Hanksy’s piece on Mulberry Street inspired by Jim Gaffigan
Since The New York Comedy Festival is behind The Art of Comedy, the series of indoor and outdoor art installations that Wayne Rada and have been organizing recently in NYC with Hanksy, gilf!, and Ron English, Vandalog has three pairs of tickets to give away to New York Comedy Festival shows.
We have two pairs of tickets to see Marlon and Shawn Wayans at Carolines on Broadway on Thursday November 8th, Friday November 9th or Sunday November 10th. On Thursday and Sunday, they have shows at 7:30pm and 10:00pm. On Friday they have shows at 8:00pm and 10:30pm. The Wayans Brothers have starred in a number of films including Scary Movie, White Chicks, and Little Man.
To enter our contest to win any one of these pairs of tickets, just leave a comment on this post or tweet @vandalog with the reason that you should win tickets to one of these shows. The winners will be my favorite three responses out of those received before midnight on the east coat on Wednesday November 7th and I’ll get in touch with the winners soon after that to sort out the details.
Hanksy’s piece on Mulberry Street inspired by Jim Gaffigan
Last week we announced The Art of Comedy, a series of art installations and murals with The New York Comedy Festival that Wayne Rada and I curated. The Art of Comedy also coincided with solo shows by all three of the artists involved: Ron English, gilf!, and Hanksy. Due to Hurricane Sandy, both the official unveiling of the murals that these artists have painted in Little Italy and their solo show openings have been delayed by a week. So, here’s what the calendar looks like now for The Art of Comedy and those gallery shows:
November 7th-11th: The Art of Comedy installations by Ron English, Hanksy, and gilf! are up in lounge inside of the comedy club Carolines on Broadway.
November 10th at noon: The Art of Comedy Art Crawl starts at Caffe Roma on Mulberry and Broome streets and continues down Mulberry towards Canal Street as we check out Little Italy’s latest murals.
Early Saturday morning, Rhiannon Platt joined Hanksy as he worked on two of his walls for The New York Comedy Festival‘s The Art of Comedy, which was curated by myself and Wayne Rada and also supported by Montana Cans and Little Italy. The walls feature Jim Gaffigan and Aziz Ansari, who are both performing at the New York Comedy Festival.
UPDATE: THE ART CRAWL / MURAL TOUR WILL TAKE PLACE ON NOVEMBER 10TH AT NOON RATHER THAN NOVEMBER 3RD.
The New York Comedy Festival, in association with Vandalog, Little Italy and Montana Cans, are bringing street art into this year’s New York Comedy Festival with The Art of Comedy. The Art of Comedy is a series of indoor and outdoor installations around Manhattan by some of New York’s funniest street artists: Ron English, Hanksy, and Gilf!. The installations include murals in Little Italy on Mulberry Street between Canal and Broome, and work inside of the historic comedy club Carolines on Broadway. I’m very excited to be a co-curator on this project alongside Wayne Rada. Caroline Hirsch, of Carolines on Broadway and creator of the New York Comedy Festival, says,”We’re always looking for new and creative ways in which humor is represented in art. These talented artists add a really unique element to this year’s festival, literally taking comedy to the streets.”
The installations inside of Carolines on Broadway by all three artists will be up from November 7th-11th, so if you’re going to check out The Wayans Brothers or maybe one of theother New York Comedy Festival shows at Carolines, be sure to have a look around the Carolines Lounge before you get seated for the show.
Over on Mulberry, the artists will be painting a mix of temporary and permanent murals. Ron’s mural is of particular note since it will be the first mural he has painted in Manhattan (excluding billboard takeovers) since 1987, and this one is going to be big enough that it may just be worth the wait. I’m also looking forward to seeing the election-themed work that Gifl! will put up and work by Hanksy starring some of the performers in this year’s New York Comedy Festival.
I hope you’ll join us on Saturday, November 3rdNovember 10th at noon on a short tour of the completed murals. We’ll be meeting at Caffe Roma (385 Broome Street).
The Art of Comedy and The New York Comedy Festival also line up nicely with solo shows from all three artists opening on November 1stNovember 10th. Ron’s show, Crucial Fiction, opens from 6-9pm at Opera Gallery NYC (115 Spring St) and runs through November 29th. Gilf! will be showing at Galerie Swanström (136 Sullivan Street, 3rd Floor) opening from 5-9pm. Hanksy’s show, Young Puns 2 – Now With More Pun, opens at Krause Gallery (149 Orchard Street) from 6-9pm and runs through November 28th.
As for the main events at the New York Comedy Festival, this year has some amazing headliners performing all over the city including Aziz Ansari, Bill Maher, Robin Williams and more. Personally, Caroline and I are going to try to catch Jim Gaffigan. The full schedule can be found here.
Let’s see what has been happening off of Vandalog this week.
I recently wrote a list of Complex.com giving my thoughts on the 50 greatest street artists right now. Let me know what you think. So far, the main criticism (besides the usual “screw you” flame war stuff) seems to be that I did not include enough women.
The London Vandal broke a story about British former graffiti writers being arrested and being released on bail until November under some absurdly restrictive conditions. For example, they can’t enter a train station or use trains in London until November unless they can prove that they are going to court, to visit a lawyer or to make a journey relating to business or education. The New Statesman corrected some of The London Vandal’s claims and so the story is perhaps not as wild as initially reported, but it’s still a pretty messed up situation where bail conditions are being used solely for the purpose of maybe making The Olympics run more smoothly. Hyperallergic has more.
