Found this beautiful old paste up from Dylan Egon that strikes so many chords with me. Which chords? It’s black and white with simple, clean lines. It’s full of small symbolic details that many will not understand. It’s political and cultural. It’s provocative, but the edge is offset by her calm expression. The Latin on the gun seems to have gotten overlapped when the sheet was applied, but it reads, “silentium est aureum” or “silence is golden”. This is a piece I wish I had drawn and now, I wish was on my wall.

Based on the handwritten graffiti, it also strikes a reaction in others as well.

Midtown, Manhattan.

As any self respecting cigar or pipe smoker knows, the best way to light up is by using a wooden match. As such, I’ve got a boxes of wooden matches stashed all over the house, garage, pockets and car. It is one of those items that you never really think about too hard though. There’s no real reason to think about them beyond “does it work as advertised?” — in this case, does it light? Or did it break?

Recently, though, I picked up a box at the supermarket and noticed they had changed vendors. No longer was…whatever brand they previously sold. Now they upgraded to offer Diamond matches. It’s not an item that I would even notice usually, but as a designer I was immediately struck by the packaging. I have some vague memory of the brand, but it seems as though they’ve gone through a redesign. And I love it. It’s clean with a touch of vintage and really stands out on a shelf.

Digging a little deeper, it seems like the brand has be tossed around by various holding companies and private equity firms which makes it seem a bit less glamorous than America’s leading producer of matches.

But those graphics! The design! The style! What’s a poor designer to do, but start drawing?

Here’s a couple of versions of the single and crossed match illustrations and because it’s one of my favorite techniques, there’s also animated versions. Dropping a <style> tag inside the SVG with @keyframe animations is a great way to sneak an animation past a content management system. Just be sure you nest the animation inside a prefers-reduced-motion: no-preference media query.

The animation itself is just a combination of scale, translate and rotate transformations. The one nice one is the ability to flip the flame by using a negative value on the X axis of a scale transformation.

transform: scaleX(-1);

I did consider doing a more elaborate animation, but…discretion is the better part of valor as they say. It quickly became clear that going down that path was leading further and further away from the inspiration point. Clean, crisp and iconic, thank you very much.

Tangentially, I do like the concept of a matched pair, burning together. Makes me think of my wife.

Need a light? You can download them here.

And the dark humor that sustains us.

Back in 2016, a video game came out that was somewhat prescient — Tom Clancy’s The Division. Maybe prescience is easy when the humanity is so predictably set on self-destruction, glorifies ignorance and revels in ineptitude. Sorry, that’s a bit harsh, I know.

It’s a great game and my wife and I pre-ordered it mostly due to it being based in NYC. A triple A game with highly detailed, open world maps of Manhattan? And a Tom Clancy based story? Yes, please.

And it’s a great game! We had a ton of fun running around all the neighborhoods we know and love. My wife would join friends online and point out our apartment or my office. We note differences between fiction and reality as we worked through missions.

And that’s where this little guy comes in. I think it was in the Brooklyn section of the game and in an alley, it was a large graffiti on the wall. This was also when I was drawing the symbols from Destiny ultimately leading to the Symbology project. Naturally, I was immediately drawn to this cool illustration, a symbol of sorts, a smiling wink and a nod, a thumb in the eye of authority in the face of disaster.

Flash forward to 2020 and there’s an actual global pandemic. And there are refrigerator trucks on the streets of Manhattan trying to hold all the dead bodies. Sorry, that’s a bit harsh, I know.

As it wasn’t part of the Symbology project, this illustration never had a home. Now it does. If you need a symbol for a bit of “screw you,” please take it. We need more signs. We need more humor. We need more ways to laugh at our despair.

You can download a version in JPG and SVG format here.

Wandering around some of the little towns outside of New York City and we found this wonderful piece of public sculpture — a giant head laying on it’s side on a massive marble stone. It’s the first of an edition of six cast from a 38 ton marble sculpture from artist Henry Schiowitz. The name of the series is Homage to the Masters.

It’s truly impressive in three ways. First, the concept. It’s an idea I’ve always loved — the mystery of a forgotten past, a broken piece of an epic tale fallen and discarded just waiting for discovery. It triggers all the fantasy and science fiction stories I’ve read. It echoes the pyramids of Egypt and Guatemala and those past civilizations. It’s the concept of something bigger than ourselves reinforcing our short lives and the fallacy of ego against time. I want one in my yard. I need one in my yard half buried looking out at the forest.

