As with most of my crazy stories, I was manic and in the mood to make some bold decisions. I had been living half out of my car and half on my friend's couch, mostly painting, befriending the homeless, and believing in myself way, way too much. At point I spent a whole day "following the wind" around town, for literally insane reasons. (Mental health is important tell your friends) But I digress.
It was about 1 AM and my friend had turned in for the night. Her neighbor was this awesome dude who was always supporting my burgeoning art even though I was completely nuts at the time, and he was like, "You should just paint something in our alley."

Huh.

I thought this was a great idea. These guys lived in a fairly mellow neighborhood in a pretty rough beach town. I know rough town and beach town don't really go together, but this town pulls it off. Behind their apartment building was an alley, and facing that alley was an abandoned house that was constantly getting moved into by squatters and then cleaned out by cops or whoever the owner was. Most people just used the lot to let their dogs run around and poop, but this house had a big ol' 8 or 9-foot wall next to it, and I thought, perfect. I will brighten this neighborhood AND predict the next earthquake, or something. I don't know, I was manic.

One of the side effects of mania is diminished fatigue--you pretty much sleep 0-3 hours per night, which contributes to the erratic behavior and cognition, since your brain can't function on 2ish hours of sleep a night. The real-life consequences of this is that if you're living out of your car and you don't really sleep, you are constantly looking for stuff to do. Having seized upon this activity during peak boredom hours (i.e. 2 AM, when most people are asleep), I decided to really just make a meal out of it.

Most graffiti artists are focused on speed and efficiency, getting in and out before you're spotted, which is part of why Banksy's stencil work is so successful and he's never been caught. My style was more...leisurely. I ran an extension cord from my buddy's garage out to the alley and set up a floodlight and some speakers I pulled from my car. I had a table with all my art supplies everywhere (and that filled a car trunk), I had a semi-broken chair I had pulled up from down the alley, and I had a pile of mason jars I stole from my friend's kitchen cupboard. (She has since forgiven me.)

So on goes the chillstep (shoutout to Tycho for being the best soundtrack to my insanity), up goes the floodlight, and for about a few hours I painted this:

Here's a shitty photo of it in progress so you can see the alley wall:

The abstract willow leaves was actually a splatter effect. Basically, I took three paint colors, put them in mason jars, watered them down, and then using a giant brush just flung the paint vertically at the wall. Think like you're holding a sword and leading a charge, except it's not a sword.

This paint-flinging pretty quickly evolved into paint-dancing, and honestly, I'd do it again. Dancing to electronic music while spinning and throwing paint at a wall is immensely cathartic. I ignored all the sirens that night, and if a cop had driven by, they would have seen a 6'3 woman in pajamas rags and long hair throwing paint at a wall and careening in circles in the warm glow of a floodlight. So my getting away with it was pure luck.

This story has a decently happy ending, in that all the neighbors actually liked it. Turns out that alley was a massive dumping spot, and putting some art on the wall made people not want to throw so much trash there. That tree lived a full life of about eight months before the city painted it over. You can still very faintly see it, and sometimes I feel like going back and doing a 2.0 sanity edition. Maybe someday.

Thanks for reading!