No one really knows exactly when it started, these crude, spray-painted visages of Bart Simpson that have been spotted throughout Winston-Salem in recent months, thrown up in haste on abandoned buildings, construction sites, hard-to-reach blank walls and, even, a Dumpster.
But everybody loves Bartsy, as the anonymous tagger has been dubbed. He’s the talk of barrooms and Facebook groups, the scourge of law enforcement and the arts establishment, a smarmy rebuttal to the four- and five-figure murals that have been so carefully commissioned and executed throughout the Triad.
The work is simplistic, based on those early, “Tracy Ullman Show” episodes by Matt Groening that eventually morphed into the Bart Simpson we know today: The hair is spiky, the eyes more pronounced, the lips just a bit overblown. Sometimes he’s got a soul patch or an earring, or both; sometimes he’s jet black or stark white or true Simpsons yellow; sometimes he’s just an outline. But the pose is always the same: a three-quarter profile of America’s favorite brat, brought to us by an anonymous artist who, like his namesake Banksy, allows us to project all our hopes and dreams on his process and motivations.
A blurry still of the artist pulled from surveillance video and released by the Winston-Salem Journal in late August only deepened the enigma.
Meanwhile, the Bartsys (Bartsies?) are slowly being removed from the landscape by people who just don’t understand.
So we present a map and photo essay of every Bartsy we could find, including the ones that are no longer with us, along with an invitation to all the haters to eat our shorts. And we ask our readers to send us any new Bartsy they find out there in the wild so we can complete the study.
Bartsy #2: 1028 Northwest Blvd.
Bartsy #3: 668 Seventh St.
Bartsy #4: 4017 Country Club Road
Bartsy #5: 2897 Reynolda Road
Bartsy #6: 1000 block of Canal Street
Bartsy #7: 380 27th St.
Bartsy #8: 180 Executive Park Blvd.
Bartsy #9: Corner of Brookstown Avenue and Shallowford Street
Bartsy #10: 408 Salem Ave.
Bartsy #11: 600 block Ansonia Street
Bartsy #12: 1314 S. Hawthorne Road
Bartsy #13: 200 block Miller Street
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Not everybody loves whatever this is, but wow what an extreme amount of wasted time you have displayed! How about mapping out something with any sort of importance….JS
I’m really interested in Bartsy, i actually didn’t know it was a thing but when I moved to Winston seven years ago I saw Bartsy tagged on rocks off of Reynolda and on concrete blocks off of 52. I just thought they were the same tagger but didn’t realize there were large versions. Thanks for the article.
Thanks for the map, I’ve painted over three of these today. I don’t see any value in this tag on buildings that are trying to maintain businesses in developing neighborhoods. You tried way to hard to give this garbage vandalism the value of art and that makes your paper less than trash.
You realize we can see your IP address, right, El Barto/Frye?
I stand by my comment; you’re less than trash — your meme filled rag is litter.
Brian Clarey is begging for a Bartsy on his own building.
You have all of the journalistic integrity of a value pack of Charmin.