Legendary New York City street art duo Patrick and Patrick (also known as FAILE), created one of my favorite prints, a piece titled ‘A Call To Adventure’. A large format, 18-color screen print, with decked edges , laid on top of fancy art paper (100% cotton coventry rag archival paper)- it’s a beauty.

Credit: Papermonster.net

The central image is of a woman holding a flaming umbrella, flying through the city skyline; set against a wild collage of text and an oddly colored rainbow. A young boy looks out his window up at her in the sky. It’s awesome.

In 2013 FAILE put up a massive mural of this print on a midtown New York City building. My lady Aimee, our young son Elliot, and I took a trip to the city soon thereafter. I used a hotel app to book a room and hoped it would would be somewhere in the general area of the mural- all while not knowing exactly where we would end up- as is the case with hotel booking apps.

Immediately after checking in, I headed out to the street in search of the mural. In my rush I did not take the time to look out our room’s window….and I should have. As soon as I walked away from the building, I received a text message from Aimee. It was a picture of our son looking out the bedroom window, directly across from the mural. He was perfectly eye level with the mural; a part of the New York skyline. He saw the woman in the sky; he saw the boy looking at her too from a window of his own. The image leaves me in awe- a mirror reflection of art and life, of my own life, of wonder and amazement of my son, not only seeing it all for the first time, but being part of it- the most important part.

Photo: Chris O’Brian @chasetheart

It turns out the building that the mural is on was the original home of the Record Plant Studio; where Jimi Hendrix recorded Electric Ladyland. It was also the last recording studio that John Lennon worked in, having finished a song there with Yoko the day he was murdered. At the top of the mural FAILE included the word ‘imagine’ as a shout out to John, an awesome tribute.