Category: Vandalog Projects

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Dots: A Burning Candy film and print release

Recently, I’ve been working with Burning Candy (Cept, Cyclops, Dscreet, Gold Peg, LL Brainwashed, Mighty Mo, Rowdy, Sweet Toof and Tek33) on a project that’s really got me excited. For me, Burning Candy are some of the most interesting and talented street artists living in the UK right now. In the UK, there isn’t a street artist who gets up harder, a graffiti writer who hits better spots or a crew that pushes the boundaries of their art further than the members of BC. So about this project…

A man called The Barron is directing a film about the rest of Burning Candy called Dots. This isn’t your ordinary graff film though. Since The Barron is a friend of the crew, he’s got more access than the standard documentary filmmaker would ever get. So far, he’s filmed and edited the first 20 minutes or so of the film. The next 70 minutes? It’s on its way, but Burning Candy needs the help of their fans to make it happen. To fund the making of the Dots, BC have made a box set of prints. All nine members of the crew have contributed an image to this print release. Since I’m working with BC on this print release, I’m obviously biased, but I don’t think there’s a bad image in the bunch.

So here’s the press release with all that vital info:

To help raise funds and make Dots a reality, Burning Candy has put together a limited edition set of 9 screenprints, one print from each member of the crew. The set will come in a hand-screenprinted bespoke box. The prints are 2-colors and A5 sized and the edition size is just 150. These prints aren’t only artwork; anyone who buys a set of prints will also own the rights to 0.05% of the films revenues for the next 10 years. 100% of the profits from these prints will go to funding the making of Dots.

The prints will be released online imminently for just £500. In the mean time, you can email sales(at)dotsfilm.com for more information.

And for those curious about my personal involvement in the film and print release, I’m helping out friends and artists that I believe in, but I’m also getting paid for my work.

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The 41st Parallel from Drago and Wooster Collective

Drago (the wonderful Italians who published my book last year), Wooster Collective and Meet At The Apartment have a very cool sounding event going on next week in New York City. The 41st Parallel is a special Q&A event with some of street art’s biggest names. Some artists from The Thousands (Chris Stain, WK Interact, Elbow-toe and Swoon), other Drago-affiliated artists like Logan Hicks, Drago’s founder Paulo von
 Vacano and Marc and Sara Schiller of Wooster Collective will all be there. I spoke with Paulo today, and it sounds like the artists might be signing books as well. Unfortunately, I’ll be here in London, but I’m sure this is going to be the place to be in NYC next Wednesday evening. Check it out if you want to meet some artists, ask them questions and maybe pick up my book if you’re so inclined…

And yes I realize that I’ve been criticizing people recently for advertising stuff without really saying that they are advertising things. So, I guess this is an advert in the hopes that more people will buy my book, but if you’re flat broke or just don’t want to buy a book, this should still be a nice Q&A with some of the most influential people in street art.

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Check out this month’s Vogue Italia

Don’t ask me how it happened, I’m still not entirely sure, but if you happen to pick up a copy of Vogue Italia this month, you’ll find an article about me and street art on page 96. I don’t speak Italian, but based on Google’s very rough translation, the article seems to be about The Thousands and me proselytizing street art as “museum quality.” So that’s pretty cool. And, because a. I’m no fashion icon, and b. it was an article about the virtues of street art, instead of photos of me taken by a famous photographer, the article features some pictures from The Thousands book of work by Burning Candy, Skewville, Elbow-toe and Chris Stain, so be on the look out for next year’s line of Skewville inspired tshirts at H&M.

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Holiday gift guide: books

There was a very positive response from my first holiday gift guide post about affordable prints, so I thought it might be worth putting together a similar list for art books.

1. The Faith of Graffiti by Norman Mailer and Jon Naar
Okay, this book isn’t actually released until December 29th, but it absolutely needs to be included in this list. A full decade before Subway Art was published, Mailer wrote a brilliant essay to accompany Naar’s photographs of the very earliest New York City graffiti, most of which would be considered tags today. This book is an essential piece of graffiti history, but it has been largely ignored by history in favor of the next book on this list.

