I'll huff..and I'll puff...and blow your brick facade down..

Growing up, it seemed things were simpler. There were Brick houses and stucco houses, there were vynil and aluminum side houses and wood slat houses. I’m not sure when I started noticing this, but suddenly I’m seeing more and more homes with fake brick fronts.
Now as an artist and as someone with a strong aesthetic sensitivity I find these very unnerving.

In Art there is this concept of form = function = beauty. An apple is a beautiful thing..it’s an apple, it fills its function perfectly. You turn it around, and it’s an apple every way you look at it. It has functional integrity, truth and beauty. A brick house or a stucco house or a siding house is, even in a dilapidated state is beautiful in that its form meets its function and it’s a home.

When I walk down the street and see a home with a fake brick front, I’m thinking... who are you kidding? If I happen to stand across the street at a 45 degree angle and look at your house I might be fooled into thinking it’s brick? You couldn’t even fool the Big Bag Wolf with that false front. Sometimes I walk down certain streets and I feel like I’m on a Hollywood set with all the false fronts.

But then I think back to my simpler childhood and I find that the people reflected this phenomenon as well. People were true to themselves. There were those that wore grey hats, and those that wore black hats, those that wore straw hats and those that wore none. The “grey hatters” wore grey hats and the “black hatters” wore..you guessed it...black hats.
Today the “grey,straw and hatless” all wear black hats. They all put up false fronts.

There is a quote from the Chozeh of Lublin...
A Rosha (wicked person) that knows he’s a Rosha..is far better than a Tzaddik (righteous person) that knows he’s a Tzaddik.