Category: Events

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The Painted Desert Project – round 1, post 1

Tom Greyeyes

Last month, Gaia, Overunder, Doodles, Labrona, Jetsonorama, Tom Greyeyes and Breeze participated in the first iteration of The Painted Desert Project, a project developed by Yote and Jetsonorama and which took place in the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona.

Of the project, Jetsonorama says:

We hoped to connect artists with vendors working along the roadside in homemade structures where food and jewelery are sold. We attempted to familiarize artists with the culture before they started painting. Because of the location of this project where large walls are few, the emphasis was on establishing a connection with the community. Both Tom Greyeyes and Breeze are Native American and came to the project already sensitized. We’d hoped to get more local youth involved in working with the artists but will have to pursue this with future iterations of the project.

As much as I enjoy the mural projects going on around the world right now, things like The Painted Desert Project are fantastic low-key but potentially impactful counterpoints to the hype and huge walls that seem to accompany more urban festivals.

Some of the crew

Jetsonorama is a talented photographer who took some spectacular photos of the artists at work and of the finished walls and signs, so it’s going to take more than one post to show everything. After the jump, we’ll start with work by Labrona, Breeze and Overunder… Continue reading “The Painted Desert Project – round 1, post 1”

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Kickstart some whimsy

Swimming Cities of Serenissima (2009)

One of the best things that street art can do, which doesn’t happen often, is that it can truly engage with people and inspire them. There are two whimsical projects potentially happening this summer which, while not traditional street art, come from that same place. And they need some support or else they might not happen.

First, there is Release the Wolves, a go-karting project by Gold Peg and Pelucas. These two artists are trying to build a go-kart track and go-karts with local kids in South London. They need another £6,500 to make the project a reality. When I was living in London, Gold Peg was one of my favorite local street artists/graffiti writers, and this project fits her to a T. I remember the opening night of The Thousands, a show that I curated back in 2009, where Gold Peg decided that, rather than put a painting in the show like the rest of the Burning Candy crew (in addition to the mural that they painted), she wanted to give out ice cream at an ice cream stand. And so she made a custom ice cream stand and had her friends serve everyone ice cream. It was probably the most popular part of the show, until the ice cream ran out. That was great fun and a bit whimsical, but it was for a crowd of Shoreditch hipsters like myself. With Release the Wolves, Gold Peg is taking that same spirit of fun and exuberance and bringing it to kids who probably didn’t show up for ice cream at The Thousands. I hope she can pull this project off. To help make Release the Wolves happen, you can pledge your support here.

And then there is the latest installment in the Swimming Cities project, which is probably best-known as that crazy series of junk boat projects that Swoon had a hand in. While Swoon is no longer at the helm, Swimming Cities has continued. This year, the group is hoping to float down the Ohio River. The Swimming Cities team is hoping to raise about $20,000 in the next 15 days. It’s a lot, but Swimming Cities is quite a project. I was fortunate enough to ride on one of the Swimming Cities vessels in Venice a few years back. It was the experience of a lifetime, and even just seeing the performance that took place on the boats was spectacular. I cannot say enough good things about this project. I hope that they reach their funding goal and send out some positive energy all along the Ohio River. You can help Swimming Cities here.

Photo by RJ Rushmore

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Street art at the London Pleasure Gardens

Ron English

Ron English, Shepard Fairey, TrustoCorp and Risk painted last week at the London Pleasure Gardens, a brand new cultural center of sorts from the folks behind MuTate Britain. Fairey has had some involvement with MuTate Britain organization before, but I’m not sure about the other artists. Whatever the case, there’s some nice work that went up at the gardens, including Fairey’s tallest mural to date and some great work on airplane nosecones by Risk and English (shown above).

Swap Fairey for Saber and you have the line-up at Letters from America, the show Corey Helford Gallery is putting on at Black Rat Projects starting July 4th, so if you like this work, definitely check out that show too.

Here’s some of the work at the London Pleasure Gardens, and we’ll probably do a part-2 of with more work in a few days:

Risk
Shepard Fairey
Risk

Photos by S.Butterfly

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The Lure of the Abandoned: in Washington DC & in West Jerusalem

Alex Merritt

There are few sites as alluring to artists – or at least to the artists I tend to meet – as abandoned spaces. A few like the Underbelly Project and Mausolee, last summer’s takeover of an abandoned supermarket in Paris, have attracted considerable media attention. But many others — both sanctioned and unsanctioned — take place regularly on a smaller scale. Earlier this month, a soon-to-be-demolished warehouse in Washington DC’s U Street Corridor became the canvas to over 60 artists. Presented by AIGA DC and Albus Cavus, the space opened to the public for six hours on Friday, June 8th. Blended – as the event was called – successfully fused the worlds of graffiti, street art, graphic design and more as it raised money to support the implementation of public art projects. I was impressed by the range of sensibilities, backgrounds and ages of those who filled the space to capacity. Here are some more images that made their way onto the walls:

