Year: 2012

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Weekend link-o-rama

Stinkfish

I’m headed to Nuart next week, so expect updates to be sporadic any maybe Nuart-focused. Should be a great festival. Here’s what I missed this week:

Photo by Stinkfish

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Illegal Baltimore part one: Pieces and freights

Stab HOD

A few months ago, I was lucky enough to be able to visit Baltimore during their Open Walls Baltimore mural program. In addition to being fortunate enough to meet some of the most amazing artists from around the world, I was also able to explore the many hidden graffiti spots that the area had to offer. With a local writer as my guide, I was able to document over two dozen spots and see a wide range of work. Due to the prolific nature of Baltimore’s graffiti scene, the posts have been divided into three parts: pieces and freights, rollers, and street pieces. Continue reading “Illegal Baltimore part one: Pieces and freights”

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NEVERCREW’S magical murals grace Swiss school

Whenever I pass bleak-looking school buildings, I imagine their exteriors transformed into playful wonderlands. NEVERCREW, a first-rate Swiss-based artists duo with roots in graffiti, did just that to an elementary school in Lugano. Here are some close-ups:

Photos courtesy of Pablo Togni of NEVERCREW

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Makatron’s travels

Cape Town, South Africa
Makatron has recently returned to Melbourne after a bit of traveling and painting. Here are some of the highlights in Mike’s own words:
Brazil – Essencia Event – Over a week we painted murals in all 4 zones of Sao Paulo Favelas, (north, south, east and west and then an exhibition in the centre).

Brazil – Graffiti Vale -An event in a tiny village situated in a valley in Sao Paulo State. This village had no graffiti at all when we arrived. About 40 graffiti artists from all over South America took over for 4 days, the locals loved it, feeding us, finding more walls, beers, ladders etc.. Everyone was really talented at whatever they did, either writers doing pieces or weirdo artists like me.

Uruguay – I was there for a week and painted a few walls in Montevideo and up the coast with a litre of black and white.

South Africa – I was invited to do an art residency for about a month with a group in Cape Town called A Word of Art. This meant living in a shared house with other artists from Nigeria, France, and Canada. The residency helped out by finding walls and providing paint and also gave me an insight into the art and culture of South Africa.

Also keep an eye out for Mike’s upcoming solo show in late November at House of Bricks Gallery in Collingwood, Melbourne.

Cape Town, South Africa
Floripa, Brazil
Punto del Diablo, Uruguay
Sao Paulo, Brazil
Montevideo, Uruguay
Cape Town, South Africa

All photos courtesy of Mike Makatron

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Yote celebrates National Welcoming Week

Yote is celebrating National Welcoming Week (which is this week) by putting up signs these that have the word “Bienvenidos” (Spanish for “Welcome”) superimposed over the Arizona state flag. According to the event’s website, National Welcoming Week is an effort to “promote meaningful connections and a spirit of unity between U.S. and foreign-born Americans.” This week is also the week that the last parts of SB1070, Arizona’s controversial immigration law, go into effect.

Photos by Yote

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The saga of Hyuro in Atlanta

On September 16th, Hyuro‘s mural in Atlanta was buffed by members of the Living Walls team. As I wrote last month, the mural that Hyuro painted for this year’s Living Walls Conference was the highlight of the festival, but it was considered controversial by some of the local residents. Of course, street art and murals cannot last forever, nor should they, but it’s difficult to not be at least a little sad about the swift rejection of this mural by the community. Creative Loafing Atlanta has a great slideshow going over the story of the mural from start to finish.

Both Hyuro and and (Living Walls co-founder and executive director) made statements about the mural and it’s removal.

Hyuro:

Each person can take it the way they want to, because it is for everyone …and at the end, if it gets painted over, know that the gray paint will not hide the fears of no one, but if anything It will make those fears more visible.

Monica Campana:

Paint on this wall made for a beautiful mural, people talking about it made for a beautiful conversation. A public space was created and all of a sudden this dead intersection became more human. The mural belonged to all of us, to the ones that liked it and to the ones that didn’t, it was our dialogue, it was our challenge, but now it’s gone. Now we are back to ignoring that space again, now we are back at thinking that erasing the evidence will make us think this never happened. It hurt so much to paint over the wall, to destroy something someone else put so much heart and passion into. It was a painful process, but what hurt the most was that for the first time I felt like I had to censor myself. It was a weird feeling, a confusing and ugly feeling that I never want to experience again.

Photo by Dustin Chambers via Creative Loafing Atlanta

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Beau Stanton paints the Berlin Wall

Beau Stanton was recently in Germany where he painted a section of the Berlin Wall. Of course, Beau is Ron English’s assistant and has been mentored by Ron for a couple of years now, and Ron painted the wall back before it came down and when painting it meant risking arrest. Still, Beau’s work for this project was pretty spectacular. Somebody give this man some wallspace to paint murals in NYC!

Photos by Beau Stanton

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Weekend link-o-rama

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:

Photo by Zéh Palito

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“Just My Type” @ Bushwick’s Low Brow Artique

Opening this evening from 7 to 10 pm at Bushwick’s Low Brow Artique at 143 Central Ave is Just My Type, an exhibit featuring the work of four Brooklyn-based artists — Gilf!, Dirty Bandits, ND’A and QRST — who utilize typography in their artworks. Ranging from the playful to the poignant in a variety of styles and media, the pieces often amuse and always provoke. Coordinated by Low Brow Artique’s resident curator, Rhiannon Platt, the exhibit continues through October 7th.

Images clockwise: Gilf! close-up, photographed by Lois Stavsky; QRST photographed by Tara Murray; Dirty Bandits on postcard courtesy of Low Brow Artique and ND’A photographed by Lois Stavsky