“The American Cousins” by Cekis in Fleury-Les Aubrais, France

So as finals exams and essays begin to creep up on me (70-ish pages to write in the next month), these link-o-rama posts are going to become essential until the school year is up, so you know, I encourage you to read them closely.

• Aryz has a solo show coming up in San Fransisco at Upper Playground’s Fifty24SF. David Choe is a fan, and says that it’s gonna be a “feeding frenzy” with collectors wanting to buy out the show 100x over even before anyone has seen the work.
• Of course, if you’re looking for something you can get your hands on, I’m loving this print from Unga.
• Ron English recently released a monochrome grey version of his Temper Tot figure on his website.
• Sam3 gets me every time.
• The Carbon Festival is on this weekend in Melbourne.
• I’ve got to hand it to TrustoCorp for making this sweet suitcase device to spray stencils in broad daylight. They also been distributing a bunch of custom cereal box artworks (in collaboration with other artists like Shepard Fairey) around LA for people to hunt down.
• Those pretty blah painted shutters near the New Museum are getting painted again. Sounds like more blah.

Photo courtesy of Ville de Fleury-les-Aubrais

Sam3

Well, the big story this week was of course Hyuro’s wall under threat in Atlanta, but a lot more has been happening elsewhere on the web, plus I missed a week of link-o-rama when I was in Atlanta myself, so here’s what I’ve got to share:

• Living Walls mentioned in the New York Times last week, but not because of Hyuro’s mural or even in the arts section. For some reason, some narrative was created about Living Walls relating to the recession. Well, whatever. I guess it’s a hook, and strange press is better than no press.
• This is a nice mural from Erica il Cane in Slovakia.
• And of course, Aryz’ work in Copenhagen is impressive as always.
• Chris Stain painted a great mural in Charlotte, NC, and BSA interviewed him about it.
• Someone stole a Banksy street piece off of a private wall, and now he’s going to trial because of it. Beautiful.
• Run in underrated.
• I agree with Eko: “This is 2012 graffiti.”
• Or maybe this is.
• Everyone’s been quoting this Steve Powers interview where he says “Most Street art isn’t art and it isn’t street.” He’s such a provocateur (read: guy well-respected enough that the world allows him to be an asshole). Actually though, as annoying as the guy can be, he’s right. Particularly that most street art isn’t art. A lot of it is great graphic design or illustration or signpainting. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s a misnomer that confuses a lot of people.
• Hate President Bush? You’ll probably love this book.
• There’s been some hilarious/scary fallout from LEWY BTM painting the Brooklyn Bridge.
• Aram Bartholl is amazing. And here’s an interview with him.

Photo by Sam3

Cept

Caroline and I are out in Colorado this week with my family, so art is coming second, but luckily it looks like it’s been a slow week. Here’s what I almost missed…

• An interesting essay about street art and MOCA’s Art in the Streets show (although far from perfect and obvious a little late).
• Sam3 has up to some absolutely great stuff (including a collaboration with Escif).
• Blu has also been busy recently.
• Caroline and I went to the opening of Pandemic Gallery’s latest show and it certainly looks better in person than over photos, but it’s not bad at all.
• Subway Art Blog’s zine can now be purchased online.
• There’s been some anti Chick-Fil-A street art, and one piece has resulted in an arrest. Of course, these pieces play on the Chick-Fil-A advertising that emulates graffiti.
• Dal and Faith47 put up some nice work in NYC recently.
• I absolutely love this piece, however simple it is, by Nuria Moria.
• And this Erica il Cane piece is a lot less simple but equally fantastic.

Photo by Nolionsinengland

Sam3‘s latest piece is this wonderful attack on buff. His forced collaboration with the graffiti removal squad/person re-energizes the wall and makes the mismatched buff into something to be noticed. I wonder what the next bit of buff on this wall will look like. Maybe this can be an ongoing collaboration, like this piece by Mobstr.

Photo by Sam3

Sam3. Photo by E. Murcia Artengo

We’ve been posting images here and there from the Bien Urbain mural festival that took place in Besançon, France, but now photos of all the works are on flickr. These are a few of my favorite images (from Sam3, Hyuro, Moneyless, TBLR-ONE, Escif, Quillograma, Nelio, ), but definitely take the time to check out this Bien Urbain flickr set to see everything from the festival.

