Last month I was making my way home by MARTA late one night, when I noticed the black-and-white visage of a masked man on several walls and bridges. I wondered what it was. A few days later, I spotted it on the abandoned overpass above Ponce de Leon Ave., near the Whole Foods complex. Not the greatest picture, but I couldn’t get terribly close to the subject:
The Mysterious Masked Figure
My friend, Alfredo Aponte (hereafter to be called ‘Fredo’), tends to have his ear to the ground on urban art, so I called him to see what he knew about it. Which then prompted me to ask him to give me a sort of informal graffiti tour. So here’s the 2.5-minute redux of our 4-hour excursion:
Fredo says the masked figure is actually, as he put it, “underground propaganda” for a hip hop band.
Another interesting sidenote to the project is that Fredo and I went out just a couple of days before workers quietly starting clearing part of the northeast corridor for the Beltline. We had no idea. Below is how things looked from an Edgewood Ave. overpass, above abandoned rail track, when we went:
Compare that to this, from just a few days later.
November 29, 2009 at 6:34 am |
Hey– not bad! You’ve got style, kid.
Btw the band represented by the mask is unfortunately called Lee Harvey Oswald. I have one of their records. Some of it’s pretty listenable.
November 29, 2009 at 3:43 pm |
Ooooh. Thanks for the clarification! Would have been so much more interesting if it had been some underground, anti-establishment campaign à la Shepard Fairey. There was one OBEY sticker up in Krog Tunnel, but my photo of it was too blurry to post.
December 1, 2009 at 4:01 pm |
That was too short, any more coming soon?, but it looks great!
December 1, 2009 at 5:14 pm |
Thanks! Yes, another one will go up early next week.