Friday, April 15, 2011

jubilation 95...chasing BANSKY in Park City

My sister, Julia, and her three kids spent the night and the next day at our Park City Hotel.  (All the pictures of her kids have been confiscated by my rascal computer).  She was as thrilled as I was about finding the few Banksy stencils left from his visit here during the screening of "Exit Through the Gift Shop Window" at the Sundance Film Festival in 2010.  In our investigations, we learned (leaving a large margin of error due to misinformation or lies) that one of them has been sold for a million dollars, two had been cleaned off by city officials, leaving two confirmed Banksy walls, and one still under investigation.   We started our search on main street, where it was rumored that we could find them.
It was cold, Ansel forgot his coat and the kids didn't quite get what we were looking for.   We thought we could narrow down our search by asking local business owners.  I couldn't believe that we were met with responses such as

"Your looking for the Banksies? Well, we have a Park City Banksy, a Banksy of America, and a Zion National Banksy. You can get all your monies at any one of them."

Ha. Ha.  I'm laughing my socksies off.

It was unfathomable that people were living in a the midst of work done by a graffiti genius and didn't even know.  We finally found some street smart people who knew what we were looking for.

We found this one, which is now protected by a huge piece of fiberglass.  Protected graffiti.  You have come a long way, Banksy.
Then this one.
Then this one done by an even greater artist.  


I didn't think our adventure had made much of an impression on the kids, but I heard Emmy ask one of her friends yesterday, "Have you ever heard of Banksy?  He does some really cool art on the sides of buildings."

No comments: