I Met A Street Artist

I was in Texas on business last week, and I had a couple of hours to kill in downtown Austin. If you have never been there, the 6th Street area is home to numerous pubs, live music venues, and all kinds of artists – a very cool place. Armed with my camera, I knew it wouldn’t be hard to enjoy the afternoon. After lunch and a walk, I stopped at Starbucks for a coffee. In one corner of the store was an artist, quietly sketching away with a pencil. He was looking up and down, obviously working on an image of another customer in the store. While waiting for my coffee I asked him if I could take a shot of him at work, and he smiled and said OK. I took a couple of quick pictures and then sat down with my coffee where I could watch him at work. I fine-tuned my camera settings and started on a few more shots. As I was doing this, he continued to look up and down – but this time at me! It dawned on me that I was now the subject, as he was mine!

So I moved over to his table and started chatting with him. He is about 45 years old, and figures he has been drawing for about 40 years, and has probably completed some 30,000 images. When I asked where he stores them all – he said that he doesn’t store them, he gives them away to his subjects. So we chatted for a while, as he worked away at my drawing. When he was finished, he pulled it off his clipboard, and his face went white with shock as he saw the back of my picture. He dropped his face into his hands and I thought he was going to cry. I asked him what was on the back, and he turned it around for me to see – it was a self-portrait! I felt bad for a few seconds, but realized that now I really had to have it.  I wondered only briefly what might motivate him, and then asked if he accepted donations. Of course he did, and I pulled out a twenty for him and took away my picture – with gorgeous images on BOTH SIDES.

Pictures of both and Art Martez are on my flickr page.