Jim Bob & the Hip Wiggling Llitle Mountain Wenches

I think the Corn Poppy is back.  Needed a little break, but now we're back.  One of the main themes of the Corn Poppy was graffiti but I was getting more and more fed up with Waitrose friendly murals.  Unless it was created by those druggy downtown kids I don't want to know.

I had drifted towards a position of chonicler of the graffiti I saw, the transient nature of graffiti means that someone may do a great piece and someone else will tag over it tomorrow.  Therefore if I saw it, photographed it, and shared it I was performing a public service.  Something to be valued by the artist because their work was being seen further afield and valued by the viewer who might never otherwise have had the chance to see.  I felt I had a duty to collect and share as much as I could. Uncritically.  Because if someone had gone to the trouble of creating it, they felt it had some worth and who am I to say it's crap?  So I didn't not hardly ever criticise, just posted them.  But I'm gonna say it now. There's a gulf between graffiti and art students painting outside.

One of my favourite cities is Bristol.  One of the reasons for this is the graffiti, commissioned, permissioned or just tolerated.  The Upfest graffiti festival is an amazing thing with hundreds of artists coming together and over the course of a weekend transforming the Bedminster corner of Bristol. Tens of thousands of people come to watch, families, old guys with beer bellies and a cowboy hat, photographers, bloggers and vloggers, kids, artists, piss-artists, everyone goes.  And everyone loves it.  Except that miserable git over there, who is it? it's the Victor Meldrew of graffiti bloggers, yes it's the Corn Poppy!

This is just some Art School student's year end project.  No, really, there was one, an abstract piece, a gallery piece, a piece for people who understand Art History.  I say it has no place in Street Art.  Someone else says Street Art is a broad church.  Like a Norwegian Metal fan I want to burn the damn church down.

Meldrew is off again.  I'll stop before I say too much.

So the Corn Poppy will once again be a repository for my photos and writing.  Sometimes it will be fascinating, deep and meaningful.  Othertimes it may just be a picture of a man, waiting for the tide to come in.

Or two people waiting for the tide.

And sometimes it might even be a little bit of social commentary, like this one below.  A city not making the  most of its waterfront.

Pictures taken today by the Corn Poppy