Playing with Fire

 It's spring here in Charleston, the azaleas are through blooming, Tomato Watch 2011 in full swing, and event after event is happening, with so much to do that I more often than not find myself doing nothing at the end of the day. I've been banking up some writing that is spilling out now into publication, and it's been an amazing month, talking to a variety of interesting people about the interesting things they do.

Sometimes I seek them out, and sometimes I am assigned. An assignment is what introduced me to Walker Babington, who defines the always-overused term "free spirit." What has he done? Studied photography (check), lived in a tent on the beach of Costa Rica (!), carved faces into coconuts with the heat from a magnifying glass (!!), and habitually dumpster dove for his art materials, only at least once to return an art piece to the suburban curb from whence he "found" it after completing it (!!!).

Oh, and I didn't even mention the rusted mural in India, using a blowtorch as his painbrush, and currently saving up for stuntman school. He is funny, inspiring and really an underappreciated artist, although I did my best to explain all that in the recent Go Triad article.

He doesn't have a gallery, a plan, or even a palette, but he is making it happen nonetheless. I hope to keep my conversation going with him and bring more of his work to this little forum in the future.