Jaz at Living Walls Atlanta 2011

Living Walls, the Altanta-based street art festival and conference, has packed their bags and headed to Miami for Basel madness. Living Walls, in conjunction with Primary Flight, has organized walls by Jaz, Ever and Know Hope to be painted in the next few days.

Photo by RJ Rushmore

Labrona and Gawd

Long-time collaborators Labrona and Gawd have been busy lately, and here are few of my favorite new pieces by them:

Labrona

Gawd

Labrona for Living Walls Albany

Photos courtesy of Labrona and Gawd

Life-side wheatpasted photograph by Erik Berglin

Expect next week’s link-o-rama to be a big one. It’s mid-term week at school. Speaking of school, I’m organizing an artist residency for young artists at my college. If you are between 18 and 24 and could use $350 to do something creative, I hope you’ll consider applying for the Haverford College Undergraduate Artist Residency. Here’s what has been going on this week off Vandalog:

• The Wall Street Journal followed Jeffrey Deitch around during the final day of Art in the Streets, so now you can see what a day in the life of Jeffrey Deitch is like.
• Adam Neate has a show of new work opening next week at Elms Lesters in London.
• Also in London next week is the rescheduled Meeting of Styles, organized by End of the Line.
• Great photos of great walls in Paris.
• e1000ink has some nice minimal geometric street art.
• Maybe the coolest and best piece from Living Walls Albany is this tile mosaic mural by Overunder.
• Brad Downey and Akay are at it again in Vienna.
• Some nice murals at the Galeria Urban Forms festival in Poland.
• Remember that beautiful Barry McGee piece in Sydney that we mentioned two weeks ago? That wall of tags? Turns out he wasn’t supposed to paint that, so it’s getting removed. He was meant to, and did, paint another wall, but not the wall that he tagged. Officially, this was an honest mistake and an unfortunate case of confusion on McGee’s part, but if you had a cherry picker or a scissor lift and some extra paint, how would you spend your nights?

Photo by Erik Berglin

Roa

Brooklyn Street Art have been up in Albany for Living Walls Albany. These are some of my favorite photos so far, but check out way more images here and here.

How and Nosm

Gaia

Overunder

Photos by Jaime Rojo

Snyder, a tribute to Kase2 (RIP) by Krush, Dame and Evol and other pieces

You know what’s really nice? Sleep. Hence, this weekend is a blessing. For now, life is school school school and more school. Hopefully there’s still a trip to NYC in my near future though… Here’s what has been going on around the internet and on the street:

• OverUnder and Chris Stain have gotten things started at Living Walls Albany. OverUnder’s portrait looks kinda like an Ethos piece, but it still looks cool. And Chris’ tribute to the 9/11 first responders was painted on wood and has just been moved to the New York State Museum.
• WK Interact collaborated with NY firefighters on a mural in Brooklyn.
• This 9/11 related piece by Zevs has caused a bit of a stir. Definitely one of most controversial 9/11 related artworks I’ve seen.
• JR’s Inside Out project has made it to Israel and Palestine.
• Some promising new for Leon Reid IV‘s latest project.
• Amanda Marie, the latest artist to show at Andenken in Amsterdam, isn’t a street artist, but she does stencils that I’m loving. (heads up, the link is a pdf)
• Ema has a solo show that opened tonight at Glasgow’s Redcoat Gallery.
• Banksy has donated a sculpture to The Bristol Museum.
• A few years ago, there was a castled painted in Scotland by some of Brazil’s best street artists: Nina, Nunca and Os Gêmeos. It was supposed to be temporary, but the owners of the castle want to keep it.
• Maybe my favorite thing I’ve ever seen from Jaybo.
• Risk and Retna painted a mural in Santa Monica, CA, but now the city wants to fine the building owners $5,000 a day until the mural is removed.
• Brad Downey and Akay collaborate at FAME Festival.
• Jim Carrey and Shia LaBeouf are both trying to do some street art. Yep, the guy from Ace Ventura and a Disney Channel star are now technically street artists. Melrse&Fairfax says, “Interesting how street art seems to be more and more an exciting ‘escape’ for celebrities.” I’d like to replace interesting with some other word or words…

Photo by Snyder

Ever and Freddy Sam. Photo by nickmickolas

In what is likely the second-t0-last post of murals from Living Walls in Atlanta, here’s work by Ever, Freddy Sam, Never, Gawd, Labrona, OverUnder, LNY, Sharktoof, Feral Child, Entes and Pesimo.

