Category: Random

Posted on

While I was cut off from the world…

BETTEN in NYC. Photo by a friend of the artist.

Since the end of May until a few days ago, I’d been more or less cut off from the street art world. I was driving around Europe with my friends. That’s not particularly important, though I would like to thank Logan Hicks, Ripo, Paulo, C215, Nunca and (especially) Angelo for spending time with us.

Here’s some of the things that I missed while I was away…

  • Penny’s latest piece kicks ass
  • Os Gêmeos have been crazy busy, so here’s one of the things they did: A few paintings at FAME Festival.
  • And Blu has been to FAME recently too.
  • I’m loving a lot of the pieces Skewville’s show Shift Work Disorder at Factory Fresh.
  • Some local residents completely misinterpreted the meaning behind some Shepard Fairey murals and painted them over. Actually a really interesting story. I suppose that when it is a reality of everyday life, people don’t like to be reminded that the police will “kick your ass and get away with it.”
  • Lazarides’ latest show in LA is Eurotrash with Vhils, Micallef and JR. Hi-Fructose has pictures.
  • Alison Young’s book Street Studio had a launch party in Melbourne.
  • High Roller Society has a massive group print show on right now. I stopped by on Saturday. If you like affordable prints and drawings, check this one out.
  • Daily Mail reports that Banksy has painted some pub in Primrose Hill. Reality: It’s a PR stunt by the pub’s owner, but at least now they have some artwork on their walls.
  • The New Grand Tour, a group show including Jose Parla, Rey Parla and Rostarr, is open now at Bryce Wolkowitz in New York City.
  • Kathy Grayson and Meghan Coleman, former gallery directors at Deitch Projects, have started up their own gallery in NYC called Hole. I’m not exactly sure how much street art or graffiti you’ll be able to find at the Hole when it opens later this month, but they sent me a press release, so presumably they haven’t ditched street art entirely. The Wall Street Journal has more.
  • Hrag Vartanian has started an interesting discussion on Hyperallergic about a new piece by Mark Jenkins which could easily be mistaken for trash. And by the way, if you don’t already read Hyperallergic, you should start. It’s perhaps my favorite art blog at the moment.
  • Armsrock has a solo show on right now at Signal Gallery. I’m going to check it out tomorrow, but based on the photos on Arrested Motion, I couldn’t be more excited. Armsrock is massively talented and just keeps getting better.

Posted on

All City: The street art iPhone app

This needed to happen, so I’m glad that someone has finally done it. All City is an iPhone app that maps out street art and graffiti for users based on their current location. Wandering through an unfamiliar city or part of town and want to check out the art? Just pull up All City on your phone and see what’s nearby. And of course, you can add to the global map yourself via your iPhone. I tried it out recently and I’m really impressed. So far, there aren’t many pieces that have been tagged in London, but it’s just a matter of time before All City becomes super-useful. In the mean time, it’s fun to upload images and contribute to the growing community.

The press release:

All City is your hand-held guide to street art from around the world. Easily tag and upload street art spots you find and discover new ones you haven’t seen yet. Check out artist bios and share your favorite artwork with friends. Quickly locate nearby galleries for inspiration and find art supplies for when it strikes. Put your scene on the map with All City for the iPhone.

Marcus White and Kayce Thompson-Russ started this project a year ago, backed by a passion for street art and a desire to connect street art communities across the world. Living in Bushwick, Brooklyn, the lively outer-borough mecca for street artists, inspiration for their project comes daily. More often than not, street art is something stumbled upon by chance and its presence, while exciting and visceral, is temporary. All City makes the best of these chance encounters and offers a simple, well-designed experience that allows every user to be a contributor, letting people locate and share street art from anywhere in the world. The wiki-based platform allows users to identify unknown artists, share, rate and comment on pieces and send alerts if a piece has been buffed. Whether you want to see art within a few blocks of your house or check out the newest, top-rated street art abroad, All City gives you instantaneous electronic and physical access to our constantly-updated, ever-evolving database. All City puts eyes on every street and generates the freshest selection of street art available.

