Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Caught with a Can in my Hand

Last night I went for my first street art session in Buenos Aires and got caught by the Argentinian police. Yes, can you believe it? Because I still can´t. I was trying to do my first free hand piece (with some stencils involved), but it was turning more into a practice session because I was failing miserably. It´s way harder than I thought. I got as far as far as the outline, started shading which covered up the detail I had already done, realized that I have to shade before I detail (obviously), when the cop car came straight for us, no hesitation and stopped. This was in the space of less than 10 minutes. I had no time to do anything, so I started calmly putting my paint cans back in my backpack, while internally flipping out trying to think quick as to how I was gonna get out of Argentinian prison. I was made to empty my entire backpack and had even my emergency tampon handled, my wallet opened to expose my two pesos, and my extremely wrongly written information taken down. I had a small discussion with one of the cops about art and he told me to go to San Telmo (the neighbourhood over) to paint. Then he told me before they left that if he catches me painting again I´m going to jail. A little contradictory. My Italian friend had been on the look out for me, but apparently he looked extremely menacing because according to these cops and their overly quick response, someone had called them on us thinking that we were trying to rob the newspaper store we were near. Paranoid Argentinians. As for the Italian, it turned more into a drug search for him, they even sniffed his hands. So that put a damper on the night and hitting up the streets of Buenos Aires in general, but I will persevere. Here is a picture of what I started, I´m kinda embarrassed, even though I think I could have pulled it off with more time.

4 comments:

  1. uh-oh, little tobias is already getting in trouble in argentina

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  2. Can we really blame them?

    I mean, what kind of red-blooded Argentinian man doesn't love fondeling an emergency tampon?

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  3. I won´t tell mama either. Don´t worry.

    (But I am telling Papa.)

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