Macs has this lighthearted illustrative, caricature style and yet still represents the urban edge of graffiti. His pieces tell a story. These are a few of my favorites, but check out more on his flickr. Continue reading “Macs from Italy”
Open Walls Baltimore Kicks Off
Open Walls Baltimore is a project that I have been personally coordinating with the not for profit Station North and is supported by the PNC foundation and a generous Our Town grant from the NEA. The intention is of course to produce great art on the streets and put on for my city that I love so much. Yet, of course, as every public art project must be, the OWB initiative will hopefully produce more than just spectacular murals. This is about an investment in a neighborhood that is burdened by 150 vacant homes and bridging the gaps between the artist community that calls Station North home and the residents of Greenmount West. Inspired by my experience with both Wynwood Walls in Miami and Living Walls in Atlanta, this initial and very exciting start will hopefully result in a continued support for public art and experimental intervention that can become more holistic as time moves forward. The current line up is as follows: Interesni Kazki, Maya Hayuk, Swoon, Specter, Doodles, Jaz, Ever, Freddy Sam, Mata Ruda, Nanook, MOMO, Vhils, Sten and Lex, Chris Stain, Jetsonorama, Overunder, and others. The website is now live. More to come!!!
Photos by Martha Cooper
DMV in Melbourne with RTIST Gallery
Da Mental Vaporz’ (Bom-K, Blo, Brusk, Dran, Gris1, ISO, Jaw, Kan, and Sowat) exhibition at RTIST Gallery in Melbourne in still open for a few more days, but if you can’t make it down, here’s a short video giving an idea of what’s going on (including a mural)…
DMV ~ Le Venin from Rtist Gallery on Vimeo.
Photo by S.Butterfly
New Works by CRASH Pay Homage to Time on the Subways @ NYC’s TT Underground
Over 30 years ago, Crash’s visual rhythms were riding the subways of New York City. These early images have remained a consistent source of inspiration to the artist, as well as to the next generation of writers. Through Friday March 11th Crash’s new art paying homage to his time on the trains can be seen at TT Underground in Manhattan’s East Village. My favorites are the ones the legendary Crash – born John Matos — has fashioned on aluminum pieces constructed by his friend, Metal Man Ed. Here’s a sampling:
And here he is back in 1980:
And, more recently, on the streets of the South Bronx:
Gallery images by John Matos & Lois Stavsky; outdoor images, courtesy John Matos
New shirts from Labrona at The Vandalog Shop
Today we are relaunching The Vandalog Shop and kicking off a new series of product releases with two t-shirts designed by Labrona which are now available online. Starting with these shirts, The Vandalog Shop will be releasing a new product / artist collaboration every month. We will focus on releasing affordable products ranging from apparel to posters to whatever else we think would be fun. We can’t say yet just what else we’ve got up our sleeve, but these shirts by Labrona are only the beginning…
Labrona’s shirts are based on a new image called Lying in Wait. The shirts are unisex, come in two colorways of either purple and teal or blue and yellow, and each colorway has a print run of just 20 tees.
Why is Labrona the artist we chose to help us relaunch The Vandalog Shop? There are a lot of talented artists in the world, but Labrona stands out to me because he is one of the nicest and humblest guys around. The first time I met Labrona, he convinced me to buy a painting by one of his friends. It wasn’t until after he had left the room that someone showed me Labrona’s own artwork. We met again years later. That time, we slept on a floor with about a dozen other men and women at the Living Walls Conference in Atlanta. Some people might have complained about the accommodations, but Labrona was just ecstatic because he had the opportunity to paint a mural and put up posters in Atlanta. At Vandalog, I want to bring great art to as many people as possible, but that great art has to be made by artists who are great people too.
Both versions of Lying in Wait are available online now at The Vandalog Shop for $30 each plus shipping and handling.
The shirts were printed at Station16 in Montreal, and Labrona has also worked with Station16 to release a fine art screenprint of Lying in Wait. Each colorway of the prints is an edition of 16. The print is also for sale beginning today and can be at their online shop.
Photos by Dan Schaub
Weekend link-o-rama
It’s still technically the weekend for a few hours, so writing this is the perfect procrastination tool before I get down to doing homework. Hopefully you can take advantage of these links in a similar fashion:
- Phlegm has a new print available. Quite a beauty.
- A Love Letter For You, a film related to Steve Powers‘ project of the same name but also not the standard documentary you might expect, will be released soon. Here’s the trailer.
- It’s definitely NSFW but also definitely worth checking out: F*CK ART at the Museum of Sex.
