Mind the Buff. Andrew Taggart. 2020.

The void of a blank wall is so greatly transformed by a single mark that it stimulates the human eye and brain. Now...We can't have that, right? Quick, cover it up poorly! This is an exercise in sterility, color and our urban landscape constantly being overwritten on a daily basis.

    Say you paint a wall of a building GREY #0004, and it is later vandalized. You would then use GREY #0004 to cover the blight over. However, the original wall is no longer Grey #0004. The original wall is now Grey #0004 plus a garbage truck once a week, 2 deliveries a week and the exhaust of 30-60 cars per week over X amount of time from its original application. This, coupled with the degradation of the original left over paint, the walls orientation to the sun and the amount of rainfall, will all but guarantee that the GREY #0004 applied to the original wall will not match the existing color of the wall. Instead, you will behold a blob of color, closely resembling, the color of the original wall. Where once stood a blank plain, then an eye and brain stimulating image, is now set back to perceived sterility, marked by lackluster blob on blob. I consider this a vastly worse eyesore than the offense. I say 'Buff" with color.

    This is also an exercise in color as I, along with 13% of men, am Red/Green colorblind, leaving me with about 43% of color I am able to discern within a slight margin of error. Maybe it is the inability to distinguish reality that drew me to seeing the slight color variations on walls. I don't know what color it is, but they do not match, that much I do know. Building and piling colors atop of one another is, in large part, a guessing game, trying to create a healthy balance of color for the rest of you. I often lose track of the initial marks I have created, to be covered up after markers and paint that I perceive to be of similar color. Black on purple, red on most every color and a maze of other combinations. The result is a collection of paintings I can't see and, while balanced to my deformed eye, must look completely different to you, the viewer. Thanks, Grandpa Ron.

    The illusion of cleanliness is all around us. We have all used restrooms festooned with graffiti, and bathrooms where its walls are caked with the cover up of graffiti. I would much rather use a bathroom covered in graffiti where the objective is to clean what should be clean, versus a bathroom where the primary objective is to 'look' clean. I find the illusion of cleanliness far more offensive than the initial offence of vandalism. The covering up of vandalism is part of "The Game", but it often penalizes small business owners who are served citations from the city to remove A CRIME AGAINST THEM. This sometimes occurs with only 48 hours notice before amounting fines and fees from the city. It does not seem to apply to The City of Sacramento, who employs a single individual. I have met the man and do appreciate him, to abate graffiti for all public parks and public skate parks in the area. One hell of a job.

     I hope that this progressive installation will make you look at our environment with different eyes (not my eyes, they are bias and malfunctioning), and remark on the forced sterility of our poor city. It is only an illusion and, thankfully, we have murals to stimulate us from time to time. Look at a blank wall and look again, and you will see layers of mysterious history erased.