Last year, Vandalog released a series of t-shirts with designs by Troy Lovegates aka Other, Faro and Gaia. Since the last of those shirts are taking up some valuable space in a box under by bed, they are now on sale at 50% off at the Vandalog online store, making them just $15 each. Unfortunately we’ve sold out of mediums in every design, but small, large and XL shirts are still available. You can buy a shirt here.

As I passed by the former Donnell Library at 20 W. 53rd Street earlier today, the installation for tomorrow’s 5pm opening of PANTHEON: A history of art from the streets of NYC was underway. Huge pieces by Royce Bannon and Celso were beginning to capture the attention of the crowds across the street lined up for MoMA’s free Fridays. Joyce Manalo who curated the exhibit with Daniel Feral shared images of other featured artwork. Among these are the following pieces by Faro and Cake, photographed by Kat Amchentseva. This 24/7 windows exhibition of New York City street art — past and present — will continue through April 17.

Photo by Lois Stavsky

Faro, close up, photo by Kat Amchentseva

Cake, close-up, photo by Kat Amchentseva

Since I couldn’t be in town last week for the New York art fair extravaganza, Edible Genius (recently interviewed on Brooklyn Street Art) took some photos for Vandalog. Here are just a few of the highlights from the fairs. For more in-depth coverage, I would suggest Arrested Motion and Hyperallergic.

Rebaroque Artist Series Sound Wall at Scope

Kaws

Faro at Fountain

R. Robot at Fountain

Todd James at The Armory Show

How and Nosm at Contra Project's booth at SCOPE

Photos by Edible Genius

Matt Siren 

UPDATE: There are just a few days left for the Pantheon fundraiser on Kickstarter. There are some cool rewards for supporting this show, so check it out.

Abe Lincoln, Jr., John Ahearn, Adam VOID, Cahil Muraghu, Cake, Darkclouds, Droid, El Celso, Ellis Gallagher, Faro, John Fekner, Freedom, Gen2, Goya, Groser, Richard Hambleton, infinity, Ket, LSD Om, Matt Siren, Nohj Coley, OverUnder, Oze 108, Quel Beast, Royce Bannon, Sadue, Skewville, Stikman, Toofly, UFO, and even more artists are all part of a group show opening in New York on April 2nd. Pantheon: A history of art from the streets of New York City aims to bring together multiple generations of street art (and, to a lesser degree, graffiti) from New York City and tie them together into a cohesive history. There are some real under-appreciated gems in that line up like Richard Hambleton, Skewville, John Fekner, Don Leicht and Faro.

Pantheon will take place in New York City at chashama/Donnell Library Building, right across from MoMA and run through April 17th. I’m really disappointed that I won’t be able to see this show in person. It should make a nice counter-point to MOCA’s Art In The Streets show opening in LA around the same time. If you do make it to Pantheon, be sure to check out the catalog, which Vandalog’s Monica Campana has contributed to.

Here’s a little preview of some of the street work from artists in Pantheon:

UFO and Gen2

Royce Bannon

Darkcloud

Avoid

Abe Lincoln Jr. and infinity

Photos by Luna Park

After procrastinating and procrastinating about writing this post, I missed Hanukkah and Eid, so I guess this is a gift guide for Christmas. Sorry for the delay.

Here are a few street art related products that have come out in the last year or so that I think are pretty cool. If you’re looking for a last-minute holiday gift for the street art obsessive in your life, hopefully this will help…

• DB Burkeman’s book Stickers: Stuck Up Piece of Crap is one of the best art books I have ever read. I cannot recommend it highly enough if you have even a passing interest in stickers. If you buy one thing off this list, it should probably be this book. The photo at the top of this post is for the deluxe edition which comes with signed stickers, but that version doesn’t come cheap.

• Laser 3.14 recently made the above t-shirt. It’s available online for about 25.95 euros plus shipping. Over the summer, I listened to The Kinks way too much, so this phrase couldn’t be better.

• Now, the flip side of that anti-fashion comment, I want to remind everyone that Vandalog still has shirts available from Gaia, Troy Lovegates and Faro. These very limited edition shirts are $30 each and you can buy them online.
• Martha Cooper’s latest book is Name Tagging, a book about the Hello My Name Is stickers and graffiti. Personally, I prefer Going Postal, her book about postal stickers, but Name Tagging is a good quick read too. It has brief interviews with Twist, Sure, Cost and others plus plenty of photos.
• These Buff Monster plush toys are on sale for $12.00 right now. Very cute.
• If you want a unique iPhone case, either Incase or Uncommon seem like good options. Incase has that Jose Parla iPhone case and Uncommon let’s you customize your own case with designs from a number of artists including David Ellis, Dennis McNett and MQ.
• I’ve only just started to read Trespass, but I’ve heard from others that it is a great book.

