The World is Not Fine Art

By the people, for the people, with or without permission

Graffiti, stickers, and posters of mischief or political protest can be classified as vandalism by the state, and thus anyone who chooses to have this bad opinion can be righteous about it.

But that doesn't make it true.

I search for and revel in this form of art, at home and where I travel. It's made by people who think, care, and dare to share their thoughts through art — art that's not confined to people with season passes to galleries, but everyone who chooses to set foot in public space. Kudos to those that do this, and for those folk who see and agree, let's do so openly.

There are special pages for some recurring pieces of art: Winnipeg Waldo and Quit Your Job if you'd like to check out themed collections instead of this random disorder of whatever.

Updates will be made periodically, or rather sporadically, as is my habit in general.

a yellow pole about 1/3 into the frame from the right with a sticker featuring two tongues from feminine mouths, one labeled 'ke' and the other labeled 'we', licking each other. the background is a blurry late evening scene with green trees, fuzzy balls of light from streetlamps, sidewalks, street signs, and cars on the road. Winnipeg.

dozens of stickers all over a number of utility boxes/meters on an interior brick wall. Portland, OR.

a power box on the street painted with a sort of impressionist urban street scene on a puddle-ridden street with one person in a white jacket painted with their back facing the viewer. the middle of the painting is beige-yellow and the top is a dark blue and purple night sky. this painting is covered with all sorts of graffiti in white and pink, an eye painted in black, and the word 'hoser' in big yellow letters in the top right. Vancouver, BC.

a concrete curved planter next to a sidewalk with red handprints all over it and a red sign with white letters saying 'SEARCH THE LANDFILL'. Winnipeg.

a grey power box with a lil cute ghost sticker on it. to the right is a road with tram tracks and a sidewalk with patio seating for various places, including, naturally, a Domino's restaurant

a lamppost next to a street covered in brown leaves with a white 8.5x11 sign with red, blue, and yellow butterflies, with white letters on scattered black rectangles saying 'a better world exists' with broken handcuffs hanging from the yellow butterfly. there is a logo in the bottom left corner of the sign that you can't really see, but the campaign is called Winnipeg Police Cause Harm, because acab. Winnipeg (obvs).

taken from high up, the rooftops of various buildings with various illegible graffiti in different colours (white, purple, blue). some of the rooftops are sloped with brick red shingles, some are flat concrete with black wrought iron fences around them. in the distance there is a wide building with 'HOLLYWOOD' in spread out letters between the windows on the top floor. the city skyline stretches to the slightly hazy horizon. Brussels, Belgium.

pavement between black bricks with something carved into it (done before the concrete dried) that appears to be two legs spread out exposing a relatively detailed vulva (given the medium) and an anus. Winnipeg.

the Lennon wall in Prague taken from a side angle with graffiti by a number of people with various tributes to John Lennon that are mostly illegible. examples you can see are 'Strawberry Fields Forever', 'Love' and 'Let it Be'. in the distance are various people standing around the wall, some taking photos

trees sticking out of a crusted muddy bank with a sign painted on old blinds saying 'patience' at the top with two birds at a nest full of eggs, and the text 'press on' below the nest to the left and vertical text 'winnipeg' to the right of the nest. Winnipeg.

a poster on a wooden outdoor wall with three mice in various gendered gear in pink and blue colours marching while crouched over and holding signs saying 'the future is trans', the mixed gender symbol from combining venus and mars signs with 'and' in the circle part, and 'the future is NOW'. there are the edges of a couple of other posters nearby, and a bunch of staples from former posters that have lived there before.

a sidewalk between a tree-lined road and a canal with a grey power box with a sticker on it saying 'people don't become smarter, robots do' and a drawing of a robot

brown leaves and dying grass above a sidewalk with a white rectangle painted on and in black letters 'rise au crepuscule/dans ses paumes le clochard/recueille les pieces'

a concrete wall behind a sidewalk under a bridge with 'If I die of covid-19 forget burial. Just drop my (sic) on the steps of the MB legislative assembly

a grey power box on a sidewalk with a ton of mostly unreadable stickers, but some are readable, such as: 'Ruin Your Life', 'Sofa Concerts', 'Love, Seks, Bureks' with seks blurred out a bit

the top of a concrete wall on a bridge with a cartoon 80s-era rock star guitarist drawn in black marker. there's a thought bubble to the left with a gibberish tag written in, and to the right it says 'find your happy place' (someone else has written 'not MSP' next to that).

a sandy coloured stone wall with a black door with a round arch, covered in graffiti, including a message partly cut off that says 'if raptors could talk to cops they wouldn't', 'PIGG' written vertically in pink, and a white rabbit wearing a black tanktop.

