Chase takes it from the street

This past week I had a great opportunity. I was heading to my favorite addiction (Border bookstore) on my way to look for a book
when I happened upon an artist beginning to paint a very large mural. The air was thick with the smell of paint, not regular paint - spray paint. As I rounded the corner from the escalator I looked at the outline of this…design just at the beginning stages. Ok, so you have to understand…this was happening on Columbus Circle in NYC…not exactly the street capital of the world.

The ‘street’ artist Chase was just beginning to outline a project for “Western Union” on the second level of the shopping center. If you’re not familiar with Chase, let me tell you a bit about him.

Chase, a Belgium transplant now lives in Los Angeles and paints free murals around the world depicting young children with the text next to them saying: “Remember Who You Are”. Actually, he has many different ‘sayings’ that can be seen through out his various works. While he did formally study art, it seems he was ‘kicked out of art school’ and only then found his true voice.

He says” Painting seems to be a source of happiness for me, when a few days go by without having painted; I feel the need to re-connect with myself through painting. I get psyched on the smallest variations in my work, and the meditative aspect of it is not unimportant either. Once a work is finished, I can’t wait to start another because I want to apply the new things I just thought of, no matter how small they may be…it gets addictive!”

I simply say his work is really cool and it’s really a pleasure to meet an artist whose work I have known and enjoyed around the world.

So why was he here – As I said Western Union was doing a presentation here in NYC and they wanted to get people interested in their product and what a better way then through art. The final piece will be moved to their corporate headquarters in Denver.

Some days it’s really pretty cool to walk around the city and see things. Sometimes the city…frankly is just the city. Other days it’s art where you least expect it.