KARL: I am not going to keep that.
NORIKO: If you didn’t keep, you would regret later. So maybe ten years later, your idea go to look at it going to be different, so just keep it. Ten years later, you will be surprised – ‘wow I made a big masterpiece’.
I couldn’t take it home and shove it in the loft anyway as it’s been converted into a bedroom. I’m sure the reason for more charity shops on the high streets these days is due to the fact that most people have converted their lofts, so they have less space to store crap.
Ushio strapped on some sponge and started smacking his arms and fists onto another canvas like Mr Miyagi’s epileptic brother. He used just black paint. It didn’t look too dissimilar to the one I had knocked out. It was funny to watch, as it’s not every day you see a man in his 80s wearing nothing but shorts and goggles whacking a canvas to shit. Maybe it’s more like performance art. I had a good day and enjoyed giving it a go, but just like the boxing I attempted when I was a kid, once was enough.
POLISHING A TURD
Art is something we like as it takes our mind off life’s daily grind. We have so much going on in our heads that it’s difficult to properly get away from it all. I find there are only a few things that help me clear my mind from the chaos: 1) cutting the lawn, 2) cleaning windows, 3) music, 4) rock climbing (I did it for the first time recently on a trip and when you are unclipping hooks from one rope to another, and your life depends on getting them in the correct order, it really makes you focus on the job in hand and you forget everything else), 5) standing in dog shit. No matter what is going on in your life, when you stand in some fresh dog shit and the smell hits you, everything has to stop while you find a stick to scrape the problem away from the tread in your trainers.
The only thing worse than having to do this is having to wipe it away from between your toes. I can still remember the feeling of this happening. I went to get some milk off the doorstep barefoot and our dog had defecated at the front door and I hadn’t seen it. It made me gag instantly. I don’t know if you’ve seen that film 127 Hours where a man gets his arm trapped under a boulder and the only way he can escape is by cutting it off. If you have, the noises he made and the expression on his face were similar to me wiping that shit from between my toes. No one else was up yet, so I wiped it off my feet and went back to bed, the plan being to act like I hadn’t seen it. Of course the only issue was that my bowl of cornflakes next to my bed and the milk already in the fridge and open were a giveaway, plus the fact that my footprint was in the turd, so a visit from Magnum P.I. wasn’t necessary to work out I’d already seen it and decided to leave it.
Rightly so, I was in the shit yet again.
Today I was going to have to beat those demons and come face to face with dog dirt one more time, as I was having a day out with a couple of lads known as the Sprinkle Brigade, who since 2007 have been creating art using dog poo. Their names were Jeremy and Jeff. I met them at the site where the idea came about.
JEREMY: Well, we’re called Sprinkle Brigade. We go around the city and we decorate the shit that people leave on the street. Because it’s a problem. No one does anything about it. So we figured we’ll do something to make it look a little bit more special to brighten up people’s day.
JEFF: Yeah. Take something that people hate, and make them laugh a little bit.
KARL: I suppose there aren’t many things left in life that get an immediate reaction like shit does.
JEFF: There’s comedy in there, but for the most part you’re right; it’s disgusting and if we can take something that people loathe and make it something they laugh at, we think that’s of value. We don’t think the world is gonna pick up their dog shit. There’s always gonna be people who leave it, and it’s always gonna be something that we all hate.
JEREMY: We’re very particular about the way we go about it. We don’t just walk up to each piece and say ‘oh, there’s one right there, we gotta decorate it’. Everything is really thought out. There are three principles to it: having a great idea, finding the perfect piece that suits the idea, and then giving it a really great name.
The plan was to go shopping first and buy some props that would be added to the poo to bring it to life and make it art. On the way to the shop we came across the first small pile of dog dirt. They stood and chatted while not taking their eyes off it, just like Blake the art critic looked at the art in the Museum of Modern Art.
JEFF: It’s a possibility but the size isn’t there. We could do something with it but it’s just . . . you know. It’s not jumping out at me.
KARL: How long would you say that one has been there?
JEFF: I think it’s newborn. That’s a newbie.
KARL: Is that from this morning, then?
JEFF: It’s got a brush of rain on it. Maybe like an hour of rain or something. So it could have come last night.
KARL: So that doesn’t excite you?
JEREMY: I think it’s a dud.
JEFF: If it’s fresh and it has a tacky ordure, you can just go straight with the sprinkles. But in a case like this, I know that if I put the sprinkles on there, then it’s not gonna stick. So, there is a little bit of a cheat we use, but it works.
JEREMY: It’s called Spray Mount.
KARL: Oh right, like a type of spray glue. It’s quite an expensive hobby this, then?
JEREMY: It gets a little pricey. Money is no object, though, when it comes to this.
KARL: Now the sprinkles are on it, do you take a photograph?
JEFF: I don’t think we necessarily need to photograph this one, cos this is a standard, a basic hit. Unless it’s like a cascade of shit, you know what I mean, like a real prize winner, then we might photograph it, cos it means something to us. But this one is just kind of routine. It just leaves a mark so when somebody comes around and sees it, they’ll know the Sprinkle Brigade has been here.
At this point, I wasn’t sure whether it was art just yet, but what I liked was that the sprinkles made it stand out on the pavement, which meant there was less chance of someone stepping in it. When I was a kid, standing in dog shit on the estate was something that happened around three to four times a week. I think I spent more time cleaning out the tread on my trainers than I spent cleaning my teeth. Thinking back, a popular toy back then that every kid had was stilts. It’s likely they came into fashion as a way of avoiding getting shit on your shoes. Honestly, it was everywhere. The local park had ‘Keep Off the Grass’ signs, but I don’t think this was an order, it was more of a warning, as it was like a minefield out there. Everyone goes on about Michael Jackson being the creator of the moonwalk, but he wasn’t, everyone round our way was walking backwards like that scraping shit off their shoes.
We went into a toy shop, and I got looking for props that could help turn dog muck into a piece of art. I followed Jeff and Jeremy around the place to get an idea of the sort of things they look for. Jeff picked up a plastic eagle.
KARL: So you’d just place that on the poo?
JEREMY: Yeah, kinda perched up on it like a wooden post.
KARL: Like a log?
JEREMY: Yeah . . . you know, like the big wooden logs that come up in the ocean. I’m really excited about that. I hope we can get a piece in a puddle, in the position that we want it. Like it’s almost like, in the ocean. Really romanticise it.
The first thing that grabbed my eye was a small wooden TV which must have been for a doll’s house.