Fabulous interview with the remarkable Miso on The Design Files. http://www.thedesignfiles.net/2009/09/interview-miso.html
Interview with RJ on Inspire Collective
Thanks to Inspire at Inspire Collective for interviewing me about street art. Here’s a snippet:
“RJ, tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into appreciate graffiti, street, and public art in general?”
My dad actually got me into the whole scene. He came home from work one day almost two years ago and asked me if I knew about some guys called Faile. He’d bought a print by them. Neither of us had been seriously interested in art before that, but we both fell in love with the world of street art and haven’t looked back since. Right now I’m taking a gap year before heading off to university next fall, and street art is the overarching theme for my year.
“Its always good to see another public art site out there appreciating independent artists, how did Vandalog begin?”
I started Vandalog about 1 year ago as a way to keep up to date on street art news and increase my involvement with the street art community. Because I post something every day, I always have to be on the look out for news or something interesting to write about, and when I go to gallery openings or visit another city, I can reach out to artists or blog readers and immediately I have some connections in that city who can tell me all the cool things to do. And of course, it’s a great way to help promote my friends’ projects.
Read the rest of the interview on Inspire Collective
Hrag talks to Public Ad Campaign
Hrag Vartanian has a really interesting interview on Hyperallergic with Jordan Seiler of Public Ad Campaign, the organizer of the New York Street Advertising Takeover (NYSAT) (as mentioned previously). Here’s a snippet:
Hrag Vartanian: Is the NYSAT campaign an art or activist project or both?
Jordan Seiler: Activism informed by art and the artistic process. Sometimes it takes a few hundred artists to move the law forward
HV: If it’s art, what would you consider the aesthetics of the project?
JS: Aesthetics? I don’t think this is visual as much as about mental clarity.
HV: Were you surprised that the advertisers were able to react as fast as they did this time to the street project? Most of the ads didn’t last through the day, did they?
JS: No. Many location saw ads go up a mere hour afterward.
HV: That’s incredible. How are these illegal ad companies able to avoid arrests for their illegal activities, while activists who are covering the same space with non-corporate ads aren’t?
JS: I am not sure. But I did call the cops while they were posting ads on Sunday and they did not listen to my complaint about them not having permits. I think it speaks to the fact that the city is ready to defend the private over the public.
Read the rest on Hyperallergic
New Gaia Interview and Studio Visit on Brooklyn Street Art
A little more than a week ago, I had the wonderful delight of receiving Steve Harrington from Brooklyn Street Art into my home, my city and my school. The product of that spontaneous, short but undeniably sweet visit to Baltimore and the studio has been published on the BSA blog in two parts! Check it out, pass it on and share it!
Part1:http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theBlog/?p=5416
Part2:http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theBlog/?p=5442
Here is a sample
Brooklyn Street Art: So what’s the best part about making street art?
Gaia: So this is obviously a question that I’ve tried to investigate throughout my entire process, beginning at an extremely basic place when I first started, and I have to constantly revisit it. What’s the best part of making street work? I always have to investigate my motive and if there is a process from conceptualizing to composing to drawing to putting it up to viewing the reception, .. If, in any of those steps I’m not really deriving a sense of fulfillment, that can be problematic. I have to always come back to these different steps and say “what’s going on here?” Honestly sometimes I consider my process kind of arduous. Sometimes it’s a real struggle for me. It’s cathartic but it’s not perfect or pure, it’s not what I enjoy. It’s a constant fight with the medium, with myself, with my concept, my intuition.
UK Street Art interviews Poster Boy
UK Street Art has a pretty lengthy interview with Poster Boy. Good to know since I was worried the guy had just disappeared and stopped the Poster Boy project.
Here’s an excerpt:
How did Poster Boy come about? Why did you start cutting-up posters and did you ever think it would turn into the phenomenon it is?
I’m constantly torn between wanting to be an activist and an artist. I’m not the greatest artist nor am I the greatest activist, but I’m a pretty good Poster Boy and that requires being little of both.
New York is inundated with advertisements. So why spend money on materials when posters and billboards are ripe for the picking? Stealing and vandalising ads is illegal, but littering the public’s visual space with images and messages that are motivated by profit is wrong. There’s a lot of potential in working with your environment, especially if the motives are well place. Besides, the traditional mediums have never satisfied my ambitions.
I always hoped this would catch on. I couldn’t have been the only one with these sentiments floating around.
What are your views on advertising?
Advertising is bizarro art. Both are cut from the same cloth, but what sets them apart is intent. Art is driven, at least in theory, by the desire to express oneself. Advertising is driven by the desire to promote a product or service. Often times the two overlap making it hard to tell the difference. As long as there’s money to be made there’ll be advertising. I can’t deny that. With development of technology and the market comes increasingly elaborate ad campaigns. Sometimes the campaigns are funny. Sometimes they’re artful. But one thing I’ll never accept is public advertising no matter how clever the campaign is.
Read the rest of the interview at UK Street Art
Photo from Poster Boy’s flickr
Questions for James Marshall aka Dalek
A couple of weeks ago I posted an interview with James Marshall on FADwebsite, but I thought it would be worth reposting part of it here because I know not everybody reading Vandalog also reads FAD where I post from time to time.
So here’s the first half of what you can find on FAD:
1 When did you start to make art?
as a kid I started drawing all the time …just sort of went from there…
as a kid I started drawing all the time …just sort of went from there…
2 How did you evolve into a professional artist?
by accident…just sort of happened..in reality it is still happening…its never really a finished process.
3 What drove you to make art as a professional vocation?
if I could make a living making art then that was better than making a living doing some other shit.
4 Explain your inspiration?
it varies from day to day….it just sort of exist in different forms..at different times…
5 In what way does your inspiration transform into ideas?
naturally I guess…i don’t really think about it… I just trust that it will happen
6 From Ideas to production of art – how? And why?
that’s a good question for someone else… I don’t really think about it…
7 Could your ideas be portrayed in any other medium? If so which?
sure I guess… Any number of things…architecture…sculpture…fabric…
8 Which artists would you most like to blatantly rip off?
none….what would be the point of that..
9 Why is your art made?
because I make it
10 What does being an artist mean to you?
nothing… It just is what it is… Why worry about what it means…
11 Are you happy with your reasons for making art? i.e Are there any trade offs that make life hard?
life is hard regardless…if it was easy then you aren’t trying very hard… I am happy with the path I am on….its moving in the right direction…i learn as I go…and that’s good enough…I feel solid that I am pursuing things in a manner that make sense to who I am …and that’s all I can ask for really..Read the rest at FAD…
Interviews on Juxtapoz
Recently, Juxtapoz has had three interviews with some of the more interesting emerging street artists I can think of: Gaia, Imminent Disaster, and Dennis McNett. Gaia and Imminent Disaster are both friends of the blog (and of course, Gaia posts here from time to time) so it’s always exciting to see them getting press from the big guys like Juxtapoz. Here are my favorite parts from each interview:
If you could punch one living contemporary artist, who would it be?
There are better people to hate on the planet than other people that make things.
Street artists often profess this war of conscience around the gallery/street issue, but you don’t seem to share those conflicts.
My perspective is I get up, I do work in the street, and I try to make it good and valuable, so that the experiences augment each other. Institutions provide certain opportunities but you have to go through these filters. There are no filters in street art—except for the obvious one, the law. Beyond that, there’s no curator deciding where you put up work, how you put up work…
Institutions provide other opportunities. If there’s this populous notion of ‘I want to show my work to as many people as possible’—you’re going to get that done a lot better institutionally. You may get a lot of passerby on the street, but think about how many people move through The Met each day.
Imminent Disaster (part one, part two)
Along the notion of “reclaiming public space,” why is street art is concentrated in “hipster” or gentrifying neighborhoods?
It’s a valid observation, and comes up often in the street art scene. It probably has to do with the fact that street art is a scene with a different audience. There are obscure graffiti spots in abandoned buildings or tunnels that are more about the difficulty of getting to the spot and therefore, will likely only be seen by other writers. Whereas street art tends to prefer to be seen by the scene—people who watch, collect, curate but do not necessarily do street art.
