This Strange Thing of Ours

We’re down in Lance’s basement studio printing our latest poster on the same evening as his neighborhood potluck. A bunch of neighbors crowd into the basement to watch us work.

Lance, Beautiful Angle’s primary designer and print guru, gives a tour of his crazy, artifact-filled space, where layers of cheap knockoff Persian rugs and stacks of battered type cabinets add warmth to the beat-up concrete walls.

He cranks the Challenge Proof Press, a vintage cylinder letterpress we use each month to create our posters. As the writer, I hang back a bit and talk to a few of the folks about what it’s like to be a guerrilla artist in Tacoma, about stapling and wheatpasting posters around town.

Beautiful Angle By the Numbers
Number of founders: 2
Number of years in existence: 5
Number of contributing artists: 25
Age, in years, of printing press: 52
Maximum allowed paper size: 15 x 28
Number of posters printed in average run: 120
Number of posters wheatpasted around Tacoma each month: 80–100
Number of citations issued for illegal posting: 0

The irony is this: On the night we’d planned to record our conversation and dive deep into why we do what we do, the community intrudes. We end up explaining Beautiful Angle to the neighbors at the same time we’d planned on explaining it to ourselves. When they leave, we start our own conversation. Beginning with a question: Why do these Tacoma folks — these stay-at-home wives, Boeing white collars, teachers and the like — connect so easily and so strongly to this strange little project?

Lance: There’s something about the craft of it. It’s tangible. There’s an industrial quality to it. You have to crank gears to make this stuff. That connects to this town. The general perception is that art comes out of leisure, but industry says otherwise. A good beer, after all, tastes better after a hard day’s work. And, I suppose, we’re making art for the masses.

Tom: Art for the masses. Hmm. Does that mean it’s less artistic? Dumbed down?

Lance: It’s approachable. We’re speaking to our audience. When your gallery is the closest telephone pole, the audience is whoever happens to walk by.

Tom: So the art has to work on a broader level. But that doesn’t mean it can’t work on a more intricate level as well. For example, our August 2007 poster references city poet Carl Sandburg and nature poet William Wordsworth. But people don’t have to get that. If they do, even better. It goes back to why this project connects with local folks. To misquote Jesus, a prophet is never honored in his own town. That doesn’t seem to be the case here. Why do you think that is?

Lance: Maybe we’re not prophets.

Tom: Maybe we’re false prophets. If we are, they’ll have to take us out to the city limits and stone us.

Lance: Yeah, they’ll have to take us to Fife. Or University Place. The spiritual content of our posters allows a dialogue that is typically taboo. Society says to never talk politics or religion, but we talk about both all the time. And you write in a way that’s pretty transparent.

Tom: Hopefully. But I often wonder how much inappropriate bias our work has. We approach the eternal from the point of view of what I’ll call Christian grace, in the sense that we talk about love and “making room at the trough” and declaring Tacoma to be a holy city. But I wonder if we do it just to have people tell us how wonderful we are. Maybe if we really loved this city, we’d be more willing to piss people off and spend more time pointing out its flaws.

Lance: What we’re doing is not so much stroking the city’s ego as it is speaking about our nobler selves. But I don’t want to be a trendy Tacoma cheerleader, where speaking about love feels like a marketing plan.

Tom: OK, then let’s put our money where our mouths are. Let’s come up with a top ten list of the worst things about Tacoma.

Beautiful Angle’s Top Ten Worst Things about Tacoma
10. Congregations in every church in this town are either black or white.
9. You still have to drive to Seattle to get a great pizza.
8. Our most sophisticated transport system only goes one mile.
7. We spend hundreds of millions on a convention center, then hide it behind an ugly chain hotel. Or is that a motel?
6. We make this push to attract the creative class of artists, then we convert their affordable lofts into $800,000 condos.
5. Valet parking on 6th Avenue.
4. A certain infamous slum lord.
3. The Tacoma Mall.
2. We still want to be Seattle when we grow up.

Tom: That’s only nine.

Lance: OK, how about: The Java Jive is still languishing.

Tom: Really? When’s the last time you went there?

Lance: I’ve never gone there.

Tom: Maybe that’s why it’s languishing.

Lance: You could be right. We’re all basically hypocrites. At least we’re consistent in our inconsistency. OK, how about the fact the Murray Morgan Bridge still needs saving? Why should we work so hard to save that rusting hunk of junk anyhow?

Tom: It’s not objectively beautiful. But subjectively, so many people have chosen to declare it beautiful that it’s become so. That, it seems to me, is the highest level of beauty.

Lance: It’s the perfect symbol of Tacoma, because of its industrial aesthetic, its functionality and its beauty, all in one.

Tom: It’s the same reason we have so many dandelions on our posters. By the way, we’re getting pretty deep into our word count for this story. Just to be clear: how do you want us to come across?

Lance: Witty and spiritual. But not too spiritual. And not just witty for witty’s sake.

Tom: Why not too spiritual?

Lance: Because I have a tendency to swing to the gospel choir. I don’t want to be out of balance. So say something witty or funny now.

Tom: My favorite funny thing about Beautiful Angle has got to be our strange, contradictory relationship with the city. We have utility workers who constantly post signs as part of their job reminding us not to hang our posters on telephone poles. Then we have Councilwoman Julie Anderson asking if she can come along with us and hang posters. And the city’s Web site linking to our site. We have Paul Ellis of the Tacoma Chamber asking us to stop hanging posters downtown. Then we have Paul Ellis giving us an award for hanging posters downtown.

Lance: And the one place in Tacoma dedicated to wheatpaste — the Tollbooth Gallery, run by ArtRod — is the single place in Tacoma that’s forbidden us to hang posters.

Tom: By the way, we’d like to take this opportunity to publicly apologize to Jared Pappas-Kelley and the ArtRod folks for any snarky e-mails we sent over that whole issue.

THE BEAUTIFUL ANGLE GUIDE TO WHEATPASTING
Wheatpaste, also known as Marxist Glue, is the sticky part of wheat flour. We buy ours in powder form from Daniel Smith Artists’ Materials in Seattle, but many artists use regular wheat flour or wallpaper glue. Wheatpasting, or poster bombing, is the act of pasting or stapling posters to utility poles and the sides of old buildings. As a form of communication, it’s been around at least since the 1890s, when Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s wheatpasted posters were so popular that instructions were published on how to peel down the posters without damaging them. As a glue, wheatpaste is permanent — unless removed with heavy soaking (minimal damage) or a pressure washer (maximum damage).

Lance: Should we drop the names of some of our friends who’ve worked on this project with us? Like Art Chantry, Scott Bailey, Jay Hember and Chris Sharp?

Tom: You just did. But you only mentioned four of them. Jerk.

Lance: Working with guest artists and writers is one of the things I love most about the project.

Tom: Who else would you like to work with?

Lance: In the not-too-distant future: Jessica Spring, Joe Miller and sweet pea.

Tom: The project is mostly about connecting. Connecting with other artists and writers. And connecting with our community.

Lance: What would art critics say about our work?

Tom: They’d say it’s pedestrian.

Lance: Is it?

Tom: No. It’s for people in cars, too.