Brightest Young Things

I woke up the morning of the snowstorm with a crazy idea, as I normally do.  Why not do graffiti on snow?  Seemed logical and legal, so I sent a text to BYT's old friend, Kelly Towles that said: 'want to paint a snowman?'

Kelly: 'Fuck yeah, duder'

And with that, we made arrangements to meet up near Logan Circle.  I would build a snowman and Kelly would paint it.  In the same manner as the Demolition Derby car we worked on a few years ago.  Except in that case Kelly painted it and I destroyed it:

I waited near the corner of 11th and Vermont for Kelly for a while, but he was quite late in showing up, so I sent him a text telling him that our party was moving over to Dupont Circle for the giant snowball fight and could he meet us there?  Kelly never got that text message.  He showed up at 11th and Vermont and immediately set to work on the first snowman he could find, assuming it was one that we had just built.

As I was finishing up at the Dupont Circle snowball fight, I recieved a text from Kelly that said 'your snowman is finished'.  I was confused, as I'd abandoned the snowman-making project, so I gave him a call.  After I explained that the snowman he had painted wasn't  built by me, Kelly summed up the situation: "Oh, that explains why some woman was yelling at me from her house to stop tagging her snowman".

We hadn't seen Kelly since his live art party/auction at the Black Cat late last year with San Francisco-based musician D.A.V.O.  and were anxious to catch up with him on what is new in his world of art.

Kelly was pretty jazzed about 'snowffiti' and we made plans for the next evening to go out and play in the snow.  He coudn't really find much on the internet about artists painting on a fluffy white canvas, so we figured it wasn't that popular of a wintertime hobby.  Surprisingly.

Kelly dropped by and swooped me up in his 4x4, driving like a bat at of hell, a madman possessed by the anticipation of running around with a backpack full of spraypaint cans tagging half the city legally.  In fact, he started directly in front of my house with one of his usual moustachioed Italians (or whatever they are).

Snowbombing is like cloudspotting.  Or watching an old tootsie roll commercial.  Whatever you see out there has the possibility of becoming something new.

Ordinary bushes covered with snow become giant lizards with a quick spray of the can.  And athough the pieces will be gone in a couple of days, it's guilt-free street art.

At Logan Circle, we arrived at the our first snowman of the evening.

And with a shake of the can, Kelly undressed the snowdude and went to town, transforming him from a jolly winter fatman to something a bit more sinister and dark.  A menacing, grimacing, punch-drunk snowvagrant a bit more representative of 1985 Logan Circle than 2010 Logan Circle.

Everyone stopped to watch, even the dogs, eyeing him curiously as he covered this mound of snow with yellow in near the same manner that they would like to be doing.

We hopped in the car and headed over to Meridian Hill Park, which was empty, save for the heavy tracks of a thousand snow revelers that had left a quiet imprint of the joy that blew in with the biggest snow storm of the past 100 years.  Snow mounds become faces in Kelly's head, in fact almost everything becomes a black-eyed, squiggly mouthed face when Kelly's around.  You gotta wonder what this kid dreams about at night?

We rolled up to someone's snow fort or snow castle or roofless igloo.  I'm not sure exactly what it was, but it looked like a pile of a thousand giant marshmallows. 

Kelly thought it needed to look a bit angrier if it was going to serve it's purpose as an impenatrable fortress of ice superiority.

Even the most harmless path becomes fraught with peril and uncertainty with a quick brush stroke (figurative brush stroke).  Actually, I take that back, Malcolm X park at night, even when blanketed in white, is still pretty fraught with peril and imminent mayhem.

Wouldn't you know it, the path led us to a gang of armed marauders, who were most certainly up to no good.

Okay, not really, these kids were just out late enjoying the snow past most other kids' bedtimes.  We couldn't fault them for their good fortune and/or lack of parental guidance.  They were curious as to who this character was with the spray paint can who was sizing up the local snowman.  So they gathered and watched as Kelly attacked his second Frosty of the night.

Kid: "Can we kick over the snowman now?"

Kelly: "Absolutely not"

Kids: "Pleeeease?"

Kelly: "You guys kick over that little one over there."

Kids begin to attack little tiny snowman.

You've seen Kelly on BYT before, he designed the set pieces for our House of Sweden event last year called the Green Masquerade.  He is a master at this kind of stuff and we've been big fans of his work since we first came across his Grate Project years ago.

Or when we threw him a big party for his opening in L.A.:

http://www.brightestyoungthings.com/art-design/bytla-kelly-towles-sneak-thief/

On the way to Georgetown we passed a pedicab guy in front of the Krispy Kreme.  We couldn't help but remark about what a terrible, awful, seriously-suck job that would be during the snowp0calypse.

We found another snowman in front of the Hotel Palomar on P Street in Dupont Circle.  Kelly originally wouldn't stop because he was afraid of getting busted.  I suggested we just ask the bellman at the hotel if we could paint there.  The guy nodded enthusiastically and said it was all ours.

It's hard to imagine if you've never had to run from the cops, but even though Kelly knew what he was doing was completely legal it was impossible for him to completely relax and keep from constantly looking over his shoulder, ready to duck and run from Johnny Law.

After a quick stop at the market for some Strongbows to keep us warm, we continued the painting.

Time to bust out the stencils.

It's not very often that a street artist gets a chance to paint directly on M Street in Georgetown without getting arrested by 'the man'.  Kelly couldn't pass up the opportunity.

Okay, maybe it is fairlyoften that Kell gets to paint on M Street.  We forgot about that little Manifest Hope thing he did with Shepard Fairey for Obama in Georgetown.

http://www.brightestyoungthings.com/art-design/manifest-hope-closing-and-opening/

More giant faces in the snow!  And we couldn't go home without leaving a little present for his friends at Transformer gallery on P Street and 14th.

Previously in I Heart DC:

• 2/13: DC News You Can (Maybe) Use:
• 2/13: 101 Reasons To Love DC-Part 1
• 2/10: DC News You Can (Maybe) Use
• 2/9: DC News You Can (Maybe) Use
• 2/8: DC News You Can (Maybe) Use
• 2/8: Perfect Date Outfits + Outings
• 2/7: DC News You Can (Maybe) Use
• 2/6: DC News You Can Maybe Use:
• 2/2: DC News You Can (Maybe) Use:
• 2/1: DC News You Can (Maybe) Use: