For the second artist in our Tim Hans shoots… series, where photographer Tim Hans takes photo-portraits of street artists and we pair them with interviews with those artists, Tim met up with artist and designer Tristan Eaton.

Caroline: At what point were you like ‘screw art school’?

Tristan: I dropped out of SVA after my Junior year because I couldn’t afford to enroll again. At that point I had no choice but to say fuck you, I’m gonna do it on my own. I started doing illustration work and showing in galleries when I was 17, before I started college anyway, so I had an inflated sense of confidence. The next 4 years of broke life humbled me, but I never stopped learning and making art no matter how poor I was.

C: When you told relatives or family friends that you were a “toy designer” how did you explain what that meant?

T: That never happened. I never set out to do toy design, nor have I ever fully identified as one. By freak chance, I designed some toys for Fisher Price when i was 18, then later helped start Kidrobot and designed a lot of toys. But it was never my profession or my main focus. Any commercial work, toy design work etc., I’ve ever done has been a distraction or separate from my work as an artist. I’m an artist first, everything else is second.

C: There are some incredible painted/modified Dunny’s and Munny’s out there, but I’m curious if you’ve ever seen ones that were so bizarre or bad that you were like “don’t put my name with that”.

T: Of course! But that doesn’t matter. The fact that we’ve given people inspiration to be creative is the whole point. I’ve met accountants, mail men and even cops who paint Dunnies and Munnies. All of them didn’t see themselves as artists until they started customizing toys. That’s amazing to me. On the collector side, a lot of toy collectors graduate into collecting prints and paintings by many of the Dunny / Munny artists. It’s become an amazing platform for discovering artists and even launching careers in some cases.

C: If you were stranded on a deserted island and you could only have one of the following things, which would you choose between a sketchbook with a marker, 3 buckets of house paint, or a large amount of play-dough?

T: Sketchbook & marker!

C: How was it celebrating KidRobot’s 10th anniversary?

T: Awesome. My time at Kidrobot feels like a lifetime ago, but it’s amazing to see how far it’s come. I’m very proud of it’s legacy.

C: What are you working on now?

T: Right now I’m just working on paintings and mural work. I do a few commercial projects here and there to pay bills, but I’m really trying to get better as a painter! It’s hard, but it’s the most rewarding thing in my life.

Photos by Tim Hans

Zéh Palito and Tosko

It is time for me to get a reasonable number of hours of sleep. Until I have to get up in the morning. Here’s what we didn’t get to write about on Vandalog this week:

• These two prints from Tristan Eaton and Everlast come from 1xRun and benefit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, so you’ve got great artists, a great print studio and a great cause all in one package, but less than one week left to buy.
• Two updates on Hyuro’s wall in Atlanta: The neighborhood organization has voted to ask the property owner to remove the mural, and someone vandalized it anyway.
• This freight by MERS is stunning.
• This piece by Batis is pretty great too.
• Buff Monster, David Meade and friends of Vandalog Hrag Vartanian and Adam COST will be speaking on a panel at Doyle New York next week in anticipation of their upcoming street art auction.
• NYC has some great art on its trucks and vans.
• Endless Canvas’ Special Delivery warehouse show looks like it’s got some cool work from Swampy, GATS, Feral Child and others, but really it’s clear that photos do not do the show justice and that you had to be there.
• Adam Neate has a solo show coming up at Elms Lesters in London.
• And Gris1 has a solo show coming up in Marseille.
• My final show to mention this week is Roa’s show opening on Saturday at 941 Geary in SF.
• Know Hope’s latest zine is now available.
• SFMOMA as acquired a huge Margaret Kilgallen piece.
• Invader actually sent a space invader to space.
• Leon Reid IV’s The Hundred Story House project has been installed and is now active.
• The Weird crew’s latest mural features some nutty Disney characters.

Photo by Zéh Palito

One of our favorite walls in Williamsburg is the one fashioned by Tristan Eaton on Fillmore Street off Roebling. For the past few days, he’s been back on Roebling bringing his stylish visual rhythms once more to NYC before leaving for the West Coast. Lenny Collado – my fellow street art and graffiti aficionado – has been busily documenting the work in progress:

And here’s a close-up of Eaton’s riveting rendition of Mickey Mouse spray-painted onto a board that will surface soon in Brooklyn:

Photos by Lenny Collado

Nunca

The Boneyard Project at the Pima Art & Space Museum in Tucson looks absolutely fantastic. Saner, Faile, Bast, Aiko, Shepard Fairey, Tristan Eaton, Nunca, Futura, Retna and many other artists have been brought together by Eric Firestone Gallery to paint old airplanes and airplane parts. Of course, the full-sized planes look to be the most impressive parts of the show. Just imagine watching Nunca’s plane, shown above, landing at your local airport. The Boneyard Project is on display at the museum through May 31st. For more photos of the show, check Arrested Motion and The Flop Box

Faile

Photos courtesy of Arrested Motion

UPDATE – LOCATION CHANGE: The Underbelly Show has moved to 78 NW 25th Street in Wynwood, Miami to accommodate the large scale of the artwork in this show. The address on this flyer is WRONG.

