Three of the finest up-and-coming street artists around just came through Philadelphia. Streets Dept. has some great shots of two spots by Gaia, so I’m going to focus on ND’A and LNY‘s work.
There are detailed shots of LNY’s wheatpastes and some spraypainted works by LNY after the jump… Continue reading “LNY, Gaia and ND’A up in Philly”
Street art is moving online. If you’re a regular reader, you’ve probably noticed that street artists are making art on the street for the purpose of photographing it and sharing the images online (and maybe you remember these posts). I think it is too early to say for sure whether this transition is a good thing, a bad thing or just change, but it has gotten so pervasive that street art that comments on street art now often focuses on pointing out this transition from in-the-flesh street art to art that was intended to be shared digitally. Here are a few recent examples…
1. Reblog This by mobstr (shown above). This piece was painted in Shoreditch, a spot where it would have been seen by countless street art photographers, but it only lasted 7 hours before getting buffed. No matter. Mobstr got a great photo of it and put that photo online. Now it’s all ready to be reblogged on tumblr.
2. What ever happened to street art on the street? by Lush. Both a comment on the proliferation of street art online and the commercialization of the movement. This image is available as a print at Backwoods Gallery. Lush has also made animated gifs of his work, something else that can only be viewed digitally but is created on the street.
3. Fine by Elfo. The text is in Italian and references this work by Giuseppe Chiari. It translates to “Street art is finished, stop all together.” Rather than painting this in a busy city center, Elfo put it on an abandoned building in what looks like the countryside. The audience for the work is (primarily) the audience that will see this photo online and Elfo is well aware of that. Does this mean the death of street art though? Of course not. Chiari continued making art after his declaration, and Elfo has already made more street art. It’s just that Elfo’s public is primarily a digital one, either seeking his work out or coming across it randomly on a site like tumblr, but either way viewing it for free.
For more about this shift towards a digital street and a digital public, here are two posts I wrote a while ago.
Photos by mobstr, Lush and Elfo
As expected, Skewville‘s latest show looks like it kicks ass. Playground Tactics is on now through February 4th at White Walls Gallery in San Fransisco and the Skewville twins have once again put together a perfect combination of smaller drawings, paintings, sculptures and large installation work. It’s playful, but what better way to do art about a playground? Curbs and Stoops have pics of the installation, and here are some of the paintings, drawings and smaller sculptures…
Also, Factory Fresh in Bushwick is hosting a retrospective of Skewville’s work next month. Skewville’s 80th Birthday: A Retro Retrospective opens on February 3rd and runs through March 11th.
Continue reading “Skewville’s Playground Tactics”
It almost goes without saying that Martha Cooper has been one of the most important documentarians of graffiti culture for the last few decades. Her urban and hip hop culture photography is iconic. More recently, Martha Cooper has expanded her graffiti documentation to the photography and collection of stickers. Her two latest books, Going Postal and Name Tagging, spotlight sticker art made with postal labels and Hello My Name Is stickers.
On Saturday from 1-3pm, Martha will join sticker fanatic and author of one of my favorite books, DB Burkeman, for a book signing at a sticker exhibition curated by DB. The show, STUCK-UP: A Selected History of Alternative & Pop Culture Told Through Stickers, is at Chicago’s Maxwell Colette Gallery and features stickers from a top-notch roster of artists.
I would gladly hop on the next plane and see this exhibit in person, but that was not an option so instead I asked Martha Cooper a few questions.
Caroline: In your book Name Tagging, you explain how you began appreciating stickers after you bought your first digital camera. What was it about the digital medium that initiated this interest in stickers?
Martha Cooper: Pre-digital, I rarely took my heavy, bulky Nikon out unless I was headed for something specific to shoot. It cost about 50 cents for film and processing every time I clicked the shutter. So although I had noticed stickers for years, I hadn’t looked at them closely and hadn’t bothered to shoot many.
My first digital camera was a little Olympus that I could easily carry around with me all the time. It had a very good close-up lens and performed well under low light. Once I had the camera, it didn’t cost any more to keep shooting so I was free to take as many photos as I wanted. Transitioning from analog to digital was a challenge. Shooting stickers was an unstressful way to practice new technology with interesting subject matter.
C: What led to you removing and collecting stickers off the street, rather than just photographing them?
MC: I’ve always been a collector. I like to look at different examples of things. At first after shooting a nice sticker, I printed it and saved it in an album. That began to feel unsatisfactory–I wanted the original. I only shoot and collect hand drawn stickers and this is pretty much the only form of graffiti and street art that can actually be removed from the street. Of course writers have criticized me for this and I know this is a dubious defense, but someday I hope to have a museum sticker exhibit.
Continue reading “Martha Cooper interview”
In 2010, Rizzoli published the definitive book on stickers and sticker art. That book is Stickers: Stuck-Up Piece of Crap: From Punk Rock to Contemporary Art by DB Burkeman and Monica LoCascio. DB seems to be the ultimate sticker fanatic, and his book tells the history of stickers in a way that only someone completely obsessed could possibly pull off. If you don’t know anything about stickers, you can skim through and get an introduction. If you’re already interested, Stuck-Up Piece of Crap gives a behind-the-scenes look at everything from early graffiti stickers to stickers in the music world to the homes and minds of sticker collectors. Of course, DB has quite a sticker collection himself. A small chunk of DB’s collection will be on display starting tomorrow at Maxwell Colette Gallery in Chicago, alongside a few other sticker-related events (and he and Martha Cooper will be signing books at the gallery on Saturday from 1-3pm). I spoke with DB last week…
RJ: Why do you think you are drawn to stickers?
