HUGO October 4th: Georges Boulos

Two tours have passed and they have been two opportunities to open and enlighten my mind. The first trip, my tour of the street art village left me completely awestruck. I had high expectations for the trip in the beginning but as we pulled up to the building I immediately made assumptions. I had felt let down as we drove up to and approached the seemingly old and slightly dilapidated building that housed what I soon came to realize was a glorious testament to the new and fast developing art culture that has quickly taken root in the fair city. Soon after walking in and turning the first corner I found a picture that summed up all my new and blossoming ideas, and it was a simple statement. A simple, yet mysterious, hooded figure that seemed to represent the few isolated but knowing representatives of their genre which was capitalized by the words “Welcome to the Houston, Texas Art Mecca.”

 And a Mecca it is, it is a true melding of many different kinds of styles all in a singular space devoted to the furthering of no one’s personal goal but for the sake of their art. Before leaving this wonderful place I had to take one last trip through to appreciate the art and to make sure that nothing had been missed. And I had missed one dark corner that had been hidden from me, like a trip from my childhood in the dark recesses of my mind. Popeye, a notable figure from my early life had been painted into the corner of the dark room, echoing the dark times that surrounded him when I had seen him last, it spoke to every part of me and I was physically forced to stop and stare at the painting as, for a single moment, I stopped and lost myself in a daze.

My walk through and under Houston was a welcome, familiar and wondrous new look at a city that I thought I knew. Many like myself will go their whole lives never attempting to traverse the modern day catacomb to the time that people absently spend their lives. Now I had seen the art in passing, seen the buildings, seen the views but I had never before ventured inside any of the buildings before, seen the art behind the doors and I've now learned to look much closer. More than the winding tunnel and more than the sculptures purposefully added for their aesthetic qualities stood the city itself. The architecture that makes up the city’s essence. Towering and tiered skyscrapers, buildings made of metal and windows reflecting the day’s sun, but what caught my eye was not the buildings shining and reflecting light, it was a steep, delicate and tiered buliding whose image I caught while walking, glancing through the myriad maze of steel and glass i saw that it was completely shrouded in shadow, the monuments to man’s ingenuity surrounding it were reflecting all the sun rays and it stood there bare for me, every nook of the building and every detail laid bare. At my departing I could feel the difference in passing in bus and taking my time to walk through and truly absorb the environment that for my whole life I have lived so near yet absently ignored.