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden, about his own time living in the woods, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Public Hoops

I was never a baller. I wanted to be one, though. The grace and fluidity with which truly great basketball players move is unparalleled in any other sport. I was jealous. I’m tall and used to be pretty thin, but I never had the grace the true athletic players seemed to have. Gravity appeared to have a stronger hold on me than it did my teammates and my opponents. Sure, I was able to dunk a ball for a period of time in my 20’s and early 30’s, but it was off one foot and more of a “rim grazer” than a true “flush.”