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.
You’ve almost definitely seen a photo at some point over the last few weeks of Tilt‘s Panic Room installation at The Hotel Au Vieux Panier in Marseille, France. Well now Tilt has released a video of how the project was done. It’s pretty much what you’d expect: Tilt and friends going a bit wild over a couple days in the hotel room. But just because it’s what you might expect doesn’t mean it can’t also be fun to watch. I am absolutely not a fan of Tilt. Almost everything I’ve seen from him has been boring and old cliches from street art and graffiti: Hot naked girls, basic bubble letters, and simple pop art iconography. But Panic Room is hard not to love. Here’s the making of video:
Geo Street Art launched two iPhone apps this week for locating street art in NYC and London. The Street Art NYC and Street Art London by Lois Stavsky (also a Vandalog blogger) and Griff respectively. Basically, the apps are street art guides to individual cities with both hundreds of currently running pieces and historical data and bios of artists you might come across. Lois and Griff are out hitting the streets all the time, so these apps actually have a good chance of staying up to date. Similar iPhone apps have often relied on crowdsourcing their data and that’s not a bad idea, but maybe it’s time to try putting a small monetary incentive behind the work of keeping a street art map up to date and relying on experts. Each app costs a few dollars and since I’m not in either city right now, I haven’t purchased them myself, but the screenshots definitely make the app look quite professional and the map in NYC already includes over 400 active locations to spot art.
In conjunction with the app, Lois has also started up a new blog, Street Art NYC. If you love Lois’ posts here at Vandalog like I do, I highly recommend checking out Street Art NYC.
I can’t draw. When I was in 4th grade, my teacher told my parents that I was drawing naked people in class and that the behavior had to be corrected. What she meant was that I was drawing stick figures. They didn’t have clothing, but they didn’t have genitals either. For her, those stick figures were enough to say I was drawing naked people. For me, her worries were enough to bury any interest I had in drawing for nearly a decade.
That’s why, when Kid Acne offered to send me a copy of his recently reprinted coloring book Colour Me Bad Vol. 1, I wasn’t quite sure what to do. The book is 36 pages of classic Kid Acne drawings ready for customization. I didn’t want to say no, but I also did not want the book to end up with every page looking like this. So now, I’ve flipped through the book a few times and it’s going to sit on my shelf, indefinitely devoid of color. But there are still another 499 copies of Colour Me Bad Vol. 1 out there in the world. Don’t let them go to waste. Pick up a copy of Colour Me Bad Vol. 1 online now for £6 plus shipping, and make sure to draw a little something in it or at least color in a character or two. Trust my 3rd grade self: It’ll be fun.
Many people may not realize it, but Stikman has been putting up his street art for nearly 20 years. He started out in the NYC’s East Village during the summer of 1992. In celebration of this major milestone, Pandemic Gallery will be hosting a Stikman solo show called 20. The show opens on March 16th and runs through April 6th.
Besides his general coolness, I do have one story to tell about Stikman: Last year I hosted some people at Haverford College to talk about street art. It was a fun event. The immediate and obvious physical results of this event were Jordan Seiler work with Haverford students and Gaia’s mural. A day or two later, I noticed stickers by some Philly sticker artists, but that was somewhat expected. I had seen those guys in the audience at the discussion. The real surprise came much later, when I discovered that Stikman had put up at least two pieces at Haverford. Both artworks are still there to this day, almost a year later. Since I didn’t spot either piece until after the talk, my guess is that Stikman’s contributions to the Haverford campus arrived when he visited for that discussion, but I can’t be sure. However they arrived, Stikman’s pieces are always a bright spot on my day, whether I’m headed to another lunch at the cafeteria or off to work.
Stikman at Haverford College. Photo by RJ Rushmore
PS, if anyone from Haverford College’s communications department is reading this because it has come up on your Google Alerts: That story was a fiction and the above photo is a faked. You will not find a blue Stikman sculpture outside of the Dining Center. Even if it is there, it must have been there for many years and has nothing to do with any event on campus that I had anything to do with. Sorry for confusing you.
PS, if you do not work at Haverford College, please disregard the above paragraph.
The work of Rammellzee, one of the late great mysteries and legends of the New York graffiti community, will be on display in New York City starting tonight at The Suzanne Geiss Company. Letter Racers will have two complete sets of Rammellzee’s letter racer creations on display. By this point, you’re probably either in agreement with me that this show is a must-see, or you’re completely lost because you don’t know who Rammellzee is. Well, The New York Times profiled him last week, which is a better introduction than anything I might write about him.
Letter Racers opens on March 8th from 6-8pm and runs through April 21st.
Photo by RJ Rushmore, flyer courtesy of Suzanne Geiss Company
It’s art-fair week in New York. Of course there’s The Armory Show, The Volta Show and SCOPE, but the fair that Vandalog readers are going to love is the Fountain New York Art Fair. That’s where the street artists are showing. 5 Pointz Art Space, KESTING / RAY, Mighty Tanaka, Station 16 and The Marketplace Gallery will all be there, plus GILF and Fab5 Freddy will be there independent of any gallery. Fountain runs Friday through Sunday, with musical performances on Friday night and Saturday night. I’ve been to Fountain’s fair in Miami twice, and each time it has been something a bit different from the standard art fair whateverness. I don’t want to give anything away, but I’ve heard that some Vandalog favorites will be working on indoor murals for the fair.
