Category: Profiles

Protecting the identity of the pothole patcher

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A stamp featuring an abstract painting by Marsden Hartley, displaying vibrant colors and geometric shapes, labeled "Marsden Hartley | forever | usa".

Above: Street artist Ememem repairing a pothole in a sidewalk on Rainey Street in Austin

I’m just a sidewalk poet…. My work is the story of the city, where cobblestones have been displaced.”

Street artist Ememem, interviewed by Arnesia Young for My Modern Met

Sometimes I feel like a stalker on the trail of tile mosaics of the sidewalk poet of Lyon, France. (See the photos from 18 months ago at the bottom of this post.) So meeting Ememem in person at work Sunday afternoon in Austin left me gobsmacked.

Colorful mosaic artwork reading 'Here Lies a Pothole,' installed in a sidewalk as a creative repair by the street artist Ememem.

Above: “Here Lies a Pothole,” Ememem, Rainey Street, Austin, 2025

The street doctor tries to maintain his anonymity, stealthily installing his mosaics in the dead of night. I imagine that’s due to the fact that often his sidewalk improvement projects are unauthorized.

Continue reading “Protecting the identity of the pothole patcher” →

A pair of Marys’ distinctive impressions of city landmarks

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bonner keating concepcion

Above, Mission Concepcion de la Purisma by Mary Bonner (left) and by Mary Aubrey Keating (right)

‘I had always dabbled a little in artistic things in a sort of boarding school fashion, but I had certainly never taken anything I had done very seriously.’

Mary Bonner (1887-1935) in a 1926 interview by Penelope Border in the San Antonio Express

Mary Bonner, well known etcher, in conjunction with her sister, Emma Jane, has a studio on Agarita Street. There, period furniture, rare objets d’art, first editions, and, of course best of all, etchings my be had. ‘Mary’ has won many medals and decorations from the French Government for her etchings. The Bonner place… is set in an ancient walled garden, hemmed in by giant cypress trees. In the garden there are many paths. One leads to Mary’s studio, another to an underground part of the Shop, known as the Caverns…. Beyond this, is the room for the gigantic etching press where the artist spends most of her time.

Mary Aubrey Keating (1894-1953) described her fellow artist in Keating’s 1935 guide, San Antonio: Interesting Places in San Antonio and Where to Find Them.
Continue reading “A pair of Marys’ distinctive impressions of city landmarks” →

Postcard from San Miguel de Allende: Redirecting Grafitti Artists, Part One

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Several years ago, Colleen Sorenson fell under the spell of a colorful, compact neighborhood of homes, Colonia Guadalupe, increasingly attracting artists priced out of the center of San Miguel de Allende.

She loves it but began to be alarmed by some of what she saw surfacing on buildings all around her. Tagged walls and graffiti attacks on property without permission damage the fabric of a neighborhood.

 

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But Colleen had seen this before in San Antonio, and she knew there were remedies. She was determined to corral the talent behind some of those marred walls, redirecting taggers toward more positive forms of artistic expression.

The gringa transplant with little command of Spanish has made a huge impact on her adopted home in an extremely short time. And, whether working class or artist, everyone on every corner in Colonia Guadalupe seems to know her name.

Some of the results of her efforts, both grassroots and at city hall, will be seen in a series of forthcoming posts.