Someone with whom I’ve been having an anonymous email exchange over the last few weeks—and incidentally, these are GREAT FUN, just loaded with mistrust and possibility—just emailed me this link to braille graffiti in Portland. And I love it:
GRAFFITI: Randy Leonard better ban braille, and quick…

The project, it seems, is the work of Scott Wayne Indiana, whom Mercury arts editor Chas Bowie tells me is also the guy behind the plastic horse project, downtown. If so, Scott, could you replace the plastic horsey on NW Park and Glisan? It’s getting really battered.

Anyway Indiana’s latest project has been mentioned on national websites but my “deep throat” emailer says he hasn’t seen much local coverage. And my google-search tactics haven’t revealed much, either. Indiana says on his website that the idea has been tried in other cities but that he wanted to give it a distinctly Portland flavor.

What interests me about this project is that the city’s graffiti abatement coordinator, Marcia Denis, has been telling anyone who’ll listen since I came to Portland that “there’s no such thing as a graffiti ‘artist’.” Has she finally been proved wrong?