Wednesday, June 6, 2018

Stairway to Brutopia



The concrete stairway at 1168 West Cordova.

Robust, no? All those years in truthy grey, then someone had the sad idea to paint it black -- a flat black -- to highlight accumulations of algae, moss and mildew.

In the 1970s Vancouver artist Eric Metcalfe drew on this location for a series of retouched postcards for his Leopard Realty project. It is, in my view, his finest moment.


In this era of vapid, decorative, up-with-people mural painting, wouldn't it be worth giving Metcalfe and his crew the keys to that stairway, in an effort to bring a little more realty to this fantastic market city?

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