Month: March 2009

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Last Night’s Openings

Last night my friends and I made it to four gallery openings.

Pam Glew Flag

We started at Pam Glew‘s show at Stella Dore. There are a few pieces that are pretty cool and her bleeching technique is interesting, but I think I’ve become a bit jaded by street art. I couldn’t keep from thinking: “portraits from a one-layer stencil” And of course, those seem to be everywhere these days. My friend who doesn’t obsessively follow street art didn’t have that same bias, and really enjoyed everything. Continue reading “Last Night’s Openings”

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Skewville’s Bushwick Project

Trust Art has been described as “a stock market for art projects” but it’s also about cultural renewal. The basic idea is that investors can fund projects proposed by artists and after a year the resulting artwork is auctioned off an the investors split the proceeds 50/50 with the artist. In the mean time, the art project not only produces art, but helps to build up a local community.

Skewville, the New York artists best known for throwing wooden shoes onto power lines, have propsed one of Trust Art’s inugural projects: The Street Art Urban Revitalization Program. Their project proposes to find 10 rundown and ill-maintained buildings in Bushwick that can be covered in murals by local artists. The project is meant to promote the local artists and make the local buildings look nicer, since right now there are a good number of abandoned or poorly maintained buildings in Bushwick.

At the end of the project, there will be work sold at auction, which is where the investors have the potential to make their money back.

Definitely a cool project. Hopefully Skewville can raise the $65,000 they are looking for.

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Help Bring Holli Home

From the guys at Black Rat Press:

This is a friend of a friend if anyone feels to donate would be amazing.

Help Bring Holli Home
Bay Area artist Holli Hawthorne recently traveled to India to visit her boyfriend and was involved in a horrible motorcycle accident last Tuesday when a motorcycle in front of her with three passengers skidded out, and she either swerved to avoid them or ran into them. She was wearing a helmet at the time. Her friend Harrison was on the scene to give her CPR until the ambulance arrived. She has been in a coma with a serious brain stem injury since. Stanford Medical Center has offered to take her in for free as she has no health insurance. That’s the good news. The bad news is that she’s still in India thousands of miles from the hospital and needs $200,000 for the medical transport from India to Palo Alto. Her friends and family are reaching out for donations.
http://friendsofhollis.blogspot.com/

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Bristol Graffiti Show – Crimes of Passion

I probably won’t be able to make it to this, but if you live it Bristol it sounds fantastic.

Crimes Of Passion: Street Art in Bristol

This Spring Bristol’s oldest and grandest gallery, the Royal West Of England Academy is throwing open all 5 of it’s galleries to host a major show by 50 of the city’s best known and most successful graffiti and street artists. This is the first major show of its kind in the city since the Arnolfini’s groundbreaking 1985 show, Graffiti Art and is a full-blown celebration of the city’s rich and diverse contemporary scene.

Bristol has nurtured many of the UK’s most successful graffiti and street artists, including 3D, Inkie, Banksy, Nick Walker, Sickboy, Cyclops and TCF Crew, to name but a few. The city continues to be a breeding ground for a wealth of exceptional creative talent and continues to have one of the UK’s most diverse and thriving scenes.

Crimes Of Passion takes the love of (and heartfelt dedication to) the art form as its starting point, but is far from a typical gallery retrospective, all the artists will be showing completely new work, as well as installation pieces and working both directly onto (and into) the walls of the gallery.

Crimes of Passion will also include a city-wide programme of large-scale painting, a photographic exhibition,a film season at local arts cinema The Cube  (www.cubecinema.com) and a series of workshops and talks.

Exhibition venue:
Royal West of England Academy, Queen’s Rd, Bristol

Exhibition dates:
21st March – 2nd May

Artists involved in the show include Cyclops, Inkie, Mudwig, Nick Walker, Sickboy, Xenz and many many many more.

If anybody goes, please let me know how it is.

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Very Nearly Almost Issue 8

I read plenty of street art blogs, but only one street art magazine (for now that is, please sugest others). That magazine is Very Nearly Almost or VNA.

VNA 8

Issue 8 of VNA was released a couple weeks ago, but I’ve just bought my copy last weekend. Issue 8 is probably the best one yet. It features interviews and essays from Kid Acne, Adam Neate, Herakut, and more. Of course, VNA also features photos of the best street art that’s been gone up in London since issue 7.

You can pick up VNA online or at Stella Dore for just £3.50. It’s perfect for when you’re on tube and can’t read Vandalog (or you want to read interviews with artists I’ve never interviewed and see work that I hadn’t seen before they were in VNA).

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TOX09 Screenprints

Tox, one of London’s best known writers, is actually releasing a screenprint. For years, Tox has written his tag along with the current year throughout London. He’s so notorious that he’s even made it into an exhibit at the transport museum and this Banksy canvas.

Tox Tags

So this screenprint of TOX09 is an edition of 75, which can be bought at Souled-Out Studios for £75. Although Tox is a piece of London history, I’m not paying £75 for a screenprint of his tag. Of course, the speculation is the entire thing is just a joke, and I love to laugh at myself, but not to the tune of £75. If Tox wants to send me a free one though, I promise I’ll frame it and hang it in my room…

tox09 print

What do you think of Tox and his screenprint? Is it all fun and games? Are these going to be selling at Bonhams in 6 months? Are the people buying it just stupid?

Photo from jovike

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Roa: My Favorite Artist You’ve Never Heard Of

If I were to buy one big original work by a street artist tomorrow, it would probably be something by Roa. Roa’s from Belgium, and doesn’t do that much work outside of his home country (at least not that I’ve found), but he’s just done some amazing walls in New York.

Roa Factory Fresh
Roa at Factory Fresh. Photo by Luna Park

Roa paints animals, usually in black and white, and sometimes includes their skeleton or internal organs. And he goes big.

Roa

Roa Rabbit and Bird

More photos of Roa’s work after the jump… Continue reading “Roa: My Favorite Artist You’ve Never Heard Of”