King Brown Magazine’s latest issue is launching in NYC on July 26th with a show including Mike Giant, Reka, Greg LaMarche, Anthony Lister, Sheryo, The Yok and others.
This week’s link-o-rama is a few days delayed. Parents were in town earlier this week and even came to an event some friends of mine organized at Haverford College: A talk by Jayson Musson (the artist who created and plays the character Hennessy Youngman). I don’t think my mom was amused. Here’s what I’ve been reading this week:
Seven Years with Banksy by Robert Clarke allegedly offers a behind-the-scenes look at Banksy. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s out in the UK here and USA here.
I’ve heard a lot of people talking about Crash lately. While I don’t buy the hype myself (but I’m willing to be convinced), it seems worth mentioning that he has a show of watercolors on now in Paris.
Rizzoli recently published the official book documenting The Underbelly Project, We Own the Night: The Art of The Underbelly Project. If you haven’t heard of The Underbelly Project, check out my firsthand account. Basically, over 100 artists were taken down to an abandoned subway station beneath New York City to put up artwork and explore hidden depths of the city. Artists involved in the project include Revok, Roa, Anthony Lister, Faile, Ron English, Dan Witz, Gaia, Know Hope, Haze and many others.
In December, a collector’s edition of the book was sold at The Underbelly Project’s show in Miami. Until now, that show was the only place to pick up a copy of this special edition of We Own the Night. The collector’s edition version includes a hardcover copy of the book, nine photographic prints from the project, and comes in a handcrafted and laser-engraved oak box. This package is an edition of 100, plus 10 APs, and a handful were held back in Miami to be sold later. Now, the remaining collector’s editions are available online for the first time exclusively at The Vandalog Shop.
The Underbelly Project is one of the most fascinating projects to ever happen in the street art or graffiti worlds. While there are photos all over the web showing what the project looked liked, reading We Own the Night is just about the only way to get a sense of what it was actually like to participate in The Underbelly Project. I saw The Underbelly Project in the flesh, but hearing other people’s stories shed new light on it even for me. I’m extremely pleased that The Vandalog Shop will be selling the collector’s edition of We Own the Night, giving people who couldn’t make it to Basel Miami a chance to pick up a copy. My copy of We Own the Night was the best thing I’ve received under a Christmas tree in years, and I hope other people will enjoy the book and the photographs as much as I do.
Here are a just a couple of the photographs included in the set:
Photo by Emile SourisKid Zoom. Photo by Ian Cox
Other images include work by Roa, Anthony Lister, Skullphone, Kid Zoom, Revok, Ceaze and Jeff Soto.
Only a few of these collector’s editions are remain, and The Vandalog Shop is the only place you’ll find them online. They are available for $250.
Today we are relaunching The Vandalog Shop and kicking off a new series of product releases with two t-shirts designed by Labrona which are now available online. Starting with these shirts, The Vandalog Shop will be releasing a new product / artist collaboration every month. We will focus on releasing affordable products ranging from apparel to posters to whatever else we think would be fun. We can’t say yet just what else we’ve got up our sleeve, but these shirts by Labrona are only the beginning…
Labrona’s shirts are based on a new image called Lying in Wait. The shirts are unisex, come in two colorways of either purple and teal or blue and yellow, and each colorway has a print run of just 20 tees.
Why is Labrona the artist we chose to help us relaunch The Vandalog Shop? There are a lot of talented artists in the world, but Labrona stands out to me because he is one of the nicest and humblest guys around. The first time I met Labrona, he convinced me to buy a painting by one of his friends. It wasn’t until after he had left the room that someone showed me Labrona’s own artwork. We met again years later. That time, we slept on a floor with about a dozen other men and women at the Living Walls Conference in Atlanta. Some people might have complained about the accommodations, but Labrona was just ecstatic because he had the opportunity to paint a mural and put up posters in Atlanta. At Vandalog, I want to bring great art to as many people as possible, but that great art has to be made by artists who are great people too.
Marketing people tell me that mild rebellion sells and Banksy seems to agree. But are they right? Let's find out...
Both versions of Lying in Wait are available online now at The Vandalog Shop for $30 each plus shipping and handling.
The shirts were printed at Station16 in Montreal, and Labrona has also worked with Station16 to release a fine art screenprint of Lying in Wait. Eachcolorway of the prints is an edition of 16. The print is also for sale beginning today and can be at their online shop.
It’s another slow week, but things should start to get going again soon. The holidays can’t last forever. Here are bits of news from around the web that didn’t make it into their own post here this week:
I wrote a list (with some help from Caroline Caldwell) for Complex.com of 10 street artists to watch in 2012. Let me know what you think in comments on this post or over on Complex.com.
Last year, Vandalog released a series of t-shirts with designs by Troy Lovegates aka Other, Faro and Gaia. Since the last of those shirts are taking up some valuable space in a box under by bed, they are now on sale at 50% off at the Vandalog online store, making them just $15 each. Unfortunately we’ve sold out of mediums in every design, but small, large and XL shirts are still available. You can buy a shirt here.
