Wrong Way
one way street you say?
I don’t see any one coming
honk once, flash twice, go

There are a handful of traffic lights in Cairo. They are ignored by everybody including the traffic cops.

Red Light
I see it, it’s red
nobody in my way… why stop?
it must be broken

Lanes painted on the surface of the road have literally, nearly no meaning whatsoever. A small fender bender is not reason enough to actually stop and pull over.

Making Lanes
ou, can I squeeze in?
flash twice, ok let’s do it
ack opps tag! you’re it

There are no left turns in Egypt. I had no idea left turns were superfluous until traveling Egypt.

Left Turn
follow recipe
straight, then u-turn, then go right
or just make three rights

I don’t understand why, but people use their parking lights not their headlights at night. You use your headlights as a second horn – to flash them at other drivers or pedestrians when the honking isn’t working.

Headlights
from dusk till the dawn
it is dark and I can’t see
headlights? nah, I’m fine

My artist-buddy extraordinaire, Chris Trueman, is currently showing at Joyce Gordon. May 2nd through June 26 2008, Chris has all the main space and the two front window spots. The opening went great…. the crowd was overflowing out into the street at the peak hour.

One of the common themes I see throughout Chris’s art is a play on the boundary between the natural and the unnatural/man-made. He’ll build his pieces in layers. Any given piece has been worked over some 3-5+ times requiring months or even years, solidifying in a thick layered structure. The result? You can spend years with a piece centered in your living room, come home from work one day, and find yourself staring at it and absorbing it in a completely new manner… it’s pulling and pushing you to places you’ve never been. It’s rare to find art that’s both just plain beautiful and ‘deep’. Chris makes it happen.

Everything you see (currently) runs from $500 for the smallest pieces to a little over $5k for the big and complicated ones, unless you’re looking for his signature piece, which is unpriced but somewhere in the 5-digit range. (It’s not showing at the gallery, but I expect Chris would arrange a private showing as appropriate.) Composed of over 200,000 ants, it’s called the ‘Ant Piece’. Unfortunately, I have no photo :(.

Chris Trueman, man of the hour!

A few more of my favorites…

Director Extraordinaire, the one and only, Rachel Anderson: