As I’ve been working on defining Arte Agora, which is art made, sold, or placed in the public way, I’ve been indexing the collections I’ve built over the years. One category is street poetry, and here’s 13 works by one of the best there ever was– Oba Maja.
Oba touched many people. His was a consistent and reliable vendor in the 2000s in Wicker Park, and he sparked many other works of art, like this mural at Lake & Damen. Here’s the pieces:
The cosmos was a common theme in Oba’ poems.
This is a flyer for a show he did at Filter, which is now a bank. “Don’t be square, be there.
Here he argues that “The people of earth must now prepare/ for Wordly thinking and other/ worldlyness travel.”
“To stand tall where-ever you are.” Oba was tall.
“In other words if you are a system/ person you are really a clone, a/ robot, you lead a life of following”
This one has some great starburst and heart illustrations.
Here’s Oba’s celebrity page on the now-defunct WickerParkDirectory.com.
He used the back of it to write a new poem for me, after I gave him one of my books.
More celestial considerations.
“May you & yours have/ a beautiful life not just a/ new year”
Great internal rhymes in this one.
This is probably my favorite, based on the spacing and the cadence and the focus on work. Oba was an endless worker.
Calling Planet Earth is the only piece I have that is typeset instead of handwritten.
Here’s a look at all Arte Agora pieces I’ve got indexed so far.