Public art as a public service

Jason Shelowitz, a graphic designer and artist from New York, has started a public art campaign that draws attention to people's bad manners and horrible etiquette on the New York subway system.
He has created a series of posters that look like official transit posters and he has posted them around the New York subway lines.
The posters' messages are about anything from people clipping their nails or eating messy food to playing loud music or simply littering while riding public transit.
"The messages are barbed and to the point," writes Debra Black in today's Toronto Star article about Shelowitz's art campaign.
Check out an image gallery of Shelowitz's posters here.


I wish a public art campaign of that nature could happen here.
It's really terrifying the amount of gross and ill-mannered things I see people do- smoking on the subway train, clipping fingernails on the streetcar and leaving piles of garbage under seats.

I don't treat the system like crap because I don't want it to look like crap. Yes, people are employed to clean up the streetcars, trains and buses. But that doesn't mean I want it to look and feel like a garbage dump before they get a chance to do their job.

It's really disgusting how people will treat their surroundings when they think that someone else will clean up after them.


Photo Credit: Toronto Star Article