2. Subway Art: 25th Anniversary Edition by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant
While Naar did a great job documenting the very earliest stages of graffiti, Subway Art is what turned graffiti into an international phenomena and forced people to look at graffiti as more than petty vandalism. This new edition of the book includes new photographs and is in a much larger format, so many of the photos that are in your old copy of Subway Art are now printed much larger and nicer. While The Faith of Graffiti documents the earliest moments in graffiti history, there is no more important book about graffiti or street art than Subway Art.

3. Keith Haring by Jeffrey Deitch and many others
If you like Keith Haring, this is the definitive book of his artwork. It’s pretty huge, weighing in at almost 9 pounds. It’s not cheap either (almost $40 at the time of this post), so it’s really for those who absolutely love Haring, but you’re not going to find a better book of his artwork.

4. Brooklyn Street Art by Jaime Rojo and Steven P. Harrington
Probably the best of Prestel’s series of street art books, this is a solid overview of Brooklyn’s street art. A great stocking stuffer.

5. Street Art: The Graffiti Revolution by Cedar Lewisohn
In my opinion, maybe the best street art book for the street art lover. Not just a book of photos, this book covers a great deal of street art history in a very serious way.

6. Wall and Piece by Banksy
Honestly, I kind of hope that nobody buys Wall and Piece because it’s on this list. Pretty much anybody who reads Vandalog should have at least one copy of Wall and Piece. Banksy is a genius. ‘Nuff said.

7. Young, Sleek, And Full Of Hell by Aaron Rose
I just read this book a week or two ago, and if you liked the film Beautiful Losers, this book is a great companion. It tells the story of New York’s Alleged Gallery, mostly through pictures and interviews with many of the people who were associated with the gallery over it’s lifetime.

8. Pictures of Walls
A funny little stocking stuffer. One of those things that makes me smile.

9. Untitled II: The Beautiful Renaissance by Gary Shove
This book doesn’t take itself too seriously and it’s full of pretty pictures. It’s good overview of recent street art, and includes some new artists that I wasn’t familiar with as well as many of that greats that I know and love.

10. The Thousands: Painting Outside, Breaking In by RJ Rushmore
Can of had to include my own book, didn’t I? What I love about this book isn’t what I wrote, but what other people wrote. Know Hope’s biography of Chris Stain taught me as much about Chris as it did Know Hope’s personality. An excerpt from Mike Snelle’s forward to the book was recently posted on Drago’s website.

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Something I learned during The Thousands

A little diary entry sort of thing from me went online today on Drago’s website. Of course, I encourage you to have a read of the full thing yourself, but here’s a sample:

I went to Miami for Art Basel and the satellite events there. The experience has made me realize how mainstream some street art and graffiti has become. Primary Flight and Deitch’s Wynwood Walls projects introduced the city of Miami and the art tourists to over 100 talented artists and writers who pretty much took over the Wynwood district with their murals. Inside Basel, there were a surprising number of galleries showing artwork by street artists, and the Deitch Projects booth was probably 50% street artists. The Artwhino, SCOPE, Aqua and Fountain fairs were full of low-brow, street and urban art and there were projects like BKMIA and Graffiti Gone Global that showcased street art and graffiti (or perhaps my favorite new catchall term for the street/urban/graffiti art genres: urban folk art).

But that paragraph is very misleading, but because my conclusion to the post suggests that not all hope is lost for the underground nature of street art.

Check out the rest of the post on Drago’s website.

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Custom beer labels at punkdog.com

BrewDog sponsored The Thousands with a very generous donation of their Punk IPA beer, so in return I want to take some time out from writing about street art to mention their (very tasty) beer and PunkDog, a site to create custom labels for BrewDog beer.

PunkDog

On PunkDog you can design your own beer label with words and pictures and even fill your bottles with one of three of BrewDog’s beers. I can only vouch for the Punk IPA, but from what I hear, everything else they brew is just as good. I think I’ll have to give these a try for my next Vandalog event. It would be cool to have good beer with the Vandalog logo on it.

Order by the 18th and you can have your PunkDog beer in time for Christmas. A 6 pack is just £18.99 plus shipping.