- I’m guessing Vandalog will cover this in more detail with a full post and not just this tiny mention, but here are a boatload of shots from Os Gemeos’ show in LA.
- Unurth happened to post cool optical illusion pieces this week by e1000ink and Rub Kandy.
- Few things I’d rather see on a truck than a horse by Reminisce.
- High Rise Murals is sort of a new project from Monorex. It organizes all of their murals (read: massive painted outdoor advertisements) under one banner. They launched High Rise Murals in two ways: By having INSA paint a mural and painting a massive Coca-Cola advertisement over some great graffiti. After someone very publicly shamed them, High Rise Murals selectively buffed the advertisement to make it look intentional and not about the massive tag (HW stands for the location of the advertisement, Hackney Wick). Over Twitter, Monorex said that they “are now in phase 2, re commissioning wall with artists.” This phase is also known as phase oh crap, we really screwed the pooch on this one and it’s time to backpedal. Monorex claim that phase two was always the plan, but I don’t see any reason to believe that. Artists need to get paid and painting advertisements can be a lucrative way to do that, but I think we can all agree that painting over graffiti and street art to replace it with advertising is not cool. Let’s hope High Rise Murals have learned from this experience and stop going over murals and art with advertisements.
Photo by Jade
Anthony Lister at New Image
This wild week of L.A. gallery openings started on Thursday with Anthony Lister at New Image Art in West Hollywood. Although I’ve always admired the movement Lister conjures up in his pieces–in his superhero series or his street faces–I had come to expect still figures in Lister’s work, and, because of that, I had no idea what to expect from a show focusing primarily on the figurative movement of dancers. What I found was impressive indeed.
Lister’s decision not to back or frame his canvases enhanced the gallery atmosphere considerably. Instead, they hung flat on the wall and had a textured, organic feel. Perhaps because of this, visitors were encouraged to touch some of the pieces, and more than a few visitors shuffled through the canvases that had been stacked on top of one another and affixed to the wall, giving a sense of a flip-book without the sequential art component.
The effect came off as straightforward and intimate, as modern in the best possible way, and this was aided by Lister’s humorous strings of sentences, penciled onto the white walls above, around, and even underneath the works. In one, he suggested that an immovable load-bearing girder be moved to better accommodate his work, and in another he provided guidance on how his art needed to be lit. Beneath his portrait of van Gogh, he wrote: “Id like to think van gogh wouldnt agree with making his work into a laurel if he had a say in it”. Continue reading “Anthony Lister at New Image”
Skewville: On the Streets of Brooklyn and at Factory Fresh
An indelible part of Brooklyn’s visual landscape, Skewville’s works can now be seen in Factory Fresh, as well. Here are some images from the streets of Williamsburg, Bushwick and Dumbo:
And at Skewville’s 80th Birthday A Retro Retrospective @ Factory Fresh, 1053 Flushing Avenue in Bushwick, — 3.11:
Photos on the street by Lois Stavsky; @Factory Fresh by Lenny Collado
Shepard pleads guilty to contempt during AP case
Looks like Shepard Fairey‘s problems stemming from his Obama “Hope” poster just won’t stop. Hyperallergic reports that today Fairey “pled guilty to one count of criminal contempt for destroying documents, manufacturing evidence and other misconduct” relating to the AP’s lawsuits over the source photograph for Fairey’s image. The fact that Fairey did all this is nothing new. He admitted so himself back in 2009. He settled those civil lawsuits with the AP, but this charge is a criminal charge brought against Fairey by the state of New York. By pleading guilty, Fairey faces up to six months in prison and thousands of dollars in fines. The sentencing will happen on July 16th.
Check Hyperallergic or The Boston Herald for more details.
Photo by craigCloutier
In Progress: UGLAR x ZES Mural
As RJ recently mentioned, L.A. is alive right now and ZES’s “Excavated Revelations” (a collaboration with RETNA which runs through February 25 at Known Gallery) is a big part of that.
But shows aren’t the only thing contributing to that feeling. Commissioned by the Holdup Gallery, ZES is currently collaborating with UGLAR’s Evan Skrederstu and Jose A. Lopez on the facade of the old Brunswig Drug Company Factory Building in Little Tokyo.
Originally built in 1931, this art deco tower now hosts a seamless integration of ZES and Lopez’s abstract work, one flowing into the other–and echoing, with one of ZES’s trademark curvatures in its lower left corner, a nautilus shell’s curl. These bursts of color frame an unsettling juxtaposition: an orangutan holding an AK-47 and what will be a walkie-talkie when Skrederstu completes it.
Location: On 2nd, west of Central, next to the Second Street Jazz Bar.
Photos by Ryan Gattis