Posted on

Welling Court Mural Project

Totally honored and excited to be apart of this fantastic event that Ad Hoc Art has organized for the Welling Court community. Hope everyone in the area can make it out for the cook out.

Opening is Saturday, May 22nd, 4-10pm.

* The community is hosting an authentic NYC street party for the event.  If you plan on joining the celebration,  feel free to bring your favorite food, beverage, or street party fixins to share.

There’s never too much of a good thing…

Welling Court Artists include: Alice Mizrachi, Beast, Chris Mendoza, Chris Stain, Celso, Cern, Cey Adams, CR, Cycle, Dan Witz, Darkclouds, Daryll Peirce, Don Leicht, Ellis G, Free5, Gaia, Garrison & Alison Buxton, Greg Lamarche, JMR, John Fekner, Lady Pink, Leon Reid, Matt Siren, M-City, Michael De Feo, Mr. Kiji, Pablo Power, Peripheral Media Projects, R. Nicholas Kuszyk, Remi/Rough, Ron English, Royce Bannon, Sofia Maldonado, Stormie Mills, Sweet Toof, Swoon, TooFly, Tristan Eaton, and Veng RWK.

The address is 11-98 Welling Court, Queens, NY 11102

* Directions: Take the N or W train to 30th Ave & walk 10 blocks towards the East River or take the Q18 bus down 30th Ave to 12th St.

Posted on

Flood Tide

A scene from Flood Tide

Flood Tide is an upcoming film that was made during Swoon’s Swimming Cities of the Switchback Sea. It stars members of the bands Dark, Dark, Dark and Fall Harbor. Flood Tide isn’t a documentary, but rather a fictional story that just happens to have been filmed during the Swimming Cities project. The film is almost done, but they need another $10,000 to finish the editing and start distribution. That’s why they’ve started a page on Kickstarter asking people to pledge enough money to get the film made. If they can raise $10,000 in donations by July 20th, the film will get finished, and if not, all the pledged money will be returned. Of course, there are also some rewards for those who help out. I pledged $30, so I’ll get access to a members-only website, tickets to some film screenings in NYC and a digital download of the film when it is finished. Go to Flood Tide‘s Kickstarter page to learn more.

Posted on

Saber – Peppers World

California based graffiti artist Saber was recently inspired to make a new short documentary entitled Peppers World about a homeless man who embraces the culture of street art. Pepper is a true street artist in the purist sense. He’s known to some by his altar ego; the Mayor of Skid Row, and he’s proud to proclaim that he’s the last homeless person on the forefront of downtown LAs gentrification.

“Pepper has a habit of decorating his immediate surroundings, wherever that might be, with multi-colored paint splats, piled on discarded toys, and other purposefully arranged found objects.” says Saber “You can frequently catch him running around the city with his red shopping cart full of freshly discarded trinkets. The print Peppers World, and the mural I painted on 7th and Mateo that it inspired, is in homage to his existence. I have enormous respect for those who can survive in such extreme conditions yet still be able to express themselves creatively”.

Pretty cool how David Choe just turns up in this video out of nowhere!

Posted on

The controversial and the just plain wrong

Sometimes the art world is full of good news and smart people. Not today.

  • In LA, photographer Jonas Lara was arrested back in February while taking pictures of graffiti writers working on an unauthorized piece. After police changed their minds multiple times, in the end he has been charged with aiding and abetting. His trial is scheduled for this coming Tuesday May 11th. PDN Pulse has the story so far. If he’s convicted, it certainly wouldn’t be a good sign for other photographers of street art and graffiti (or photographers of gangs, illegal immigrants or many other things for that matter).
  • Roger Waters of Pink Floyd has hired some folks to wheatpaste a quote for President Eisenhower around the country for him in order to promote his upcoming tour. One of those awkward situations. Since it’s not a blatant advert, I suppose it’s equivalent to Banksy putting up work in Utah right before his film premieres at Sundance, but that was already controversial. Where this gets bad though is that one of these posters ended up covering the wall that was photographed for the cover of Elliott Smith’s album Figure 8, which has become a bit of a memorial to Smith (even if the wall is pretty damaged now). LA Weekly has the full story.
  • The Sun, a UK “newspaper,” had an interesting front page today (it’s election day here).
  • Some guy in Australia is all upset about Banksy coming to town and he’s written an article with the headline Hey Banksy, graffiti is vandalism not art for the Sydney Morning Herald. There’s certainly an argument that can be made for all graffiti writers and street artists to be thrown in prison and whatnot and all their artwork should be removed, but the article is so poorly researched that it becomes hard to read.