Hyuro. Photo by E. Murcia Artengo

Hyuro (detail). Photo by E. Murcia Artengo

Moneyless. Photo by D. Demougeot

OX. Photo by OX

TBLR-ONE. Photo by E. Murcia Artengo

Escif. Photo by E. Murcia Artengo

Quillograma and Nelio. Photo by Nelio

Photos by Nelio, E. Murcia Artengo, OX and D. Demougeot via Bien Urbain

Portrait of Steve Jobs in France

This weekend I’ll be in Boston. If you have any ideas for what I should get up to, leave a comment. I’ll definitely be checking out Swoon’s installation at the ICA Boston. Here’s what’s been going on in street art while I’ve been locked in my room studying all week:

• Steve Powers aka ESPO designed some beer cozies for The World’s Best Ever. They’re pretty okay, but should your beer cozy really be more than pretty okay? I would honestly feel a bit weird of my beer cozy had some brilliant high-brow design on it. Much more impressive is the latest in Powers’ Love Letter series.
• Philips de Pury and MTV had a charity auction for MTV’s Staying Alive Foundation, with particularly nice work by Shepard Fairey and Faile.
• Stik’s latest solo show just opened in London.
• Some beautiful pieces by Sam3 in Porto, Portugal.
• AvoidPi designed the latest cover of Showpaper.
• Blu’s latest mural is in Greece.
• A nice booth for Joshua Liner Galler at Pulse in LA.
• Mr. Brainwash has a show opening soon in LA, but it’s going to be full of other people’s art. Anyone can submit work to be wheatpasted around the exhibition. On the one hand, yay, artists can benefit from Mr. Brainwash’s stupid fame and hype. On the other hand, I guess Mr. Brainwash has acknowledged that he doesn’t have any ideas for art, so he’s just openly benefiting from the art of others to further his own art career. So it’s mutually beneficial, except that individual artists submitting work will gain a lot less from this arrangement than Mr. Brainwash will gain overall.

Photo by Abode of Chaos

Sam3 in France

This week it seems like I’ve been appearing elsewhere on the web as much as here on the blog. I’ve been more active than usual on Vandalog’s tumblr, which I’ve finally getting a feel for; I was interviewed by Brian Sherwin over at FineArtViews; and I wrote a post for my friend at Hyperallergic about advertisers utilizing the style of Liu Bolin to sell stuff. Here’s what didn’t make it to Vandalog:

• Revok called out Fab 5 Freddy for appropriating (or in Revok’s words “stealing”) letters from other artists including Sever and using them in his own work. You can read Revok’s post here, and hopefully I’ll have some thoughts about it in a post on Vandalog over the weekend. A commenter on Vandalog actually noted that Fred was doing this about two months ago.
• New York Magazine published an article, and not a particularly brief one, all about a painting that is supposedly by Jean-Michel Basquiat but was denied by his estate’s authentication committee. Well, while the writer of the article tries to get readers to sympathize with going through a potentially daunting and certainly not transparent authentication process, there was really no point for the whole thing: The painting is clearly by Phil Frost, something that the article doesn’t mention at all. So, umm… good work. Thanks to Known Gallery for pointing this all out.
• Nunca, Titifreak, Invader and more at this show in Paris.
• Retna painted a mural in Miami.
• Here’s some images of Bast’s show in Newcastle.
• The New York Times went with graffiti writer Freedom back to The Freedom Tunnel where he used to paint and took some photos.
• A street art / mystery investigation documentary film thing. Looks kinda cool except that they are trying to “out” an artist, so I’m not sure I’m 100% cool with that.

Photo by Sam3

As far as I know, this mural by Sam3 is the tallest in America, if not the world. It was painted this month in Atlanta for the Living Walls Conference. Yes, there are murals and even illegal graffiti that cover more square-footage, but in terms of height, this 15-story-tall mural has everything I can think of beat. So is this really the tallest mural in America or possibly the world? Let me know in the comments if you know of a taller one.

Update: Thanks to a anonymous commenter, we’ve found out about this mural in Chicago, which is 200 feet tall, and the mural on the David Broderick Tower in Detroit. Looks like one of those murals holds the record of largest painted mural, for now.

Photo by nickmickolas

Doodles, Swampy and Greg Mike at Living Walls 2010

Later this month, Atlanta is going to be taken over by street artists from around the world for this year’s edition of the Living Walls conference, Living Walls: the City Speaks. From the 12th-14th of August, there will be film screenings, lectures and artists painting murals around the city. Living Walls have brought together an impressive artist roster from around the world including (but not limited to) Doodles, Swampy, Gaia, Roa, Labrona, OverUnder, Sam3, Freddy Sam, White Cocoa, Nanook, Greg Mike, Paper Twins, Clownsoldier and Gawd. And I can’t complain about the keynote speakers either: Tristan Manco, Gaia, Ricky Lee Gordon and me.

So if you’re in Atlanta, come out check out the opening party at The Sound Table on Friday the 12th, lectures at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia on the 13th during the day, a party at The Goat Farm the night of the 13th and a tour of all the new murals on the 14th. I’ll post more details about exact times later. And of course, I’ll be posting plenty of photos from the conference as well.

In September, another Living Walls event will take place in Albany, NY. More on that later.

Photo by Greg Foster Photography

Estado de bienestar

Sam3 painted this billboard in Murcia, Spain twice recently. First, he painted the above piece, titled Estado de bienestar, Welfare state. As you can see in the photograph below, he then repainted the same spot. This time he called it Estado de flacidez, which you can probably translate for yourself.

Estado de flacidez

Photos by Sam3