Have You Looked Around Lately?

No, for real. Have you looked around lately?

I ask because bricks are one of those ordinary things we stop seeing, even though they are holding up half the visual world around us.

As a scenic artist, that is part of my job — to look around and notice all the little nuances of everyday things in order to make them believable.

I almost want to say, before you read any further, I need you to go outside and walk around your block. I need you to actually look at the surfaces of the houses, or the bricks specifically, if you have any. Notice all the tiny details that make up each and every brick. The things that make them believable as, well, bricks.

Photos of bricks I took while in Copenhagen, Denmark

One of the things I wish I had started doing a long time ago, when I began my art career, was measuring every single piece of brick I had ever painted. I am pretty sure it would be well over 10,000 feet.

Did you know that most of what you see in movies and television, especially façades in closed areas, is fake? We make it look real.

When I paint brick, I am not painting rectangles. I am painting evidence.

Here’s a great example.

Here is some brick I painted from the theater performance of August Wilson’s Fences.

Here is another image of a police station. I can’t remember what it was for, but it was a television show.

And here is yet another example of brick from a different movie called Sorority Row. The photo on the left is of the real house with a fake facade being built so the house would match the script. The photo on the right was what I had to paint to make it match.

One of my favorite things to do while traveling is take photographs of bricks.

It is amazing to me how many different variations there are. Everywhere you look. Especially in European countries. My whole camera roll is filled with images of bricks.

A photograph I took in Helsinki, Finland

And when I think about them in the deepest sense, as I zoom in, we make these little squares, surround them with bricks, and then we live inside them. We create our little lives inside our little squares, and they become a reflection of our minds.

Yeah, I’m going deep here.

Bricks are not just bricks. They hold memory for some. They hold meaning for others. They are the façade, the face of what you might see as you travel down a city block. Each one holds a story. Everything you see on it holds a story.

That splash of mud from someone’s shoe when they stepped in a puddle.

That can of Coke that got opened and splattered all over the side of the bricks.

The salt from the trucks as they came through and tried to clear off all the ice in the winter.

The gum from that little boy’s mouth that he carelessly pushed right onto the brick.

They become a canvas for graffiti artists and other artists alike. They become a canvas for kids with chalk and markers and whatever else they can get their hands on.

If you think about it, bricks can also be weapons. We’ve seen it in movies, where somebody gets slammed up against a brick wall and hurts their head.

One of my favorite things about working on movies is that we get to be in places nobody else dares to go, or wants to go.

For instance, I think I have seen every single alley brick within a 30-mile radius of Pittsburgh. I love alleyway bricks. They tell so much more of a story, especially if you are in an alley where there are a bunch of restaurants. You walk back there and look around, and it is crazy what you can find on those bricks. I won’t go into detail here, but next time you are out and about, you should check it out. Walk down an alley or two.

A photo I took from Belgium

Occasionally, cars crash into them. The UPS truck, with its back door swung open by the wind, smacks into the brick and knocks it out.

Like I said, bricks have a story.

You would be surprised how many different colors are in bricks.

Which is probably why, when I needed to find my way back into painting, I started with bricks.