It just occurred to me that if people don’t live in or visit Bed-Stuy, they have never seen the simple immortal words of our resident philosopher, the unknown person (or persons) who provides gentle advice and comforting moments of sanity.
The first one I saw—I don’t remember exactly when, maybe ten years agowas in black lettering on a white board on the corner of Dekalb and Nostrand and it said:
“IF ALL OUR GREAT LEADERS ARE DEAD, HOW ARE YOU STILL HERE?”
I’m assuming the artist is Black and is referring to the loss of the great civil rights leaders. Also, a great question for everyone.
Since then the message and the medium has been refined and simplified. The phrases are ephemeral, painted on the black and Hunter Green plywood boards put up around construction sites and on scaffolding—and vanish when the boards are taken down.
They are hand painted (with a brush!) in white paint of varying viscosity in Cooper Black font—I assume with a template but I don’t know…Nobody seems to know the artist, I have never seen anyone painting them, or painting over and obscuring them.
I asked a neighbor if she noticed the sayings and at first she seemed doubtful, then she told me about a couple I hadn’t seen. That’s how they work—on our unconscious minds.They are there and then they aren’t and my eyes go to where they were and I miss them. So glad when a new one appears.
–CNQ
