Bren Bataclan is Good (and from Boston, More or Less)

Last night on CBS News with Katie Couric they did a segment on a Boston artist named Bren Bataclan who makes funny paintings and leaves them in public places for people to take home with them.  It's what he calls the "Smile Boston" project, and these days, with the recession and everyone having no jobs and eating lentils only and all, he attaches a note to the paintings that says "everything will be alright."  Bren leaves the paintings in all sorts of places all over the country and the world.  The paintings, as I mentioned, are really funny looking and will inevitably make you laugh.  We learned about him a few years ago when I think he did a talk or something at the high school where my wife teaches, and we then bought a couple of big goofy paintings from him which are now hanging in a prominent place over our dining room table.  It was great seeing him and his work on the national news, although I'm pretty sure that they did not identify him as a Boston-area artist (Cambridge, I think), which if true is kind of lame--now everyone is going to assume he works out of New York when he doesn't work out of New York but instead out of the Boston area, where there are a lot of good and talented and funny people, yay Boston.

Check out Bren's website here.