Secondly, the scale. The bronze weighs over 2,100 pounds and the marble base weighs 14 tons. It’s just…giant. You can almost feel the weight. There is also a delicacy to the sculpture as all that bronze is balanced on the stone at only three points.

The third impressive feature (or perhaps mystery), is the location. It’s perched just off the sidewalk next to a residential house and in front of a parking lot. It’s claustrophobic for something so massive. Something so big needs more space to breathe. Perhaps the location choice was intentional — to put it somewhere unexpected, as if the town grew up around the ancient head to imbue it with a deeper sense of time and history. To magnify this odd location choice, it’s directly across the street from an small public park (and parking lot). One would think a park would be the natural choice for a public sculpture, but no, it sits…amidst the modern world somewhat hidden and diminished from it’s past glory.

Sparkill, New York.

It’s always nice to find street art in a neighborhood filled with high end art galleries. A good sized stencil piece tucked inside a loading dock reminiscent in subject matter of that other famous, shall not be identified street artist. Plus, the bonus of people being moved enough by it to contribute their own messages.

Chelsea, Manhattan.

An older photo I found in the archives that never got posted. It looks to be a commission from TotemGraffx for a cannabis shop next door. I recall it being a bit hidden with an overpass (maybe the High Line?) to the left. The whole black background helps to keep it a little unnoticed while still making all the gorgeous foreground colors stand out. Also an interesting contradiction between the loose feather painting (almost brush like) and the precision line work in the lettering below.

Midtown, Manhattan.

I feel like I know this dog. He’s patient. She’s kind. The illustration is simple and emotive. The thick white border is a sign of an experienced hand. It’s not easy to make minimal be immediately recognizable.

Midtown, Manhattan.

Another photo found in the 2025 archives to bring a bit of blue to the site. It’s a wonderful gradient that just jumps out. Paired with a strong black outline shadow and all the little white highlights and it’s really glowing. Well practiced, very experienced and well executed.

Lower East Side, Manhattan.

Bringing a bit of color into the new year, by digging through the last of last year’s photos. It’s a classic take by a skilled artist. Three colored outlines, internal shading and highlights, arrow quotes and a two toned background — there’s a ton of good work going on in this piece. The shape of the lettering gives it a good flow too. Here’s hoping this new year is filled with lots of color and flow.

Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan.

Putting “preserve” back in the phrase “nature preserve”

Read last year’s post or view the updated photo gallery.

It would seem that this is becoming an annual report which is somewhat funny and also somewhat sad. I do like the aspect of reporting and in this age of propaganda, distortion and denial, it’s more important than ever to show the proof. The idea of an “annual report” is funny to me as it reminds me of the how it all started and the “local archeology” tagline. It’s a bit of dark humor pulling us out of the dismay. There is no corporation here, no investor relations, no government agency requiring a report of my activities. There’s just an art project tied onto the back of a hike while cleaning up the neighborhood.

So how did 2025 go?

The year was both more active and more focused. Last winter when the snow covered everything hiding man’s many sins, I used the time to scout for areas that needed attention. Turns out, this was time well spent and come summer, I was able to go back and tackle three or four problem areas leading to huge progress. These areas are spots of commercial dumping and led to an increase in trash volume and trash weirdness. I’ll still need to follow up on them as the forest continues to spit out and reveal more trash, but a significant amount of clean up reduced the obvious blight. Disappointingly, I also discovered some new trouble spots which will lead the 2026 adventures.

The Trash

In addition to the usual containers this year, I started using a couple of old masonry tubs on my hand truck to help carry out stuff that just didn’t fit nicely into a bag or bucket. These bins quickly became essential for large pickups in areas of commercial dumping. It’s also worth noting that as I ranged further I actually had to start to use our car. It was too far from the house and the terrain is too rough to physically carry out the trash. There were two car loads in December.

Using the same conservative estimates from 2023, 50 pounds per bag comes out to 2,900 pounds for the bags. For the buckets, using the conservative estimate of 20 pounds per bucket leads to a total of 820 pounds of trash put in buckets. The bins are a bit more awkward due to their shape, so estimate the trash weight by volume is difficult. They were often lighter, but held oversize items to keep them from falling off the hand truck. Let’s go with an estimate of 10 pounds per bin for a total of 330 pounds. Additionally, there’s also the category of the unwieldy and unweighted. Things like truck tires, large pipes or car transmissions just never get weighed or factored into these estimates. It would be cool one day to get an old large farm scale to just drop items onto for actual weights. Maybe one day.

