This week brought us our second team challenge. The eight remaining contestants were arranged in teams of two and charged with creating a large-scale piece of street art. The judging was respectable with another artist on the panel, which always makes me happy, and I found agreement this week with the judges’ decision regarding top and bottom.

Simon helping create a one-of-a-kind

Lola and Michelle got so caught up in being the mean girls trying hard to be haughty and naughty that they seemed to forget to make something good. I fear that when Lola and Michelle heard street art their first thought was frivolous, which somehow led to tiger penises.

Lola is slowly convincing me that she has little to say as an artist. She has told us that her mother dated Al Pacino and taught her how to view herself as better than everyone else by cutting in front of other people in line. Beyond someone who appears self-absorbed and a bit too blasé for her age, there isn’t much there and the superficial nature of her art was especially apparent in this challenge.

Michelle proves more perplexing. She swings between pieces that struggle with mortality and human fragility and pieces that might be visually interesting but have nothing ultimately to communicate. With Lola’s vapid influence on this challenge, Michelle plunged headlong into the void.

The most damning characteristic of the pair as a team was that they both tend to check out on challenges they don’t like. Michelle is more talented and can pull through generally, but, by allowing Lola to drive the creative vision, she was left with trying and failing to save the piece with talent alone (since no one could have). And what did Lola mean when she kept referring to the devious nature of street art? Did she mean mischievous? Subversive? Playful? Devilish (I can’t hear the name Lola without thinking of Damn Yankees)? I wanted somebody to say to her, “Shut the hell up!”

The top two pieces demonstrated how you can approach a team project from opposite directions with equally strong success. Where Dusty and Young managed to capitalize on their differences, Kymia and Sara found strength of vision in their similarities.

Dusty and Young’s Universal Conversation had an emotional depth that Young’s work generally lacks. This piece was all in the execution. I liked their piece but not as street art. It was too polished and ended up looking more like a mural. I was very happy to finally see Dusty get a win, even if he did have to share it with Young.

Kymia and Sara’s Reroot was both visually captivating and – unlike Dusty and Young’s piece – had a rough-hewn quality to it (for example, the paint drippings from the roots of the tree) that fit the challenge the best for me. They worked well as a team and, unlike some, maintained respect for their fellow contestants’ work. Reroot translated well as a large-scale piece and mesmerized the viewer with its surrealist style. The more I consider this piece the more I like it.

Morgan/Sucklord and Sarah’s was definitely had a retro street art feel but needed color. The minimalist color palette with the simple design made the piece bland. Adding the three-dimensional pieces was a good idea but didn’t do enough to make the piece succeed. The fact that Sarah never seemed to see that worries me. I think, in general, she hasn’t been afforded the credit she’s due, but she will have to recover from two weeks in a row on the bottom.

While my personal vote would have been for Lola to go home (mostly because I find her exhausting), I can’t disagree with Morgan getting the boot. He really stayed way past his expiration date. He seems personable and ambitious. And there is a place in the art world for what he does; he just couldn’t find his voice within the context of most of the challenges.

Goodbye and good luck, The Sucklord! Since you’re leaving, I’ve decided to use your full title as a sign of respect.

Next week, repurposed/recycled art! I have a bad feeling about this one.