The fountains are really everywhere, and as I mentioned, many of them are real works of art. Here, the lovely Christina shows us another one, complete with a smug-looking maiden, the heraldic crest of Barcelona, marble seashells, and fish/gargoyles. (Fishgoyles?)

This particular one is in nearby Plaça de la Vila de Madrid, in El Gotico, which features some Roman remnants.

Street art. Barcelona is full of it. I won't pretend, here on this blog, to present anything even close to a comprehensive discussion of Barcelona's street art; there are lots of other sources for that kind of thing. But I do find myself taking pictures of the stuff I like, so here is some of it.

Much of it is apparently prepared at home, and then brought out to the streets and glued up, kind of like Taos's own PromoHobo.

Anatomical illustration. I'm pretty sure this is anatomically correct. My dad is a doctor.

Skull. I really like this one. It reminds me of perhaps my favorite painter, Francis Bacon.

More skull. I actually don't particularly love any of these, but they do show how people prepare these things, some of which are quite three-dimensional, and then manage to get way up high and glue them up. Also noteworthy is the fact that someone (either the property owner or the city) has re-painted the wall below, but painted around, and thereby preserved, the art. One does get the feeling here that the street art is embraced as part of the texture of the city.

Here's another one from near the zoo. Love it.

But this one really takes the cake. People throw mattresses away on the street all the time, but someone took the time to...
-Paint these two figures who are "jumping in and out" of the mattress, and also..
-add paper feet to the two figures, which are glued to both the mattress and to the stone sidewalk.
As soon as the mattress is moved, even a few centimeters...  (did you catch that? centimeters!)... then the feet, and the whole "piece", is ruined. So ephemeral, so good.
(The word in front of the lady is "BASURA", or "trash"... and it looks to me as if the written word was there before the art, probably by the person who discarded the mattress...)

And I will close this one out with this panoramic view of the beautiful, old, and very cinematic staircase in our building, complete with my beautiful Christina and Kodiak looking up at me. It's 81 steps up to our flat. Sorry mom. They're really nice steps.

Today we had lunch with a fellow who does work that is reasonably similar to ours. Such a nice guy, and I think he will probably prove to be a great resource for us. At this point it feels like he is our best connection yet.

Later this week, we will go see a few possible studios where we might be able to start producing some new work. To be honest, I'm a little less optimistic about these possibilities than I was a few days ago, as I am coming to understand that these "communal" artist studios are not always welcoming of sculptors, due to the fact that we sculptors have a propensity for making noise and dust and such. But I'm trying to keep an open mind.

Future posts, hopefully in the next few days, will cover things like • More fountains • More sculptures (with a sub-focus on boobs in public sculpture - there are lots of those over here, I'm telling you!) • Motorcycles in BCN • The little creative work I've managed to do over here.
I hope you're as excited a I am!

Cheers!