Author: RJ Rushmore

RJ Rushmore has been involved in contemporary art as a writer, curator, photographer, arts administrator, and fan since 2008. With a focus on street art, graffiti, and public art, RJ facilitates and promotes catalytic and ambitious art outdoors, in galleries, and online. He founded the street art blog Vandalog and has worked at The L.I.S.A. Project NYC, Mural Arts Philadelphia, and Creative Time. Currently, RJ is Co-Curator of Art in Ad Places.
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Jealous Gallery at The London Art Fair

The Jealous Gallery has a booth at the London Art Fair, which opens tomorrow (and closes on Sunday). I’m not sure about everything that will be at their booth, but two prints should be mentioned. First of all, Jealous were the folks who printed Hera’s lithograph of The Answer a few months ago for The Thousands, so there will be a few of those prints at Jealous’ booth. I think that they are selling the prints without my book, so the price will be a bit cheaper than usual.

They will also have a new print by Charming Baker called “What Beautiful Thing Life Turns Out To Be (Grey)”. Here’s what it looks like:

The print is an edition of 95.

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Ron English paints Homer Simpson

While I acknowledge his importance in the scene, I’m not a huge Ron English fan, but this painting looks pretty cool. It’s Homer Simpson painting a Jackson Pollock-esque piece. Apparently it was used in a recent episode of The Simpsons in America, but I’ve yet to see the clip so I dunno. This time lapse painting of the piece turned out great though:

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Jeffrey Deitch named director of MOCA

UPDATE: Jerry Saltz reports on his facebook account that “LA MoCA just announced that Jeffrey Deitch is their new Director. He begins June 1. He will soon close his gallery.” So I guess that answers that question. No more Deitch Projects.

As anticipated, The LA Times reports that Jeffrey Deitch has been named as the new director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in LA. The nomination is a controversial one primarily because Deitch’s background is as a commercial art dealer, while traditionally the post would be filled by somebody who has worked in museums for most of their career. Also, there is the question of what will happen to Deitch’s gallery, Deitch Projects, and what role he will play in the gallery’s future.

I for one am ecstatic about this news. Deitch has been associated with many great street artists like Shepard Fairey, Keith Haring and Barry McGee, so perhaps this new position will allow Deitch to bring some of those artists into MOCA’s collection.

So, congratulations to Jeffrey Deitch on this new job. I hope that he is able to breath a new life into MOCA and bring it back from the edge of bankruptcy (okay, to be fair it was in 2008 that the museum was almost bankrupt, but it certainly isn’t in a strong position today).

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The Faith of Graffiti giveaway

This month on Vandalog, I’ve organized a few giveaways.

The first of those giveaways starts today with two copies of Jon Naar and Norman Mailer’s seminal graffiti book The Faith of Graffiti. When it was first published in 1974, The Faith of Graffiti was the first book to take a serious look at graffiti. In 1974, Jon Naar’s photos and Norman Mailer’s essay gave the graffiti movement some mainstream legitimacy, as Mailer was one of the first to call writers artists. Looking back now, the book acts as an important historical document, preserving the very first generations of New York graffiti. Mailer’s understanding of graffiti was unparalleled at the time, and his writing is still an important starting point when looking at graffiti in the context of art history and art criticism, while Naar’s photos, taken at a time when few other photographers were paying much attention to graffiti, are invaluable evidence of how widespread and powerful graffiti culture was in the 1970’s

For years, it hasn’t been easy to get a copy of The Faith of Graffiti, as it was out of print, but last month it was reprinted in an expanded edition. This book is an absolute must-have for fans of graffiti and street art; my 1st edition is one of my prized possessions.

So how can you get a free copy of The Faith of Graffiti? Easy. HarperCollins has given me two copies of the paperback edition to give away. To enter the contest, you can either comment on this post (make sure to include your real email address, otherwise you can’t win because I won’t be able to contact you), or go on twitter and tweet a link to this post along with the hashtag “#vandalog”. But you have to enter before 6pm (GMT) on Wednesday, January 13th. After that, I’ll randomly pick two winners. Good luck.

Of course, not everybody can win, so if you’d like to buy a copy of the book, just go to Amazon.com.

Photos by Jon Naar

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TrustoCorp signs

UPDATE: Hello traffic from reddit and stumbleupon. If you like this post, I did a similar one a few months ago about similar kinds of signs by other artists. Check it out here.

TrustoCorp seems to be a new street artist or artists who specialize in clever signs. So far I’ve seen them in New York and Miami. I really enjoy street art like this, as much of their work could probably pass as actual signs put up by city workers (at first glance).

Photo by Ken Harman

Photos by Ken Harman and TrustoCorp

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Uncommon – cool artist designed iPhone cases

I’m not big on blogging about products here. Mostly because a lot of graffiti/street art related products are kind of silly (see: the graffiti mug). But Uncommon makes what seem like very cool cases for your iPhone. I’ve never seen one of these in person, but I might buy one. The artist line up is pretty solid.

Uncommon lets you design your own case using your own artwork or artwork from their catalog. The concept is interesting enough, and the lineup of artists is just perfect: Ron English, San, Mode2, David Ellis, Tinho, Anthony Lister, Herbert Baglione, Date Farmers, Usugrow, Dennis McNett and Monica Canilao just to name a few (and these are just the artists they are starting with, who knows how many more will be added in the future). One of the great things about these cases is that the artists haven’t contributed just one image each, some have contributed a dozen. And while those in a hurry can buy a “premade” case (like those pictured above), creative risk takers can customize their case by placing the graphic themselves: you can blow up the imagine so that the all you see is Ronald Mcdonald’s giant head painted by Ron English or shift the design so that a Date Farmers drawing appears at the top, center or bottom of the case.

Here are two cases I designed from the same image by David Ellis:

The cases aren’t cheap ($39.95), but that seems like a small price to pay when you spend hundreds of dollars on a phone and most other cases make it look so ugly.

Here are two more premade cases:

By Greg Gossel
Special edition for Juxtapoz

In short, these are pretty cool.

Buy them at getuncommon.com

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artrepublic street art competition

artrepublic has put together a competition for street artists to get legal wall space  and raise awareness of homelessness in the UK with the charity StreetSmart. The competition is being judged by Inkie, Pure Evil, Static and Ben Eine. Here’s a video about the competition:

The winner of the competition will be announced on January 28th, so if the work is any good, you’ll see it here on Vandalog.