Jay Shells, a street artist who has endeared himself to many New Yorkers with his MTA-parodying “Subway Etiquette” posters, recently proposed to his dearest in the most logical manner for a street artist to do so: He popped the question by spray-painting it on the roofs of buildings across the street from his Upper East Side apartment.
The faintly visible pink spray paint words read: “Rachel, will you marry me?”
“I was definitely going to paint the proposal somehow, but wasn’t sure where,” Shells told Animal. “I recently moved in with her uptown in a very tall building and the idea hit me when I was looking down off the terrace. Found my way up onto the roof and used inverted ground marking spray paint, one word per roof. It took about 8 minutes to paint. I brought her out there the next morning and told her to look down on the sidewalk for something else I said I painted. She looked over the edge and noticed (not right away) the rooftops across the street. Then I dropped to one knee and did that part in the traditional way.”
Shells’ efforts weren’t in vain; his girlfriend said yes. “It was also the most super natural way I can think of him to propose,” she told Animal. “In his natural environment.”
— Benjamin Sutton
(Images courtesy the artist, via Animal.)
Tags: Benjamin Sutton, Jay Shells, News, Street Art
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C’mon Art Info, is this really worthy of space on your usually highly thoughtful art blog? I’m a big fan of most contemporary art styles (including street art and Shells’ MTA work in general) but for a guy of his talent to do lettering worthy of a 4th grader seems gratuitous even if the proposal sentiment is the real story. I love the idea of the proposal, but the ‘work’ itself was weak at best. Not readable and emotionless. It’s shit graffiti like this that gives graf-art a bad name. Congrats to the couple nonetheless.
Maybe he should have painted it in black paint first, then in the pink. at least then she wouldn’t have needed help figuring out what it said.