Storefront Art: The Ice Cream Cart Bus Stop

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We're big proponents of the idea that art is in the eye of the beholder. Questioning the definition of art is nothing new - Marcel Duchamp and his gang with their altered Mona Lisas, Jasper Johns with his flags and Ballantine Ale cans, and Richard Lair with his Thai Elephant Orchestra are but a handful of artists who have forwarded the idea that art is where you find it.

In the city, there's a specific genre of art that has a small but fervent group of admirers, and for our purposes we'll call it storefront art (even though it's not always on the front of a store). It's the non-licensed drawing of Mickey Mouse on the ice cream truck, the mysterious floating gyro hunk on the window of the greek deli, the logo depicting a sausage orchestra on the side of a meat delivery truck. Some of it has obviously been rendered by professional artists, but a great deal more is the work of the shop proprietor or his kid who picked up a brush one day with the intention of jazzing up the family business. And to that we say kudos to you, shop proprietor and your kid. Keep it up.

We're choosing to highlight some examples because this sort of art is particularly ephemeral; one day you're walking by the local pupuseria and you notice that the flipper woman levitating a potato has been painted over, or the chicken mural has been decimated by a wrecking ball. A good lesson to be learned from storefront art is enjoy it while you can. Today's storefront art selection is more of an homage to storefront/ice cream cart art, by "Moron" artist Aaron Donovan. It can be found at the bus stop on Alvarado Street just north of Sunset Blvd. in Echo Park, and is continually being embellished by local kids in a rather humorous manner. More pictures are here; a couple are not safe for work if your boss is offended by depictions of genitalia done in Sharpie pen.