Pair of hooters set off by wheat-paste owl: Kenny Be’s Sign Language

The wheat paste technique is most often used to slap printed movie posters onto wooden pedestrian walkways in construction zones — but its use to display an original drawing on a cell-phone tower is more rare than a spotted owl sighting. As seen in the photo above, the remains of a wheat-pasted ink-wash-on paper rendering of The Owl Sees at Night makes a daring daylight sight. The artwork has even inspired “Spud” to pay homage in a pared-down line-drawn rendering that shows just how much an owl looks like a surprised man with a train track mustache…

Although the artwork above might be considered vandalism, a look at where it has been torn away reveals how much more beautiful it is than the ugly scrawl that it covered. The poster-sized brushed-ink painting features a washed-out owl hovering over an FTS!-emblazoned storm cloud. A top-twenty Internet search would suggest that this work is part of the “Fuck The System” crew’s “Graf on the Tracks” project, as it hangs on a utility tower next to some train tracks that pass under an interstate somewhere in the city. These scanty details are necessary in order to preserve, for just a little bit longer, the work of a pair of artists who give a hoot.