Traces
During Festival MURAL in Montréal, I painted fish, birds, and fragments of ecology directly onto the sidewalks of Saint-Laurent Boulevard.
They appeared underfoot, where people were already walking.
These works were not meant to last, but I sure was curious to see what might happen while they were there.
Painting on the ground changes how people approach you.
On a wall, I usually work with my back to the public.
On the sidewalk, people arrive from every direction.
They step around the painting, over it, and sometimes through it.
I’m in their way – we have something to talk about.
The environmental imagery offered a way into those conversations.
A fish on the sidewalk is an odd thing to come across. You don’t need to know anything about the project to wonder why it’s there.
Long before I had language for encounter as part of my practice, I was finding out how much could happen around a small interruption.
These pieces had the lifespan of cut flowers.
Rain, footsteps, dust, and time wore them away. That was expected. Their disappearance belonged to the work from the beginning.
For a little while, there was something underfoot worth noticing.
© Jason Botkin