Category: Random

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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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Time for some links

I did not realize that the flight from London to Miami is over 9 hours long. And today was one of those days with lots of cool stuff happening in the street art blogosphere. Here are all the things I would blog about if I wasn’t about to fall asleep:

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Dale Grimshaw on the streets of Shoreditch

Dale Grimshaw

This piece, The Fool by Dale Grimshaw, appeared recently in Shoreditch. First of all, it’s a cool piece. But it is part of a larger point I’d like to make/question I’d like to ask. It seems like woodblock and lino-blocks are pretty popular in the USA, particularly NYC, but almost unheard of here in the UK. On the other hand, stencils seem much more popular in London than elsewhere. Why is this?

I think it has to do with Banksy and Swoon. Swoon is an American artist and she’s probably more popular in New York than London. She’s been wheatpasting for a long time now, and a lot of artists have been influenced by her. And in the UK, Banksy is a household name, and a lot of street artists picked up stencils after seeing Banksy’s work. But that’s just my take.

Any other thoughts?

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BrewDog’s Equity for Punks

As of November 1st, BrewDog is the beer sponsor of The Thousands. They will be providing everybody at the opening with plenty of great beer. Otherwise my plan was to buy a bunch of cheap beer and put up a donation bucket, so I’m very thankful I won’t have to resort to that. Since BrewDog is majorly helping out me with The Thousands, it’s only right that I repay the favor.

BrewDog is a different kind of brewery. They’re independent, and they do things like brew an 18.2% beer and then make a 1.1% beer when people get mad at them. One of their latest projects is Equity for Punks. At Equity for Punks, BrewDog is looking for 10,000 investors to invest £230 each to own a piece of the brewery.

Here’s their video pitch:

Equity for Punks from BrewDog on Vimeo.

And here’s BrewDog talking about Equity for Punks on the BBC:

Equity for Punks is an opportunity for people to support something they love. If you like beer and you like the environment, then why not invest in an environmentally friendly brewery which is only two years old and growing quickly?

Here are the benefits of investing (from the BrewDog blog):

Benefits of Being a BrewDog Shareholder:

· Full Dividend Entitlement, equal to that of existing shareholders

· 20% Lifetime online shop discount

· Owning your very own part of BrewDog

· Owning part of our awesome new energy self sufficient brewery

· Owning part of our new BrewPub in Aberdeen and subsequent BrewPubs

· Sell and trade your shares on www.equityforpunks.com or at a potential later listing

· Share in our future growth

· Having your say in how the company is run and vote on key decisions online

· Being able to buy your own beer in shops and bars

· Literally become richer with every BrewDog beer you drink

Oh yeah, did I mention the 20% lifetime discount? Not bad.

To learn more, check out Equityforpunks.com

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Street art in the gallery

Mark Holsworth is apparently a much more eloquent writer than I am. On his blog, he makes some great points about why the misconception that street art cannot be brought into a gallery is just that: a misconception.

Here’s my favorite point:

Walking through W.E. Kennick’s imaginary warehouse of all the objects in the world and trying to pick out the art you may be confused by Duchamp’s readymades but not by the street art. (Kennick, Journal of Philosophy, v.81) Street art is designed to appear as art without the museum, you would know that it is art anywhere.

Read the rest of the article (and please, do read it, it’s great) at Melbourne Art & Culture Critic

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MNMNT Snowboards

I might actually buy one of these. MNMNT Snowboards makes snowboards (duh) with great artwork. Snowboarding is pretty much the highlight of my winters, but it can be nearly impossible to get a board with cool artwork. MNMNT might just be changing that.

Welcome to the 2009-10 MNMNT Snowboard collection. Each season Creative Director, Christopher Glancy curates an ever-growing pedigree of artists to create site-specific art and deliver the highest quality product on the market.

Turning our back to momentary trends, vapid graphic design and company branding, we focus on the visual impact and technical superiority of our boards. Our dedication to provide premium products drives us to search for new and unique approaches to enhance riders’ snowboard lifestyles worldwide.

Started in 2001, based on a collective of Mid-Atlantic artists, Monument Snowboards was started and driven by art.  Providing unique products to riders.  Today, that collective is worldwide, with many artists across the globe contributing to our vision.

Here are two of my favorite boards:

The 777 by Richard Colman
The 777 by Richard Colman
Memento Mori by Kelsey Brookes

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Linking it up

Street art news seems to come in cycles, right now there is a lot of news coming in. Here’s a few highlights:

  • Sam3 has a new book out with Studiocromie and it looks great. More info at Feed Your Wall.
  • Shepard Fairey’s opening at the Warhol Museum looks amazing, but as Richard Lacayo points out, the AP case might have run into another snag for Fairey since the AP has countersued again on the basis that either Fairey only spent about 5 minutes “transforming” the photo into his poster or he is lying again and didn’t forget which image he based HOPE on. One thing Lacayo and the AP seem to have forgotten is that Fairey has a bunch of assistants. I don’t know how his studio functions, but it seems a fair assumption that Fairey sent his assistants a photo and they developed poster from there, or they gave him an already cropped photo based on his specifications and he went from there. It’s definitely not as simple as Lacayo is making it seem.
  • Elbow-toe still has a few prints left for sale on Etsy.com for only $30!
  • Anthony Lister has put up a beautiful new piece in Brooklyn.
  • Damon Ginandes has also been painting murals in New York.
  • This new video interview with Swoon is a must-see.
  • I missed this piece by Vhils inside the monastery at FAME Festival. It’s just too awesomely well-hidden.