The duration of the mediums also might factor in on this. If wheatpaste was a more permanent mark on a wall, street artists might be more exploratory with their placement and find more obscure spots that would get much less traffic but last much longer. A look to stencil artists might prove this theory wrong, however. Even though it would last forever, I’ve never seen a celebrity head stencil in Queens.
I know I’ve personally been very lax on interviews on Vandalog for a long time, but I’ve got 2-3 coming up soon so keep an eye out for that.
Matt Small Video Interview Part Two
Here’s part two of my video interview with Matt Small. It’s from his recent show, “Youngstarrs” at Black Rat Press in London. The show is up for another week, so you can still catch it if you haven’t seen it in person yet. There’s some really beautiful work which Viddler’s image quality does not show off properly at all. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can check out Part One of this interview as well.
The audio is poor, so there is a transcript below the video.
RJ: So how do you choose who to paint?
Matt: Well I got my film camera…
We talk about how I only brought a cheap video camera.
Matt: Yeah so I film people with a video camera and I do it at a nice discreet distance. So in a way it’s a bit naughty, but what you’re doing is you’re getting them unaware and you’re capturing them in their own natural way of being. You know what I mean? [inaudible] Because I film them and people assume an identity. We all do that. We all… I’m doing it now. So we all assume an identity, and we stop being ourselves as such. We put out what we believe we want people to see. I bypass that by filming you, without you knowing. And then I can just go through that and find ones that I believe in [inaudible] and I’ll get that person. So there are all just like kids on the street. And, as sinister as that might sound, that how I’ve got them. One of the kids here, he was from a place called [inaudible] estate in North London. He’s sitting there, and I just filmed him. He had that beautiful look about him. [Inaudible]. I just that was very telling of the kids that are growing up in that particular area. They’re growing up in a tough estate and [inaudible] and who knows what lies ahead.
RJ: What’s the process to paint one of these, the actual painting though, once you have the image?
Matt: Once I have it? Well I’ll film, sketch, and then I’ll build up the sketch on metal and I’ll use oils and use that to build up tones and then I use [inaudible] I’ll get loads of emulsions paints which you see [inaudible] different tones of paint that I use and then I scratch it on. And I’ve got a little tool that I use to smear the paint around and it creates a sort of collidial process where all the paints mix and it’s like being in a realm of chaos because what I’ve just done is before I painted a very conventional painting: a very nicely done picture. Every time I do that it’s me protesting against traditional portraiture. It’s me saying “damn the way that [inaudible].” And it’s quite liberating. I’ve just destroyed this picture that [inaudible], and then I’ve got to try to get it back. The way I [inaudible] to bring it back as a different picture. Almost like it’s been reborn into something that I would like to think is progressive and it’s saying a bit more than that picture before. What it was before was something that doesn’t represent me or what I’m trying to say about art and about the world. And when I destroy it and bring it back, it is something that is me and it does speak about the world. I think that’s what makes it really interesting personally. Because each time I do one of these paintings, there’s a little story behind it. And it’s a story that sort of speak about me as well as a person. I think that, as an artist, if you’re an artist then you really want to make sure that a picture is coming from you, and it’s you talking and that’s there in these pictures.
Matt Small Video Interview Part One
A little over a week ago I had the chance to see with Matt Small and we spoke about his show Youngstarrs, which is currently on at Black Rat Press in London. Here’s part one of that interview, the rest will be coming online in the coming days. The audio isn’t great, so below the video you can read the transcript.
Also, for some great pictures of the show, check out WallKandy’s flickr set.
Transcript:
RJ: Okay, so we’re here with Matt Small at Black Rat Press for what’s the show called?
Matt: It would be called Youngstarrs.
RJ: Right. It opened last week, and I guess you’re gonna explain to us some of the paintings.
