It's that time of year again.  Autumn is very nearly upon us.  But it's no reason to mourn.  As Samuel Butler reminds us, those warmer months are overrated. "Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits." 

Today was Fensfest, the "harvest party" of the Fenway Garden Society, and also, as luck would have it, Open Studios in the South End.  A gathering of fruits.  And since my friend Will had never been, I had no choice but to drag him all over Boston to share this end-of-summer feast of the fruits of aht, cultcha, and life with him. 

Fensfest was nice.  The weather could not have been better.  And it's always good to get the gardeners together.  But it was probably not wise to drag poor Will along.  Talk over knackwurst and homemade slaw tended toward the obscure.  Probably the most controversial topic was the proper winter storage and care of dahlias, since they're quite spectacularly in bloom at the moment, and one of my neighbors' hadn't wintered well.  Turns out peat moss is the secret.  And one gardener suggested, to universal skepticism: give them a little water in the middle of winter.  He swore up and down that's what they want.

A funny thing happened as I showed Will around to some of my favorite gardens in the Fenway after lunch.  We passed a klatsch of middle-aged women on one of the paths.  We were obviously admiring the gardens just as they were, but as we squeezed by them one raised her voice so that we could hear what she was saying to the others:

"... those AWFUL PEOPLE who BREAK INTO OTHER PEOPLE'S GARDENS TO HAVE SEX ..."

When we were out of earshot, Will turned to me and said, "do you think that was for us?"

I shrugged.  I mean, it annoys me, too.  We had just passed a derelict garden with the gate kicked in, and there are a couple in my row as well.  And I guess everyone pretty much assumes it's run-off from the Ramrod around the corner. 

And while to a practiced eye my friend and I don't look like sex-crazed crystal meth addicts fleeing the reeds on the banks of the Muddy River for a little privacy, I'll grant the kneepads, hotpants and tiny tees might give people WHO NEVER GET LAID the wrong impression of our character. 

What. Ever.

From there we trekked across the city to the far edge of the South End to get some culture.  I've been doing Open Studios off and on for years, and it's amazing to me how posh some of the studio spaces have become since it all started.  We had to be buzzed into 433 Harrison.  Thankfully 450 Harrison is still pretty funky.

In the old days the point was to pop into as many studios as you could, fill up on cheap wine and peanuts, and cruise the halls for hot guys.  But it's gotten somewhat more respectable.  So we ended up looking at some of the art this time around.  Will had a concert to go to, so we were on the clock, but got a sense of the diversity of artists on hand.

In my quick survey, I was most impressed by Judith Solomon's stuff.  However she achieves her realism, her command of color and light is remarkable.  Her still-lifes are mostly of fruits — like grapes, limes, and oranges.  And they're gorgeous. 

Other than that, I was happy to see that Ron English's (in)famous Obamraham Lincoln murals had seasoned well...


...and, in the spirit of bipartisanship, had been joined by one representing the GOP nominee...


It's the old conundrum: what's better for street art in the long run?  Political propaganda that's deprecative or adulatory?  You could take Christian iconography as a case study.  Straight-on adoration is anodyne.  Even Christ gets more respect when you hang him on a cross. 

The Obamraham Lincoln panels already seem a little dated — and I don't mean merely that they're a little tattered — but they were done back in July, when Obamania was still driven largely by opposition to Hillary.  Now that he's the only game in town, the murals have a Chairman Mao quality to them.  The message they convey is uncomplicated and relatively uncontroversial. 

The complexity of loathing is more compelling and garners a more interesting response, in my opinion.  Not only because it implicates us in an emotion that's unpleasant. In political art, the potential for subversion in multiple layers of meaning is greater the more critical of the subject we are.

Having said that, I do love the way the murals have turned out, with "comments" and addenda added over the intervening months.  I can't say an Obama presidency would be worse for street art than McCain, although I would predict an at least hundred-day lull in political agitprop should Obama end up being sworn in next January. 

Not to worry.  Faux guerilla ads for Spore will take up the slack.