Or, if you’re a street artist, you could go out on Christmas, brave the cold, and do some art. Give a gift to the rest of us. Not enough street art happens in the winter months.

This show is opening and closing in just a few hours at NYC’s Showpaper 42nd St Gallery. For The Community Serviced, 24 artists and writers have decorated 12 newspaper boxes for Showpaper. Faro, Darkclouds, Coolcat, Cahbasm, Infinity and others have collaborated on these boxes, which, after the opening, will be places on the streets of New York to distribute issues of Showpaper. Probably the highlight of the evening will be that the legendary Cost has decorated a box. Wonder how long before these got stolen off the street…

Also, Charlie Ahearn from Wild Style will be there to provide music.

But The Community Serviced is only open at Showpaper 42nd St Gallery tonight from 7-10pm, so that may be your only chance to catch all these boxes in person.

As you may have seen mentioned on my Twitter, I’ve been working with a few artists that I admire to make a series of t-shirts.

Today, the first three in a line of Vandalog t-shirts are available online. All three are designs are artworks by people that I admire. These aren’t your standard artist collaborations though. There are a few things that make these shirts unique. Yes, Vandalog now has a clothing label, but nowhere on these t-shirts will you find the Vandalog name. This project was conceived as being about the artists as much as possible. Additionally, these aren’t the sort of thing that you’ll find 40 of in every Urban Outfitters throughout the world. There are less than shirts 40 with each design in the world. That was intentional. These t-shirts are screenprints, except that they were printed on fabric instead of paper and they aren’t signed by the artists. Luckily, all these shirts are significantly cheaper than screenprints on paper, at $30 each plus shipping.

So who was involved? Gaia, Troy Lovegates aka Other and Faro have contributed designs to this clothing label/experiment.

Gaia

Gaia’s shirt is an edition of 37. Gaia is a young street artist (and blogger for this site) based between Baltimore and New York. There’s still about one week left to see his current show with Lex & Sten in New York City. The artwork is a portrait of his grandfather, which you may have seen outside.

Faro

Faro’s shirt is an edition of 34. Faro is a mummy-obsessed artist and graffiti writer who you may have seen around New York City. His graffiti is cool and it’s how we at Vandalog first heard about Faro, but his drawings are what really sets him apart, which is why Faro’s shirt is based on this drawing.

Other

Troy Lovegates aka Other’s shirt is an edition of 35. Troy Lovegates is a Canadian artist who likes to draw outside, often with his friend Labrona, as well as make beautiful prints and paintings indoors. I’d say Troy is probably my favorite Canadian street artist. Also, he recently had a cool book of his art published.

All these shirts are available now at Vandalog’s online shop for $30 each plus shipping.

New York’s Faro has just put out his first zine. It’s a 24 page overview of Faro’s drawings and graffiti in black and white. Faro is one of New York’s up and coming graffiti/street artists, so who knows, maybe this zine will be a collectible one day like Neckface’s book Satan’s Bride. But more importantly, it looks like it’s full of fun content and plenty of Faro’s trademark mummies. I may get one just to rip it apart so that I can stick individual pages to the walls of my room.

Here’s some of what’s inside:

But where can you find The Broken Casket? Just get in touch with Faro on flickr to get your copy.

Photos by Faro

A bunch of artists from the ADHD and 907 crews got together recently to paint this spot in Brooklyn. The best part, for me at least, is that Swampy from the west coast joined in.

Swampy

UFO

You can check out more photos from this wall over at The Street Spot.

Photos by Becki Fuller

By Head Hoods

Manhattan’s Leo Kesting Gallery has a group show opening next week with some of my favorite emerging artists. Dead Letter Playground: A Collection of Contemporary Street Art opens June 24th (from 7pm-10pm) and has artwork from Carolyn A’Hearn, Chris Stain, Clown Soldier, Dain, DickChicken, Doze Green, Elbowtoe, Elle, Ellis G, Faro, Gaia, Head Hoods, Imminent Disaster, Jen.Lu, Jordan Seiler, Know Hope, Laura Meyers, Lee Trice, Love Me, Matt Siren, Mister Never, Nicola Verlato, Peru Ana Ana Peru, Phil Lumbang, Shark Toof, Anthony Michael Sneed and Sweet Toof. Of course, the show also includes one of my least favorite artists, DickChicken, but nobody’s perfect (ps, because I know that somebody is going to give me shit for that comment, I’d like to clarify: I actually don’t mind DickChicken’s tag or find it offensive or anything. I just don’t think he makes anything remotely interesting indoors). The show runs through July 18th.

Here’s some of the work that will be at Dead Letter Playground:

By Jordan Seiler

By Faro