Carlsbad Art and Culture

Once upon a time there was a trashcan who despised categories, stereotypes and trash. Each day began with a steamy insult and ended with a swift cleansing by a gloved city worker. The early morning supplied promise, but was always thwarted by a hurried passer and his misinformed characterizations. His passion and love for the arts was hidden in his dull and misguiding stature. His mind, which ran wild, kept hidden in the shelves of blandness. He desired the opportunity to inspire, but remained stagnant and dull.  The trashcan grimaced as his frame filled with soggy newspaper, soiled diapers and sticky sweets. His inaudible cries tumbled down the street like a sheetless ghost. He was never acknowledged by anything more than a receptacle for trash, though he felt he had so much more to offer.

One day as the sun stretched and the ocean still sat calm, the trashcan was awoken by the crashing jolt of a paint bucket bouncing within his barrel. He opened his sleepy eyes to the screeching of tires. Down the road he saw the bumper of a weathered truck, laden with buckets and ladders, disappear into the gloomy distance. The trashcan immediately grabbed his belly like the ill on the verge of a stomach disease. His eyes swelled and his palms began to sweat as he cursed the truck whom emptied its unwanted garbage. His teeth began to chatter and his cheeks went gray. He grabbed his face and punched his stomach in a poor attempt to misdirect his pain. He yelled at the sky as his eyes went empty and his muscles sagged limp.

The trashcan cried in agony and humiliation as he sat on the curb. His energy was depleted by the onslaught of pain. A bacteria as spiteful as a drunk clown bored deep into his gut. It boiled to a lively bubble like a volcano at its threshold. With uncompromising timing, it erupted and shot up the trashcan’s throat and out his mouth in an explosion of splattering bright colors. The trashcan moaned, but soon dismissed his misfortune with the acknowledgment of his new attire. His once dull outfit now danced with the hues of a rainbow. Paint dripped down his body in beautiful streaks of interlocking color. He stood to his feet and introduced his new look.

The fallowing days brought a whole new set of visitors. Instead of garbage and other unwanted discharge, he was awakened by the wide eyed and inspired. Strangers posed by his dripping colors and cameras flashed like lightening in the dark sky. He was given names like muse, beauty and masterpiece. His barrel remained empty as trash no longer sought his direction. Instead, he was given praise and applause. He no longer sat alone. He no longer smelled of the unwanted. He flaunted his colors as he was no longer a trashcan, but a barrel of expression, a container of creativity; he was now the local art can.

Can you find the local art can?