Feral Child. Photo by Feral Child

Labrona, Overunder and Gawd. Photo by nickmickolas

Entes and Pesimo. Photo by nickmickolas

Never. Photo by nickmickolas

LNY. Photo by nickmickolas

Sharktoof. Photo by Greg Mike

Photos by Greg Mike, Feral Child and nickmickolas

Greg Mike. Photo by Greg Mike

Even more from Atlanta’s Living Walls… Today it’s Greg Mike, LNY and Jaz.

LNY. Photo by RJ Rushmore

Jaz. Photo by RJ Rushmore

Photos by Greg Mike and RJ Rushmore

Here’s the mural that Ola Bad (who has no website but can be reached at olabad.art@gmail.com) and Howdy Nater collaborated on for Living Walls.

Ola Bad tells this story of how the mural came about…

This is my first wall which was done in collaboration with Howdy Nater. The wall is out in the West End of Atlanta on the border of two run down neighborhoods, Adair Park and Oakland City. It lies directly along the Northbound Marta Line which is what everyone coming into the city has to take from Hartsfield Airport. Living walls had started a few days before we started painting and we were just tripping out at how much all the out of town artists were talking about all the love they were recieving and how this felt truly like a home away from home. We had decided that because of the location we wanted to welcome every traveller into the city with the hope that they would experience the same feeling as the artists.

Howdy Nater came up with the saying Your Southern Home Away from Home. I wanted to do portraits but didnt know who. As HN was laying out some letters I walked across the street to goto the gas station to buy us some 40s of Colt 45. The gas station had two lines , mine which was barely moving and the other which was flying by. I decided to move over to the other line when I was greeted by a man named Fred. He had two gold fronts a towel over his shoulder and was completely thugged out. He congratulated me on my patience and offered to let me cut in line. We started a converstion when a homeless man i was talking to earlier came in and asked me to buy him a hotdog. Before I could even reply Fred interjected that anyone who was humble enough to ask for food deserved to eat and purchased the hotdog. Fred told me that he had lived in Oakland City his entire life. I was completely blown away by his kindness and the way he treated anyone in his neighborhood like family. I knew immediately that he was the perfect ambassador for the mural and got to work.

The second portrait is of a wonderful woman who is heavily involved in the atlanta graff/street art scene, whos name is Sharon. She and Fred both share the same love for Atlanta and its inhabitants no matter who they are or what they look like. Its rad to think that two completly different people with completely different backgrounds share the same love and the only hope I have is that there are people like this in everycity to welcome and love people.

Photos by Ola Bad

More from Living Walls Atlanta. Today, Marco Sueño. Marco is a photographer from Peru who works with stickers and wheatpastes. He did a few murals for Living Walls. Here’s how he describes this series:

Sacha Project is a muralism, photography and public space intervention that proposes, through a series of compositions that highlight the hybrid nature of icons and objects a result from the fusion between modern urban culture and the andean culture traditions a visual explorations on the peruvian identity, seen from its own transfiguration. “Sacha Project” displays how the sacred and the “Hybrid” create a jigsaw of different realities interacting through synergies and fragmentation.

Photos by Marco Sueño

Drew Tyndell, Ben Niznik and Derek Bruno

Over the last week or so, there have been a lot fewer posts on Vandalog than usual. Two reasons for that: This week I’ve been spending time with my family and relaxing, but last week it was because I was in Atlanta for the second annual Living Walls Conference. It was a crazy few days, resulting in some beautiful new murals for Atlanta (like these from Gaia, Nanook and Escif). I’ll be posting more of those murals over the next few days.

For now, I’d like to focus on a massive thank you to all of the volunteers, organizers, artists, speakers and sponsors at Living Walls. In particular, all the volunteers who spent their own money on gas to practically act as personal drivers to all of us without a means of transportation. And while there’s a long list of sponsors, here’s a little shout out to those that I had the pleasure of connecting with: Sam Flax South, Eyedrum, Dodekapus, Atlanta Beltline, Streetela, The Goat Farm, MOCAGA and The Sound Table. The artists and speakers at Living Walls are some of the most talented around, but they are also some of the most fun. So thank you to everyone involved in Living Walls on any level for all the hard work. It was an honor to be invited to speak, and I hope to return again next year.

Evereman projecting onto Jaz at The Sound Table

Photos by Drew Tyndell and Evereman