David Zinn's Street Art in Ann Arbor

Journalist Meredith Bruckner reports that beloved street artist David Zinn continues to create street art in Ann Arbor, Michigan's outdoor spaces, reflecting playfully on our current conditions of lockdown and social distancing.  His chalk drawings still figure the friendly green critter Sluggo with his prominet eyestalks and Philemona the Flying Pig, now doing their best to stay safe in the age of the novel coronavirus.

David Zinn

In one image, which Zinn has shared on Instagram, Sluggo self quarantines on a Desert Island, waving at Philomena, who remains at a safe social distance. Zinn provides a caption: "Sluggo knows how to make paradise out of wherever he is"

As always, Zinn cleverly plays with shadow and dimensionality to grant his characters the illusion of hanging out on pavement and outdoor walls. At a time when the city's streets are nearly deserted, and residents hurry past each other at safe distances, his colorful miniature beings re-enliven their environs, and remind of us of the dynamic energy of a normally vibrant cityscape.

A city is sometimes defined by socioogists as a space within which there are more social networks than any single individual can keep track of; thus cities can be awfully lonely places at the best of times. But Zinn keeps on providing us with heart warming glimpses of new connections being made even when physical proximity is forbidden.  On a bricked corner, a separated couple re-discovers the joy of serenading at a distance.   A lovely four part sequence shows a mouse drinking coffee alone on a window sill, and then a neighboring mouse pokes her head out from the next window (safely distanced), bringing a smile to the face of our friend. We can't frequent cafes or the Literati Booktore, but we can still have third spaces, and the joy of conversing with strangers.

In his classic essay, The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903), Georg Simmel notes that city dwellers, amidst incessant sensory stimulation from all sides, end up developing all sort of unique personal quirks and odd characteristics: the urban resident, he writes, "has to exaggerate this personal element to remain audible even to himself" Such seems to be the case with Zinn's instantly recognizable idiosyncratic imaginary friends, who keep on popping up in unexpected places throughout A2: in them, we see and hear an echo of our unique personas,,even if they are just about to to be trod upon by self-absorbed pedestrians. They hold up a joyous mirror to each of us, as we rush off on the next errand, or as we, as so often these days, wander the streets alone--wondering, anxiously, just what the next corner, and the next day, might bring.