a green lamppost with two stickers and a poster on it. the top sticker has a faded message about surveillance capitalism. the second sticker has a blue border and is coloured in blue and pink markers to look like the trans pride flag, with a combination male/female/nonbinary symbol with an A in the circle, and the message 'T-GRLS Love Unions, Start One Today!!!' Below that is the top part of a weathered poster that says 'CANCEL THE WORLD POLICE' (by which they mean the World Police and Firefighter Games or whatever)

a wall with west coast Indigenous Turtle Islander art, including what looks like a human face on a frog holding up a rainbow that has faces on each side

a wooden telephone pole taken from a low angle, with a wood sign nailed to it with the message 'Kindness is Never a Waste' with kindness being written in rainbow colours, and with a black silhouette of a bird after the e, then the ss turn the corner and are at a 90 degree angle from the rest of the message. the sky is cloudy and there are telephone wires and two high rise buildings in the background.

the bottom 60% of a stop sign with three stickers right below the bolt keeping it to the post: two edge stickers that have a Lite Brite style image of a cop car on fire and the words 'Fuck the Police', and one in the middle for Winnipeg Critical Mass.

a rusty pillar in front of train tracks and under a bridge to the top left with a load-shooting penis drawn on it in black spray paint

a yellow box attached to a silver streetlight post. There is white handwritten text on the yellow box saying: 'Lesson: Distinguish Imperial from Traditional' and a sideways sticker below it saying 'SOFT but 2 hard 4 u'

a concrete curb at the edge of a sidewalk with a legit-looking sign on the side saying 'DANGER' in white letters in a red oval, then below it 'what if we held a protest & everybody came' in black text on a white background below it

a silver lamppost with a sticker on a panel cover with 'USE CASH' written in black marker, and office buildings across the street in the background.

a stone wall painted brown with a stencil of a hockey goalie's mask and the caption 'who really saves?' spray painted in black

a shot down a street with lots of murals painted on walls outside of building entrances, the most prominent of which is a raised clenched fist with dark skin. The sidewalk is covered in compacted snow and there is slightly more snow with some footprints between the sidewalk and road, lined with parked cars and a sign for a bike store

A trash bin next to a walkway towards an arch with some generic graffiti (including a crab drawn in red marker) plus a pride flag sticker saying 'Support Namibian Queer Rights'

a silver pole with a round sticker on it that shows the pride rainbow colours as waves in the background and a windmill with the trans flag colours as blades

The sidewalk in a park with dirt spread about to form a portrait of Louis Riel, Métis leader and founder of Manitoba.

A sticker on a traffic pole saying 'you are entering a fascist free zone' with various fascist symbols at the bottom with red circle no signs over them

Two images of the same poem on different metal street utility boxes with various stages of being ripped off or written over. The poem goes: 'today at 8:23 pm i watched / helplessly / as four men/ under employ of the state, and / paid salary / (generously) / beat and tazed a cuffed native // his face--alike my own, though darker / painted osborne, seizing / helplessly. // oh G_d, / i can no longer write gently, / or take solace in small comfort. / this beautiful home has been made cold / unending / absent of grace. // that which cannot be truly said / besides by poem / will go unheard / besides by war.' The message written over in the first picture says 'IF YOU HAVE AN ISSUE EXPLAIN...' in the middle and 'ACAB' in the bottom corner.

a beigey orange exterior wall with a dark blue sign with white lettering saying 'Please, No Graffiti, Thanks, Residents' and a sticker on the top righrt of that plus black permanent marker on the top left saying 'U SUCK'

a green lamppost with a high contrast sticker with teal and magenta tones of a devil eating a taco. the background features a lawn with a garden, another lamp post, a Canadian flag, and some distant buildings.

a brick wall with half a face of a cartoonish guy looking down with sad eyes

a stone wall with a blue metal railing on it above concrete steps with a stencil of a black and white devil painted on it

a sidewalk with a bird painted on it in an Indigenous Turtle Island motif, using mostly orange and teal colours

wet cement on a sidewalk with 'ROB CANDY' and 'BLM' freshly written into it

a cardboard sign on the pavement that says 'BEER' in purple letters below a drawing of a smiling bottle that looks more like moonshine than beer, next to a wooden fence

a concrete wall with a lizard-like cartoonish head drawn on the left screming 'AAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!' with the letters going across the frame of the picture

a concrete stairway going up to an overpass with a concrete wall that was painted an off-white colour but now has grey rectangles on it from painting over other graffiti. Part of the grey paint portion has 'ART is not A CRIME' spray painted in blue

a lamppost with a partially covered sticker that was a series of vertical rounded rectangles in colours of the rainbow with the message 'love is love is love' going down one word each line. somebody has written over it in black chisel tip marker writing 'FUCK LOVE'

a lamppost with a sticker featuring an icon of a bicycle with 'all cyclists are beautiful' written above it