Good Morning Lowcountry

Bubble gum art

Last week while GMLc was shaking with fever and coughing, hacking and retching with bronchitis, we noticed that Charleston's three gum-covered, pop-art utility poles near the landmark City Market probably won't have a chance to become landmarks of their own.

The city's transportation director, Herman Pena, said that sticking your gum on a telephone pole is a vile, destructive and unwelcome act. Charles Francis, police department spokesman, threatened those caught doing so with a $500 fine and 30 days in jail.

In a 1990 manifesto, artist and Charleston native Shepard Fairey described his "Obey Giant" sticker campaign as an experiment in "Phenomenology."

"(Philosopher Martin) Heidegger describes Phenomenology as 'the process of letting things manifest themselves,' " Fairey wrote. "Phenomenology attempts to enable people to see clearly something that is right before their eyes but obscured; things that are so taken for granted that they become muted by abstract observation."

Things like ... telephone poles. The telephone poles in Charleston at that time that displayed an Obey Giant sticker were soooo much more interesting than the telephone poles that did not.

As far away as Siberia, GMLc has seen, and photographed, the more interesting telephone poles and otherwise ugly concrete walls ... the ones with graffiti on them, the ones with messages posted. In Siberia, the messages were in Russian but we have no doubt they said things like "Bass player needed for garage band. Must have own amp." or "Roommate needed for cheap apartment. No heat."

But back to Obey Giant and phenomenology. "The sticker has no meaning but exists only to cause people to react, to contemplate and search for meaning in the sticker," Fairey wrote.

While Charleston viewers search for, and Charleston officials dismiss, the meaning of bubble gum, we note that other cities have handled their own exercises in phenonmenology with more finesse.

San Luis Obispo, Calif., for example, where Bubble Gum Alley is a tourist attraction.

"I visited Bubble Gum Alley in San Luis Obispo a year ago at Christmas," wrote reader Teri Lynn Herbert of Charleston.

"(There's a) note from the store on the corner asking people not to put gum on the store.

"I asked the folks in the store if the note worked and they said that 99 percent of the time they had no problems, just when there were big street parties and lots of drinking that people 'couldn't read'... It was quite humorous. Don't you think the first one looks like a Jackson Pollack painting!"

We leave it to you, dear reader, to decide whether the bubble gum looks like a Pollack or a mass of seething, writhing, saliva-borne germs.

Some see vandalism, others see art.

Graffiti and other street art have found their way into online and actual art museums. A new work appearing on a wall or an overpass by Banksy, Britain's well-known street artist and prankster, is cause for celebration in Brooklyn, N.Y.

One of GMLc's favorite artists, Keith Haring, was a 1980s street artist turned pop icon turned businessman much as Shepard Fairey has become with his movie posters ("Walk the Line") and campaign art (Barack Obama).

It's not far in the art world from outsider with a spray can or a stapler to commercial success among the talented artists of our time. We're surprised the bubble gum industry hasn't found a commercial way to appropriate bubble gum poles, alleys and walls across America to their own product sales use.

GMLc

Call 937-5564. Write gmlc@postandcourier.com. Comment at www.charleston.net/news/gmlc.