Things have been busy the past few weeks here at Carmichael Gallery – Seth and I have been prepping for Moniker / our trip to London, I’ve been finishing off the next issue of tasj (more about that soon) and Bumblebee has turned one of our back rooms into a full-on studio in preparation for his first solo show, which opens this Saturday at Beyond Eden!
If you live in LA, I hope you can make it to the show. There will be lots of new canvases, mixed media pieces and a big installation on display. He’s worked really hard for it, and it shows. It’s some of his best work yet.
Unurth posted one of Bumblebee’s most recent street pieces, “I’m Not Supposed To Bee Here”, last week; you can see it here. He also did a cool piece last night called “Sleepwalking”, which you can see on tasj.
Ma’Claim are in LA right now, painting a series of murals both for the Montana Store and for Goethe-Institut. They’ve been live painting all day today at the latter.
There will be a presentation introducing guests to Ma’Claim and their work at 7pm this evening. A panel conversation will follow, moderated by Seth Carmichael and featuring special guest Retna.
I really like Ericailcane’s new murals for Fame Fest. He always does some of the best work there, in my opinion. See his 2009 walls here (my favorite) and here.
If you want to see more, I’ve posted some more photos of these new walls, plus a video of him working in Studiocromie, on tasj.
I’m looking forward to what Alexandros Vasmoulakis does at Nuart, so in the meantime it’s nice to be able to share some of the other things he’s being doing lately. The piece above was commissioned by an historic concert hall in Ljubljana and painted in collaboration with Paris Koutsikos. Here they are at work:
I’ll need to ask him for a close up because I can’t see the rhinestones he mentions are on the paper. That’s a nice touch.
This second piece is located in the Dafen Painting Village and was commissioned by the Dafen Art Museum. It’s a funny place for it to be, but it’s a nice piece. Faith47, Hitnes, Sonik, Run and others also took part in this project. I’ll have to look out photos of what they did.
I just posted about Andreas’ new show on the tasj blog (which is where I am when I’m not here), but I wanted to share a sneak peek with Vandalog readers, too. I think that big piece is amazing.
It’s had like a million views at this point (and I’m not exaggerating) so you’ve probably seen this video already, but it’s still fun to watch. If you’re a fan, you can support the Poster Boy movement, the new Poster Boy book, The War of Art and the new street art/graffiti legal defence fund K.A.R.A.T.E. (about time we had one of these) in four different cities on Saturday night:
I love this wall Dotmasters recently painted at Nuart. It’s not easy to be cute without getting lame and cutesy.
– Elisa
PS If you haven’t seen the tower Blu and Ericailcane painted for the festival, check out the photos on Unurth. Then keep an eye out for updates on the Nuart twitter and blog – there are a lot of great artists still to come. I also did an interview with Martyn (the festival’s curator) for the next issue of The Art Street Journal. It was great to listen to his thoughts on the festival and its swift growth. The media has a tendency to throw the spotlight on the artists, but I believe it’s also very important to recognize the people who work tirelessly behind the scenes to make things happen. Martyn is one of those people and if you’re a reader of the journal, I hope you find our conversation as interesting as I did.
Here’s a show to check out if you live in Sydney – Stormie Mills at Richard Martin Art. His last solo there was really good so I’m looking forward to seeing what this one looks like. You can see some of the work here. The opening is on September 1 from 6-8pm.
Stormie’s a great guy and I think his personality really comes out in his work. There’s so much soul in his little characters.
Seth and I just printed the newest edition of The Art Street Journal! It’s our longest issue yet and with the move to better paper stock and four color pages inside, it’s a big step toward where we’re hoping to take things in the future.
A lot of really great people helped out with this issue, including Vandalog’s Aaron and Steph! I’ve included previews of their pages (well, one of Aaron’s, at least – his article has the double page spread in the middle of the journal).
Steph's article on Viva La Revolucion at MCASDHalf of Aaron's interview with Boogie
One thing I’m particularly happy about is that our Unurthpage has now doubled in size to a two page spread. It’s still not enough to fit all the great images Sebastian finds, but I packed in as much as I could this time around. Sebastian also did a great interview with Escif about the differences between his indoor and outdoor work. You can read an older conversation between these two here to get some context to it.
Other street artist-related articles in this issue include those on EuroTrash with Conor Harrington, Vhils, JR and Antony Micallef in LA, Herbert Baglione in Barcelona, Dan Witz in New York (although the article is actually on his last show of oil paintings), 108 in Grottaglie, Basquiat in Basel, Nina Pandolfo in Sao Paulo, M-City in LA and Ericailcane in Ancona.
Street Art New York, Dan Witz: In Plain View and Poster Boy: The War of Art all feature on the bookshelf page. I recommend you buy all three if you can and haven’t yet. I’m a bit biased, I guess, because all the authors are friends of mine, but I genuinely think they are great books and I know everyone involved worked really hard to get them out there.
If you’re not getting tasj in the mail yet and would like to, you can sign up at www.theartstreetjournal.com. It’s free, no matter where in the world you live.
If you’re in LA, we are having a release party for this new issue here at Carmichael Gallery on Saturday, August 7th. Come by for a drink, pick up a copy, see our Boogie/M-City shows (it’s the last day they’ll be up!), then head out to the other openings in Culver City – there are some fun things going on that night. Hope to see you there and spread the word if you can! Thanks!
If you’re in Brooklyn this weekend, Labrona is taking part in a 3-day event that is an art show, dance party and a whole lot more all in one. Find out more here. He was also in LA recently and did a lot of cool wheatpastes like the one above. See more of them on Unurth.
