It goes without saying, but the world was a different place before the internet and cellphones. We’d head out in the morning to skate, paint, or whatever, and meet up with friends at a few spots around the city. If you didn’t find them at one, you’d run into them at another - or on the way there. You had a general sense of when dinner was and somehow just made it back home, unreachable the whole time.
Being connected like we are today has its upsides, but we’re also constantly distracted - if not outright addicted - to our phones. The dopamine-driven feedback loops keep us hooked: texting, checking likes, posting and doomscrolling.
Beyond the nostalgia, pay phones represent a time that felt freer, more innocent, less fragmented by distraction. With the last pay phone recently removed from NYC, these actions are my attempt to make them just a little harder to erase from the streets of LA.
This are the first phones I’ve painted in the studio and I’m looking forward to expanding on this concept and painting phones in the city everywhere!