More Green Sleeves by Sean Martindale and Eric Cheung. Excerpt from a recent article..
It’s 6 a.m. in Kensington Market on a Sunday morning, with the sun out but only barely, and Eric Cheung and Sean Martindale are busy planting flowers. At College and Augusta, on the two large posterboards on the west wall of Sam’s, they cut the outlines of large triangles deep into the thick layers of posters, through and past the topmost movie ads for The Ugly Truth and District 9 on one board and the PSP on the other. Then they pull those triangles out, folding and curving them into a pocket that’s shaped like something between a cone and a pyramid, using a staple gun to firmly attach it to the wall. When all the triangles across both boards are cut and folded and curved and stapled, which won’t be for another few hours, Cheung and Martindale will fill each pocket with dirt and place a plant inside, spraying it with water.
Unlike other forms of ostensibly illegal public art, the planters have been so well-received that they can afford to take their time. “No one’s complained yet,” explained Martindale as he cut another triangle; “a lot of times they thank us.” That held true on Sunday morning, as most passersby seemed pleasantly surprised that the two young guys with gloves and box-cutters going to town on a wall of posters not long after dawn, claiming that they were planting flowers, actually were. One woman shrugged off their explanation until she got a closer look, and exclaimed, “oh, you really are putting up plants!” It helps that the two only make planters out of pre-existing posters, avoiding ads for not-for-profit organizations or awareness campaigns and trying to carve up only illegal ads in illegal spots. According to Rami Tabello of Illegal Signs, that’s just what the poster boards on the side of the convenience store are—”totally illegal,” he says—erected, appropriately, by a company called Grassroots Advertising.
