Just for the sheer Botticelli of it The Nicest Monogram I Ever Owned Proxy self-expression for shroomheads Last updated 07/05

The banner you see below is not computer art. It is a hand-painted "monogram" produced by a street artist in Shanghai. (My apologies; I've forgotten the "new" spelling of that venerable city).

A couple of years ago, my mother and sister traveled to China, and while they were on a stopover in Shanghai, my mother noticed a street artist executing remarkable watercolor abstracts of people's names from a sidewalk easel much in the way that caricature artists work in North American cities. She was gracious enough - gracious, since Cub Lea isn't my birth name - to have this banner done using my name. It seems the Chinese have it all over our street artists; this was incredibly well-executed for a "slapdash" abstract watercolor.

The actual image is painted on a "blank" about 30x90cm, with a decorative blue border around it. Once the watercolor has dried, it's laminated in plastic, a lovely touch that insures that the image will survive "accidents" and a return flight, and delivered in a tube that conjures images of early-20th-century Chinese handicrafts.

I haven't received anything this nice as a souvenir in a very long time...there's something about the way this artist renders the letters that really captures my imagination. This work has a grace and raw beauty that I felt I had to share on my website, to the point where I actually used it as a "gateway" for several weeks, even though it really says very little about this site or its contents. Naturally, I felt it necessary to add a tagline:

A 344kb full-size image of this banner, which is over two feet long and a foot high, is available here. The full-sized image is 3600x1300 to allow you to really see the detail in this work.