Astrotwitch
Pore
i will not

Earlier this spring in Jerusalem, a diverse group of artists covertly refashioned an abandoned home in West Jerusalem’s upscale Emek Refaim neighborhood. Meydad Eliyahu, a Jerusalem-based artist (whom I met years ago when his stencils surfaced regularly on his city’s public spaces) shared the following images with me:

Meydad Eliyahu
Meydad Eliyahu close-up
Michal Mikaho Harada
Michal Mikaho Harada close-up
Lihi Weiss

After the home was refashioned — with library and all — it was opened to the public for a few days. The Empty House is once again empty, but its brief existence has helped revive Jerusalem’s underground art scene.

“Blended” photos by Lois Stavsky & i will not; photos from “The Empty House” by Meydad Eliyahu 

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Weekend link-o-rama

Specter

The week isn’t over yet, but this week’s news is going to be old if I don’t mention it soon. Here’s some of what I missed this week:

Photo by SMKjr

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Welling Court Mural Project Readies to Launch Year Three

Katie Yamasaki and Caleb Neelon

Organized by Ad Hoc Art, The Welling Court Mural Project is once again bringing some of the finest artists anywhere to Astoria, Queens to grace the walls of the Welling Court community. The event opened officially today at noon, coinciding with Welling Court’s annual block party, but a number of artists have already had begun making their mark earlier this week. These images were captured yesterday:

Toofly @ work; image begun by Sheryo on the right
Subtexture — with a message
Veng
Christopher Cardinale

Images from opening day to follow.

Photos by Dani Mozeson

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Competition time: Tickets to the D*Face/Smirnoff collaboration launch

D*Face and Smirnoff have teamed up to create an inventive limited edition collectable bottle. To celebrate the exciting collaboration, D*Face and Smirnoff will be hosting an exclusive party encompassing a surreal art experiment in East London on Wednesday 13th June where attendees will each receive a piece of art by D*face.

Vandalog is able to offer one lucky winner a pair of VIP tickets to invite-only party.

To enter, just leave a comment with the name of the gallery that D*Face owns. Make sure to leave your real email in the comment, so that we can be in touch. Only Vandalog will be able to see your email. The winner will be selected among those who answer correctly and notified via email on Wednesday morning.

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Improvise Combustion with Chris Mendoza and the Con Artist collective

While walking down Suffolk Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side yesterday, I chanced upon two spaces brimming with vibrant, playful, infectious images.  Exuding a raw, yet almost mystical charm, these collaborative improvisations – I soon discovered — are the work of a group of artists whose works I’ve seen and loved in a variety of other settings. Opening this evening, Saturday May 26, from 6-10pm at 154 Suffolk Street, Improvise Combustion, organized by Chris Mendoza, features collaborations and new work by Michael Miyahira aka Mike Ming, Kenji Hirata, Pablo Power and Naomi Kazama, members of the collective Con Artist.  Pablo tells me that the group will be working on an outdoor mural this week. I’m certainly looking forward to that!

Pablo Power of the Con Artist Collective

Photos by Lois Stavsky

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Do we need a “Go Bombing Day”?

Bomit‘s latest potential project is Go Bombing Day, an attempt at developing an organized day for getting up. In the UK at least, Christmas is already an unofficial Go Bombing Day for writers, but it’s not an organized event and it’s not global. Bomit’s hope is that a more organized Go Bombing Day could encourages artists around the world get active and also acknowledge the great artists who have been instrumental in the development of the street art, graffiti and stickering communities. Bomit is already promising free paint and asking for official participants who will paint on this yet-to-be-determined date and put the words “Go Bombing Day” in their piece. So, is Go Bombing Day a good idea?

Personally, I’m not sure. On the one hand, it would be great to get people out en masse putting up work. More art = good. Maybe it’s that simple. Shouldn’t it be? The event could be the precursor to a number of mini-festivals around the world, sort of like Meeting of Styles. But and organized Go Bombing Day may also mean that artists getting up on that day get enveloped by a sort of brand, even if it’s a noncommercial one. Go Bombing Day might encourage non street artists to paint their first walls, but it may also encourage people to get out and paint that first wall purely for the sake of self-promotion, already a concern in the street art community.

But what do I know? I wouldn’t be a participant in Go Bombing Day anyway. What do the artists think? Let us know in the comments.

Photo by RJ Rushmore