I do love the juxtaposition of ideas with the stickers I find. Some days the play between the stickers is obvious and influences the way you look at each. Other times it's just an interesting collection of images and ideas that will keep you enthralled for a while with all of the different things to see. I can't say I can really categorize tonight's combination of stickers though. It's not like they truly play off each other, since the top one is really just the remnant of a sticker. And since there's only the two on the pole you wouldn't immediately think it would draw your attention as much as it does, well at least it captured mine.
I feel like a large part of the image's draw is the mystery. The top sticker is just the leftover glue from the sticker that used to reside there. To me this memory reminds me of a forty, with it's wide bottom and small mouth. I could be mistaken, maybe there are different bottles that this resembles, but that's where my mind goes to. I can't say I've actually drank a forty, I generally prefer darker and higher alcohol beers than what is usually bottled in this method. This is a common enough of an image though that it's not a hard connection to make. The strawberry sticker is a little easier to gleam information from, although I wasn't able to find anything in particular about this image. It has the artist's initials of BR in the corner but that's not really anything to go on. And well, searching for strawberry stickers on the internet is a bit of a fool's errand. The strawberry though does have a fair amount of meaning tied to it. Some meaning that I associate with this berry is a sense of childhood and innocence. Partially because of Strawberry Shortcake, but mainly because strawberries were always my favorite food and I had plenty of access to them growing up. My grandparents had a fair amount of land which they rented out to local farmers to grow their crops. And while my grandparents were never large scale farmers themselves, they did keep a small garden that always had strawberries. The start of each summer always meant a drive down to their house to pick some strawberries and get my jar of freshly made jam to take home. Even though I really only buy strawberry jam now, there is nothing like those childhood jars. Strawberries actually have quite a bit of meaning attached to them. In folklore, early Christianity, and pagan belief systems the strawberry can symbolize rebirth, righteousness, spiritual merit, modesty or luck. In Victorian times the strawberry and it's flowers were used to communicate perfection or sweetness in character to others in bouquets. A common symbolic meaning that has remained to this day is the idea of love. From Norse and Greek mythology the strawberry was associated with their respective goddesses of love. Even today when people think of romantic evenings in or a sweet treat for Valentine's Day, strawberries are generally involved. Which, in a round about way, brings me back to my first thought. Again strawberries, as well as alcohol, are often played up as a big part of nights of passion and love. So I do enjoy the fact that these two stickers can be found on a pole together, a small symbol of passion and love on the street even if it's not what was originally intended.
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Maggie Ondrey
An amateur photographer and writer capturing a small portion of the city. Archives
August 2017
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