LEVIS REMEMBERED  |  Found Portraits

He Was My Friend and Winter
Photos contributed by Matthew Myers and Mathias Svalina

He Was My Friend  Fan Neighborhood 2008  Richmond, Virginia    Photo by Matthew Myers

He Was My Friend  Fan Neighborhood 2008  Richmond, Virginia    Photo by Matthew Myers

One cool spring afternoon a friend and I were walking along Park Avenue, in Richmond, Virginia, when this small piece of street art caught our attention. At first I thought the man in the image was an early Parisian Hemingway, but, upon closer inspection, my friend excitedly confirmed it was another Larry Levis tribute, one of many street signs—always with the same stencil—that have been appearing intermittently on the East Coast in urban areas over the past few years. This piece, with its familiar tableau of Levis’s shoulders, chest, and mustachioed visage, was (and I say was because vandals recently destroyed it) about 8" by 8" on plywood, attached by two nuts and two bolts below a dilapidated parking sign, close to the intersection of Park Avenue and Harrison Street. So, fueled by the presumption that street art has no permanence (despite its beautifying aspect—especially in low-income, dilapidated inner-city areas—street art is considered, by law, vandalism), I ran home, grabbed my digital camera, and dashed back to take a series of shots, two of which appear here. We believe the words embedded in the pink background are taken from the Levis poem, "Boy in a Video Arcade."

He Was My Friend (detail of back—signature of artist)  Fan Neighborhood 2008  Richmond, Virginia  Photo by Matthew Myers

This neon-bright combination of symbols and snowflakes on the backside of the piece is the artist's signature. On all of his work you will find the snowflake image somewhere, occasionally on the reverse side, away from the artwork, and other times it is incorporated into the piece.

Winter  Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina  2007  Photo by Mathias Svalina

This final image is a 2007 photograph contributed by Mathias Svalina who found the artist’s work in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina. The text is from Larry Levis’s poem “Winter.” The forementioned symbol and snowflake signature appears on the face of the work as it does on the found Levis portrait published in Blackbird v6n2.

—Matthew Myers  

Matthew Myers lives in Richmond, Virginia, and is an undergraduate English major at Virginia Commonwealth University. He taught English as a second language in Budapest, Hungary in 2003–2004. His poetry has appeared in Friction Magazine. A pagebuilder and second-term intern for Blackbird, his review of Melanie Almeder’s On Dream Street appears in this issue of Blackbird.

Mathias Svalina lives in New York City. He serves as co-editor for both Octopus Magazine and Octopus Books. He is the author of several chapbooks including Why I am White (Kitchen Press, 2007) and Viral Lease (forthcoming from Small Anchor Press). His full length collection, Destruction Myths, is forthcoming from Cleveland State University Press. His chapbook, Creation Myths, is reviewed by Catherine MacDonald in this issue of Blackbird.

   Levis Remembered  

Have you photographed Levis street art that we don’t know about? Blackbird editors invite readers to send digital photographs of work by the anonymous artist above for possible publication in future Levis Remembered features. Whether you find the work relatively new or degraded, please document it and get in touch.

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