The Positive Impacts of Street Art (on my life!)

One of my favorite distractions when I’m running in my neighborhood is the street art that seems to pop up or get refreshed almost on a daily basis. I’m lucky enough to live within running distance of Melrose Avenue, which I believe the tourist guides mislabel as being ‘an exciting & vibrant shopping district’. I’m pretty sure it’s not that exciting in terms of shops, but what I do know is that it attracts a lot of street artists. Whether it’s the foot traffic on that street or the collection of boutique stores that attract them, I’m always surprised to see interesting and thought provoking images. Here’s a few of my favorites:

I noticed The Big Boss Chief over a year ago, it’s such a striking image and the colors are beautiful. The tribal headwear and corporate suite and tie are a real statement about our times.

My absolute favorite though is Morley who is part poet (although he doesn’t consider himself a poet) and a hopeless romantic.

Here’s the latest that I spotted a couple of weeks ago:

“With the sea to our backs and tomorrow at the breach of our lips we ride at the highest speed, laugh like our souls have never known hunger and live our lives awake“

Here’s his romantic side:

I’m also getting into Mr Romano

I’ve not seen his work in a while in my hood so this is off his instagram. Street art is different from graffiti, there’s a couple of major distinctions:

1. Street Art often packs a powerful message about our times or political situation – Big Boss Chief is a prime example
2. Street Art often pays homage to mainstream artists like Warhol, it’s basis comes from art where as graffiti comes from a hip-hop culture.
3. Street Art is often not permanent, artists use paper and wheat based glue which disintegrates over time. Graffiti is paint based.
4. Street Art often has a message, like Morley, where as graffiti is just about the name or tag of the person painting.
5. Street Art can be multi media and often not just limited to paper and paint.

Ever since last weekend’s 10k I’ve been ‘off’, I’ve not wanted to run, I’ve eaten the most unhealthiest food ever and have been in a general funk. I feel like I take two steps forward and one step back in trying to get over this heartbreak. I had a great insight about acceptance last weekend, and realized that if I just accepted this situation exactly as it is, my life would be much easier. But this week it seemed that the slightest thing has triggered a raging depression. Saturday morning was the perfect example, I was supposed to meet someone for coffee, and they flaked an hour before, and I was once again fighting the urge to crawl into bed with a bucket of Ben & Jerry’s for the rest of the day.

Instead I forced myself to go to the coffee shop ALONE and I read some stuff and did some writing. And to be honest after I’d finished I felt much better, thanks partly to Sarah who I skyped with. She’s just got engaged and is running her first marathon in London this year so we had lots to talk about.

She told me that I just needed to find that ‘one thing’ to get happy and as soon as I found it, I’d be back on track. She said that if you give a kid ice cream, they’re instantly happy, because they’re just in the moment with it and they soon forget about whatever was upsetting them. It was a really interesting idea – what is it that would make me happy?  As I ran home, I was thinking about what it is that would make me happy.

And then, the craziest of all things happened.

I looked up at a new piece of street art I’d not seen before and read this:

Duh! It’s not one thing that is going to make me happy again, it’s nothing. It’s accepting everything exactly the way it is right now, and realizing that is happiness.

Happiness is in the now.

And bam, I’m back on track again.

Thanks to two awesome LA Street Art Blogs I follow

http://lastreetartgallery.com

and Melrose & Fairfax

What distracts you while running?

Update – i saw this on my street and had to add it