DB Burkeman: It’s changed over the years for me, but now the simple answer is they are simply tiny portable works of art. That may have a different answer for each person.
RJ: In your collecting habits, do you differentiate between “art stickers” or “graffiti stickers” and stickers intended as advertisements?
DB: Never really thought about that, but I’m less drawn to stickers that are obviously advertisements. I’ve also become more picky since overdoing on the damn things : )
RJ: How many stickers do you have in your collection?
DB: Somewhere between 4000-6000 & growing, much to my family & friends annoyance. It can take a long time to get down the street with me, I keep stopping to check out lampposts etc. Continue reading “Interview with DB Burkeman”
If Chris Stain isn’t already in your street artist repertoire, this is someone you need to know. Baltimore bred and current New Yorker, Stain transitioned from graffiti writing in his early days to the stencil portraits and paste-ups that have made him known around the world today. The beauty in Stain’s work comes from his ability to capture the soul and often overlooked tenderness of the urban world.
1. Describe one of your first experiences with graffiti.
I got into graffiti after seeing the movie Beat Street in 1984. The only type of paint my friends and I had was Testors model car paint. The cans were small and you couldn’t get far with them but it was easily concealable.
We all lived in rowhomes in Balitmore so our main targets were houses on the end of the block because they had the biggest open wall space and traffic on the main streets could see our work. We also wrote in the alleys behind the houses as well, decorating the backs of peoples cinderblock fences. Once the neighbors caught on to who was writing all over the neighborhood we moved on. We really had no idea what we were doing. We mostly just wrote our new chosen aliases in a form of cursive and printing that we combined. Like the beginning of anything new it was incredibly exciting.
Continue reading “Interview with Chris Stain”
Jeff Soto just sent over these photos over from an excursion he went on in Paris. Be sure to click on the images to see a larger version of each one. Here’s what Soto says about the work:
Basically I have a friend who lives in Paris who is an urban explorer and documenter of graffiti. He knew I wanted to paint something illegal and underground and he had this spot in mind. It is an exhaust vent above the Metro line. I was originally going to paint in here, but decided against it when I saw the walls. It was perfect for chalk (which I don’t get to play with much but I love). In the brief hour or two of sleep I got before our mission, I had dreams about eyes, many eyes, so I decided I had to draw eyes all over the room!
Photos by Jeff Soto
Please note: Corrections made to the article are in bold or stuck out.
This is the second post in a two-part series on Artists 4 Israel and their event, the Defend The Future Tour. The first post was an effort to give an account of my personal experiences with Artists 4 Israel and was published yesterday. This post deals more directly with criticisms of Artists 4 Israel and their response to some of those criticisms, as well as other Haverford students’ reactions to the DTF Tour. I encourage you to read part one first, because, while this article is also clearly very opinionated, the first post sheds more light on my personal experiences with the group and may help to explain some of my personal biases that came up when writing this post. As is always the case on Vandalog, this post is mine and may or may not represent the views of any other Vandalog writers. – RJ Rushmore
As explained in detail in part one of this series, the Defend The Future Tour (a thinly veiled front for Artists 4 Israel so that they can appear apolitical) visited Haverford College on November 17th with the innocuously advertised aim of putting on a graffiti workshop for students. In reality, they used the creation of a mural as an excuse to pass out pro-Israel and anti-Arab propaganda masked as apolitical facts. Continue reading “A close look at Artists 4 Israel – part two”
Update: Part 2 of this series is now online.
This is the first post in a two-part series on Artists 4 Israel and a series of events they put together, the Defend The Future Tour. This first post is an attempt at giving an account of my personal experiences with Artists 4 Israel and the DTF Tour. There are two primary reasons for this post: A. To give a firsthand account of what it is like to be subject to attempts of manipulation by Artists 4 Israel and B. To acknowledge some of the personal experiences and biases that I am bringing to the table when I write about Artists 4 Israel. This is done in an effort to be honest with Vandalog’s readers. Part 2 of this series, dealing with Artists 4 Israel in a wider context than myself and giving the organization’s take on the DTF Tour, will be published tomorrow. As is always the case on Vandalog, this post is mine and may or may not represent the views of any other Vandalog writers. – RJ Rushmore
On November 17th, the Defend The Future Tour came to Haverford College, spray cans in hand, in what now seems to me to have been an attempt to manipulate students into having a greater hate and fear of the Arab world and a greater love for Israel. This would have been fine, except for the manipulation. I go to Haverford College, so I experienced the DTF Tour myself. Continue reading “A close look at Artists 4 Israel – part one”
It seems that portions of The Freedom Tunnel were recently buffed, including some of Freedom’s murals. Maybe this has something to do with our recent interview with Chris Pape aka Freedom reminding people about this graffiti treasure trove… More than likely though, it had to do with the New York Times article about Freedom and his work in the tunnel. Not all of Freedom’s work was painted over, but some was. I’m not sure how much work was painted over by other artists. Luckily, people are already back in and repainting the tunnel with fresh artwork, including Gaia. Here are some recent photos of the tunnel by Dan Solomon:
PS, NewYorkStreetArt also took a trip to the tunnel and has plenty more shots.
Photos by Dan Solomon