This leads to a total estimate of 4,050 pounds of trash removed in 2025 surpassing the amounts collected in the previous two years. Over 2 tons (2.025) of trash removed from the forest without even factoring in many of the larger items.

Here’s a list of some of the items that jumped out

• Car batteries
• Concrete blocks
• Steel buckets
• Shovel heads
• Appliance motors and parts
• New York and Connecticut license plates
• Children’s pacifier
• Concrete parking blocks
• Car headrest
• Windshield wipers
• Pitchfork
• Styrofoam packing
• Lawnmower handle
• Box springs
• Automotive car seat
• Porcelain vase
• Heating vent cover
• Cast iron pipes
• Plastic green doormat
• Home stereo receiver
• Iron weight from a window sash
• Large truck inner tube
• Electric weed wacker string trimmer tool
• Car and truck tires
• Screen window
• Beach chair chaise lounge
• Carpet and foam padding
• Roof shingles
• Fluorescent light bulbs
• Insulation panels
• Garden hoses
• School bell
• Soccer balls
• Hypodermic needle
• Champagne bucket
• Axe head
• Car axles with transmission housings and drum brakes
• Metal shopping cart

Where’s it all go?

One thing I also wanted to answer in this year’s update is a question I sometimes get from folks: “What do you do with it?”.

For the trash, it easy, just put it out for the town to pick up. The really big, awkward or dangerous stuff gets loaded into the car and taken over to the county’s Household Materials Recovery Facility (H-MRF) which is really…the dump. It’s free for county residents and you don’t even have to get out of your car. Just pop open the back and they pull everything out, but you do have to make a reservation online beforehand. It’s also notable that in 2025, they are now required to track how many tires you bring over. I don’t think there’s a limit, but probably something the county needs to report on.

Alternatively, the town offers a bulk pickup service. It’s a bit random, so you never known when they’re going to show up. You just have to put the stuff out front and wait. They also have more restrictions on what they’ll take (no tires or batteries), so I’ve been using the service less and less. I also think it’s more neighborly to not leave a giant pile of rusting metal out front of my house for two weeks until the town comes by to pick it up.

For the recycling, there’s the trusty town bin and this is where the volume gets a bit crazy. We have a town provided 35 gallon blue wheeled bin for “co-mingled” recycling — basically plastic, metal and glass. In our house, there’s just no way my wife and I could ever fill the recycling bin that size on our own. With the large volumes of bottles and cans I’m pulling out of the woods, the 35 gallon bin is completely full almost ever week. Often times with 2-3 accompanying bags as well. The bin says it has a load rating of 122.5 pounds, but let’s dial that down a bit. If we estimate that the materials weight is 80 pounds and it’s full 35 weeks out of the year, we’re looking at 2,800 pounds of recycling. Subtracting the weight of our usual weekly household recycling of…maybe 15 pounds…and we’re looking at 2,275 pounds of recycling removed from the forest.

Remember kids, picking up the trash is only half the job. Packing it out of the woods and disposing of it properly is often to hardest part.

The Design and Development

There were only a few development changes to the gallery this year. The majority of the effort was in processing and formatting the increased amount of photos. It seems I was much better in my documentation efforts in 2025.

Typography

I swapped out the typeface used for the bold subheads (Canada Type’s Gibson) due to license restrictions when I canceled my Adobe subscription. The new font (Argentum Novus) isn’t visually identical, but it’s close enough to fool most non-designers.

UX/UI

As the page was growing and growing longer, I realized it needed a couple of UI improvements to help the UX. Notably, a few navigation links so that visitors can quickly jump to a specific year. Likewise, since the new navigation links are not sticky and scroll off screen, I added a “return to top” button to allow visitors to jump back to the top of the page.

The links to each year’s blog post were also moved from the page header to under the heading for each year. I also added in some horizontal rules to help define each year’s section. They come in handy when scrolling along as there’s not a lot of visible space between each year’s images.

Looking Ahead

While on my winter snow hikes to scout for trouble spots, I also began expanding my range into another, larger, neighboring park. This one is managed by the county (not the town) and generally, is in better shape, but of course, my keen eyes can find a broken bottle or rusty beer can anywhere. There’s the opportunity that I may start pulling trash from this new park as I just can’t…leave it. But the work on the first park will take priority. There’s no reason to give up before the job is finished. Here’s to making your neighborhood a little cleaner, a little brighter and a little healthier for the future.

Please don’t litter.

View the updated photo gallery