The Personal Story is the Story.
Often people like to refer to what’s happening on the streets today like it’s a homogenized “scene” in which a number of actors are somehow coordinated and in agreement, acting in concert with a predetermined speed and direction to deliberately affect Street Art’s evolution. While you may spot certain themes and influences that are common within the ever mutating scene, it’s important to know that for an individual street artist, usually the whole experience boils down to the personal story, and everything else that emanates from it.
Street Artist QRST recently completed and installed this piece in New Orleans and it’s topic and symbolism could not possibly be more personally meaningful.
QRST “Patron” Detail (photo © QRST)
His largest piece to date,”Patron” is a tribute to QRST’s father, a biology professor who studied the behavior of bees and wasps and whom he lost to cancer when the artist was a teenager. With this piece QRST attempts to examine “the manner in which a parent, and a father specifically, shapes a person and their view of the world”. He also points out how the memories that we have of the loved ones who have left us can change and fade with time and often all we have left are symbols that helps us connect with them. When QRST talks about this hand painted wheat paste as tribute and catharsis, you can tell that he thinks a lot about his father, his view of the world, and the symbols that remain as he makes his own marks upon it.
QRST “Patron” Detail (photo © QRST)
Here’s how he talks about it;
“I guess I am ‘Canonizing’ him in my mind with symbols that I associate with him. The person that he actually was evaporates over the course of time until he’s just a symbol, in a manner very similar to a saint in Catholicism. New Orleans felt like the perfect place for him with its brand of Catholicism, saint devotion, Caribbean and West African religious aspects all coming together in a strange and magic place with it’s own dark and long held traditions, ceremonies and celebrations. It felt like the ideal, polytheist environment to place my own devotional piece.”
QRST “Patron” Detail (photo © QRST)
I don’t think I’ve ever installed anything this large before. All tolled he’s about 9 or 10 feet tall, so the very top is about 11 or 12 feet off of the ground. Thankfully I had two eager assistants, but I still managed to almost fall off of the foot stool we were using resulting in the minor damage to the ‘Q’ in the banner and a tiny bit of damage to one of the books. He feels already well worn in, like he’s been there for some time, which I quite like. Overall I’m fairly pleased. ~ QRST
Other Articles You May Like from BSA:
Traveling around Berlin this weekend we took a couple of trains and an unexpectedly looooong walk into the neighborhood of Tegel in search of Urban Nation's huge One Wall installations that we haven't...
SpY describes his new public art project “Earth,” as “a luminous red sphere caged inside a structure.” You may wonder what this structure made from building-site scaffolding represents, especially wh...
Today's new piece by street artists/collaborators Alice Pasquini and UNO is high above your head, but the people it depicts are walking the same streets with us every day. Alice Pasquini and UNO....
Maya Hayuk on the Houston Wall this week got tagged mid-job, took a moment and repaired and continued on to completion in signature glowing dripping geometrically teXt-driven style, Ben Eine ISHue...
Like leaves scattered into the street by a gust of wind, new large wheat-pasted linotype prints have appeared across some fatigued facades in post-industrial Brooklyn this autumn. Hand cut and painsta...