Street Art, Providence, RI.

I'm a great lover of street art, as readers of this blog may know, but not when it's defacing beautiful buildings or public spaces, like this stencil, which was found on a lovely set of stone stairs on the Providence River Walk.

The beauty of the surroundings actually detracted from this stencil, which if it had been on some grungy building on the Lower East Side, I would have liked much better. I don't know why this is. Am I missing the point of street art? Can a person be selective of where they like to see it, or don't like to see it? I think what I like so much about street art is that it seems to pop out at you out of nowhere, in unexpected places. Sometimes you really have to look hard to see it. But this...right out in the open on a lovely stone staircase? Why? There didn't seem to be any effort put into the placement, like the stencil was just slapped down on the first available flat surface. You know how chain restaurants like Subway or Dunkin Donuts are forced to submit to planning commissions in places like Martha's Vineyard or Freeport, ME and blend in with the surroundings, with like a cute little swinging sign off the side the building rather than a neon sign? I feel like this is kind of the same thing. If you're going to do street around a place like the Providence River Walk, at least make it blend in and add something to the surroundings, not detract.

There were a bunch of these monkey faces (plus one of the Fonz, which was kinda funny) all over one section of the River Walk, and they just plain old looked bad. If it had been much smaller and in a less conspicuous place, I would have liked it much better.