What are you waiting for, try out the PunkDog label designer now.

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The Answer by Hera

The Answer print
The Answer by Hera

I’m not sure I’ve given this a proper mention on Vandalog yet. For The Thousands, Campbarbossa and I teamed up to create a special edition of The Thousands coupled with a lithograph by Hera of her sketch The Answer. The print is an edition of 100 and is of course signed by Hera. The print and book combo is available on the Campbarbossa website for £100.

One of these prints is already sitting on my desk I’m going to send it to the framers as soon as I get back from my vacation (which starts tomorrow), it turned out really well. Because it is a lithograph, it really looks exactly like a slightly scaled down version of an original Hera sketch, which are some of the best sketches in the street art scene (in my humble and clearly very biased opinion).

Always one to look for a bargain when it comes to prints, I think we kept this priced pretty reasonably. The Thousands is available for £23 from Drago, so if you were already thinking about buying a book, the print essentially costs less than £80.

Be on the look out in the next week or two for some Christmas suggestions for books and dvds that aren’t by me, but this is probably the best item to add to your holiday gift lists 😉

Once again, the book and print combo is available from Campbarbossa for £100.

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The Thousands summary

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Last Wednesday was the opening of The Thousands, the art exhibition I curated. The photos are on flickr and the blog posts are online, and yet, I haven’t mentioned the show much on Vandalog since the opening. It’s been busy, so now I’m making up for that.

The folks at Babelgum have been super-supportive, with three videos about the show. The first is a behind the scenes look at the show, a bit of the set up, as well as a chat with me about the exhibition. The next two are tours of the exhibition.

And there are hundreds of photos on flickr in The Thousands’ group pool of all the pieces in the show.

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Just hours before opening, the books arrived. The Thousands: Painting Outside, Breaking In was sold at the show, and now you can buy it on Drago’s website. And forget about hours, minutes before we opened the doors, Hera finished signing her prints for the special edition of the book with a lithograph of one of Hera’s sketches (you can get those at CampBarbossa £100).

Photo by Tim Boddy
Photo by Tim Boddy

Of course, the opening was packed. Thanks to BrewDog, there was a steady supply of their Punk IPA beer until 15 minutes before closing time. And Gold Peg was also there selling some ice cream at the Mad Beef Ice Cream Parlour. I was worried about who would show up on Wednesday, but not only did we have artists like Know Hope, Hera and the Burning Candy crew, but there were people I didn’t recognize! That felt pretty cool.

I think The Thousands looked amazing, but I’m not the only one. Here are some reviews I found:

  • The Future Tense were there taking some great pictures and chilling with Hera. They say “most people agreed it was a welcome opportunity to attend a show solely to celebrate the medium rather than to buy or be sold to”
  • Arrested Motion sent s.butterfly over to have a look. They say “RJ Rushmore’s debut exhibition highlights some of the strongest representatives of the street art scene.”
  • It was great to finally meet Sean from Organ Magazine. He says “The Thousands is a triumph.”
  • Ryan Millar says “It was all delicious.”
  • Art of The State has some cool photos including both sides of Roa’s piece.
  • The 405 says “The goal of The Thousands was to attempt to show the art world and the public that there are great works of art within the sphere of “street art” and that street artists deserve a place in art history at least equal to that of The Young British Artists or the great pop artists; And hells yes, that was indeed achieved.”
  • Of Burning Candy’s mural, Hookedblog says “get down and check it out.”

Which brings me to the murals. The murals looked amazing. As planned, Burning Candy showed up to paint this (daytime shot here):

Photo by Marta Ka
Photo by Marta Ka

Unexpectedly though, I found out that there were 3 small walls on the building that I could have painted, so I invited Inketish, Pure Evil and Know Hope to come by. Here are those results:

Know Hope
Know Hope
Pure Evil
Pure Evil
Inkfetish
Inkfetish

And here are some interviews and articles that were done in the lead up to the show:

So that’s The Thouands in a nutshell. It was an amazing experience and I hope to do it again.

Thanks 1000x over to all the people who helped put the show together, especially my mom who doesn’t even like street art that much.