Can't you just smell the scent of urine?

This isn't my front door. It's Westminster Street, Providence. Pretty huh?

But how 'bout now?

Right? Right!

This transformation comes courtesy of my man (the photography, not the spray paint) Andre M. Brown. (Not to be confused with the New York Giants running back Andre Brown.) My Andre sees things. Not dead people (that I know of), but beauty in graffiti.

I see nasty. Dirty. Ugly. Germs. Disease. Hand over the Purrell.

Andre? He envisions these bits of city blight, found on streetlight posts, trash cans, doors and traffic light control boxes, as only the starting point for his 'urban abstracts' series. His inspiration comes from looking deep within a mismatched collection of paint, stickers and posters, all laid down by different artists, using different styles, different materials and altered by the elements.

Other people's visual trash. Andre's treasure.

Then, he does the impossible. Andre gets rid of the ugly. He closely crops small vignettes to a point of abstraction, going to a special place beneath the surface, dominated by color, texture, lines and shape, extracting lyrical photographic compositions from the spray-painted chaos.

Viola. Fine art with street cred.

This piece, Early Effort, 2012, framed, matted and ready to hang, is for sale as part of the Photographic Resource Center benefit auction, at Boston University this weekend.

If you happen to get outbid by a Boston socialite (fingers crossed), an Etsy shop is on the horizon soon. Stay tuned.

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