The Secret Wars painting battle series will be making its way to Miami for this year’s Basel insanity. Secret Wars is a team paint battle where two teams are given 90 minutes to simultaneously paint two walls live in front of a crowd of cheering and partying spectators. Secret Wars Miami is going to take place on December 1st at The Underbelly Show with Chaz (of The London Police), Wayne Horse and Mr. K on one team and Tristan Eaton, Buff Monster and Kano on the other.

Tristan Eaton

How & Nosm close-up

How & Nosm

Photos by Lois Stavsky

Ron English, for his recent show at Lazarides in London

Anonymous Gallery, the mostly New York-based pop up gallery, has put together a show that will open later this week at the Wooster Street Social Club, aka the site of the show NY Ink. Flash includes original artwork as well as designs by those same artists that people can get put on them by the tattoo artists at Wooster Street Social Club. Flash opens on September 17th, runs through October 29th,  and includes Anthony Lister, Curtis Kulig (aka Love Me), Dan Witz, Eric White, Greg Lamarche, Kenji Hirata, Kenzo Minami, James Jean, Logan Hicks, Nick Walker, Ron English, Shelter Serra and Tristan Eaton.

Photo by RJ Rushmore

Beau Stanton and Darkclouds at Welling Court

So I got the latest issue of Juxtapoz in my inbox today (I have a digital subscription), and realized that I still haven’t read the last issue yet. D’oh. So while I get on that, here are a few links to keep you busy.

• Contra Projects showed at Scope in Basel, Switzerland. They had work from TrustoCorp, How&Nosm and Tristan Eaton.
• This is perhaps a controversial statement, but Faile’s print show in LA looks great. I barely mentioned the show here before it opened because I didn’t have high expectations and the print release seemed silly, but damn was I wrong (about the show, still big on the print release). Faile get a lot of crap for their prints, but when they are on, they are really really on.
• This is a few weeks out still, but Subliminal Projects has a group show of female artists including Swoon.
• Lois has been posting on Vandalog about Ad Hoc Art’s Welling Court mural project, and the photo at the top of this post is from that project as well. Obviously I’m a fan. So here’s even a bit more from Welling Court, over at Brooklyn Street Art.
• This show over in Milan with Futura, Os Gêmeos, Delta and more looks great. Especially the Futura pieces.
• If you haven’t in a while, go check out Xylo’s website. Lots of good stuff on there. Especially his supermarket pieces.
• Someone, possibly associated with Banksy and possibly not, tagged this Banksy piece at MOCA. There has been work put up inside MOCA by uninvited artists, both in the bathrooms and throughout the McGee/James/Powers Street installation, but Banksy has also been changing up his section, so either option is definitely possible.

Photo by Beau Stanton

In two weeks, Vandalog and Murals Around New York (MANY) will be putting on a pop-up show in a New York City apartment. Up Close and Personal mostly came out of two ideas: 1. Street artists tend to work large outdoors and we wanted to challenge people to make art on a small scale and 2. We’ve all seen artwork in galleries that either would only look good in a gallery but not in a home, or is just too big to fit into a typical apartment and we wanted to see something different from that. With Up Close and Personal, the show itself is taking place in an apartment on the Upper West Side, and we have capped the size of the artwork at 30 x 30 inches, with an emphasis on going as small as possible.

I’ve worked with Keith Schweitzer and Mike Glatzer of M.A.N.Y. to curate this show, and we’re really excited with the line up that we’ve managed to put together: Aiko, Chris Stain, Clown Soldier, Don Leicht, Edible Genius, Elbowtoe, Gaia, How & Nosm, Jessica Angel, John Fekner, Know Hope, Logan Hicks, Mike Ballard, OverUnder, R. Robot, Radical, Retna, Skewville, Tristan Eaton, Troy Lovegates aka Other and White Cocoa.

Up Close and Personal opens May 12th from 7-9pm. We’ll also be open from 7-9pm on the 13th. Then noon-9pm and noon-7pm on the 14th and 15th respectively. Particularly on the 12th, it is possible that we’ll be shifting people in every half hour or so, since the space is a small apartment. The show is taking place at 217 West 106^th Street, Apartment 1A, New York, NY 10025 – Between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenues.

Hope to see you in a couple weeks!

Chris Stain

Tristan Eaton‘s new book, The 3D Art Book, is being launched this week with a show at Opera Gallery‘s NYC location. Andrew Bell, Stephen Bliss, Kevin Bourgeois, Ron English, Mat Eaton, Tristan Eaton, Filth, Haze, Travis Louie, Tara McPherson, Kenzo Minami, Mint, Serf, Dr. Revolt & Tom Thewes will be in the show, and the book includes over 100 artists. I haven’t seen this book in person yet, but I’m looking forward to checking it out.