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.
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”
Postcards from Barton Springs 