Posted on

News from the world of David Choe

Two bits of news from David Choe today.

1. Giant Robot has just released two limited edition skate decks with Choe’s artwork on them. Personally, I absolutely love the black one.

Each deck is a limited edition of just 50 and is for sale at Giant Robot’s online store for $150 (so don’t try skating on these). You can get the red deck here and the black deck here.

2. WalrusTV has posted a deleted scene from the documentary Dirty Hands: The Art and Crimes of David Choe. Check it out here:

Via The Citrus Report

Posted on

This whole Wooster Collective thing

I just wrote over 1000 words describing a series of tweets and blog posts by Paddy Johnson of Art Fag City and Marc Schiller of Wooster Collective without even getting to my thoughts on those events, but I realized that it was kind of boring and pointless. If you want to know the full story behind what I have to say now, you can read it yourself. In short, there was controversy surrounding the possibility that Marc Schiller was doing marketing for Exit Through The Gift Shop and using his twitter and Wooster as part of the marketing campaign.

The end result of all this back and forth? Yes, Marc is helping with the marketing for the film. Wooster Collective has supported Banksy for years and Marc’s day job is in marketing, so it kind of makes sense. But Marc isn’t getting paid for his work. Nonetheless, he didn’t ever make it clear on the Wooster Collective website that he was part of the film’s marketing team (to be fair, it wasn’t a secret and he would tell you his involvement if you asked, but he wasn’t volunteering the information to all of Wooster Collective’s readers).

After initially being upset (particularly because he commented on my post about Banksy’s marketing efforts for Exit Through The Gift Shop without mentioning his own involvement) and then speaking with Marc about the situation, my take is that as a reader of Wooster Collective, my trust was betrayed. On Vandalog, Wooster Collective and just about every other blog in the world, there are times when we post about our friends or other things like that, and it would be impossible to declare every possible conflict of interest. In this particular case though, I feel very strongly that Marc and Sara should have simply noted once or twice on their blog that they are officially helping with the marketing efforts of Exit Through The Gift Shop.

I still enjoy reading Wooster Collective and I think that they are the most important street art blog in the world today (so don’t stop reading Wooster just because of this, and if you don’t read it now, please start reading), but in this one instance, I was disappointed and I just wish they had been more straightforward with their readers.

Posted on

The Graffomat – Fact or Fiction?

Could you image a world where regular vending machines stood along side those stoked full of your favorite brand of spray paint? This idea is something that has probably already been the product of many street artists wildest dreams. But perhaps we have spoken too soon! Believe it or not it looks as though someone has come up with a crazy enough idea to make all those dreams come true. Although were not entirely sure as to whether this is the real deal or not, the latest street art commodity – The Graffomat is said to supply you with all of your favorite graffiti supplies such as markers, caps, gloves, and everything else that the graffiti writer need – Including ski masks! As much as I want to believe that The Graffomat is not just a hoax or a viral ad campaign, I really can’t see this being allowed to be put into production! I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of buzz surrounding The Graffomat within the next few days and we’ll be sure to keep you up to date on the latest developments. In the mean time check out this really impressive viral advert they’ve made for it!

Head over to Graffomat.com for more info!

Posted on

Pop-up OBEY store

Shepard Fairey is going to NYC soon, and he’s making sure you take notice. Of course, the main event will be his May Day solo show and he’s also looking for legal spots to poster, but now OBEY Clothing has announced that they will have a pop-up shop in NYC just a few minutes walk away from the Bowery and Houston Street wall where he will (presumably) be making a huge mural.

Via OBEY Giant