Matt: Well, the show, Youngstarrs, kinda I wanted to do a project about kids I suppose. At the end of the day, these kids are us. Because that’s who we are: big kids. I just thought I thought it would be lovely to have this huge theme of young people. Young people that are living and growing up in today’s society. These young kids who walk round up the roundabouts and they’ve all got their futures ahead of them. You know whatever in the end, whatever negative things, so many worrying stories about what’s happened with our youth and we worry about where they’re gonna be. I’ve got a young child myself, he’s seven. He’d say that’s your formative years. You know that’s really where you become who you are as a person. That’s where [inaudible]. That’s where futures start to really kind of, you know, to be cemented and such. As well as [inaudible] you really kind of becoming you as a person, which is like: do we believe that, [inaudible] we can tell with the recession and [inaudible] and this crime and do we think that our little kids are gonna be down in the scrap heap or do we just see them as these beautiful little angels like “young stars” as such? They’re like stars in the sky. They’re shining bright and that be me is what I think that my little kid, that’s what I thought of him. I can’t see him in a negative way, I can’t see his friends in the negative, I can’t see their futures in anything but the positive, a positive termed vernacular, because I think that that would be failing them. And I’m getting sick and tired of The Daily Mail and all those sort of papers that just talk about how everything’s terrible and the world’s gone to pot because I can’t think like that. So that’s more than your [inaudible]. That’s in the same vein as like, the concrete people, and I’ll do my best to sort of make my kid’s future as bright as possible and I think that’s the [inaudible] in kids. That’s the potential of them all. I think that that should be giving the right message that I’m trying to say, and it is saying that we’ve all got stories, we’ve all been somewhere, we’ve all wanted to have something different in our lives and [inaudible] sometimes takes us to where we don’t wanna be [inaudible] everyone’s got a story. And I’d like to think that when people look at this they sort of see themselves in them. These little young people. It’s like, well, I had the whole world ahead of me, and my story is still continuing but things I might have wanted to do or things that I think I can’t do, I didn’t get the chance, or I wish that this didn’t happen. I might be this place. Or I just think it’s really interesting to think about these children who, they are us. They got the world ahead of them. I think of these as self portraits. They’re all me. I was that little kid once. I don’t know why what happened to me [inaudible] there’s things I could have done I didn’t do it because of life’s little scenarios and what we thought we couldn’t achieve if someone’s saying you can’t do it. And that’s what I’m saying, life starts to inform your mind and tell you what you can and can’t do and I just think, I don’t want that to happen around my kid. I think each one of these kids has got the potential to become world leaders and something incredible [inaudible]. It doesn’t matter if they’re from dodgy or a bad estate or bad area or they’ve got bad things happening around them. They’ve got the chance to grow in a positive place. These are the young stars.
RJ: So it’s sort of like right before, or right as they are sort of realizing that the world might not be that perfect place, but at this point, it still is for all these people.
Matt: It’s totally that. That’s what I see. Like within contemporary London (for me) or wherever you live. You think that these kids are gonna be all savvy and they’re gonna be all different to how we were when we were as little kids. They’re not. They’re still playing tag and they’re still very cheeky and funny and they haven’t been burnt yet. They haven’t had their fingers singed. They’ve still got a lot of energy and a lot of potential. I think that’s exactly what I see every day. As I say I’m at my child’s school. I see that.
Swoon on “The Swimming Cities of Serenissima”
Arrested Motion has an interview with Swoon about her latest boat project, “The Swimming Cities of Serenissima”, which will launch this May. Swoon and her team will launch their homemade crafts from Slovenia and travel all the way to Venice just in time for The Venice Biennale. With any luck, I’ll be in Venice for their arrival, so I’ll be blogging and twitter that, but in the mean time, Arrested Motion is where it is at. Here’s a short excerpt from their interview with Swoon:
AM: Are there any particular themes or issues that you’re looking to explore with this journey?
Swoon: There are many, but just to pull out a thread, I have always felt that these boats are an expression of joy and wonder, while at the same time being a map of anxiety.
We are making a cabinet of wonders by collecting things we find along the way: seeds, bones, flowers, stories – all manner of things. This impulse is about observing, collecting and sharing beautiful things in the world around us, but there is also an element of the impulse to preserve these things and to pack your whole life onto a couple of hand-made rafts and set sail, which is about the feeling that the way we are living is coming apart at the seams, is destroying the world around us and will not last. These boats are not to be taken as a literal solution, but in the way that art distills a language from our imaginations and creates images that speak to us above and below the level of our spoken language, we are addressing these issues in our form.
Read the rest at Arrested Motion.