For most of last week, I was in Stavanger, Norway for the 2012 Nuart Festival. Naturally, even though I was there in part as press, I spent very little time on my computer and didn’t do any blogging. So, expect a full post or two about Nuart later this week, but for now here’s what I missed writing about while I was away:
Steve Powers’ and Joey Garfield’s film A Love Letter for You is now available on iTunes. It’s an interesting film well worth checking out if you like Powers.
Walking around in the abandoned areas of Baltimore gave me a peace of mind that the NYPD would never allow in New York. However, engaging life-long citizens of Baltimore about the graffiti surrounding them in the streets came with its own merits. The blending of New York and Baltimore-based artists that I saw in the the city’s innards was mirrored in its streets. With the, then recent, invasion of international artists for Open Walls Baltimore, the city had become a hub for any east coast street artist to visit. As long as you had friends in the area or on the roster, chances are you ended up there. Continue reading “Illegal Baltimore part three: The city’s streets”
Bushwick 5 Points has quickly become one of NYC’s most exciting and enticing open-air galleries. ND’A, OverUnder and LNY, three of my favorite street artists, have recently been gracing its walls. Here are some captured these past two days:
ND’A at workOverUnder at work, close-upOverUnder — complete — and LNY
Last month, I was at the Living Walls Conference in Atlanta, but it’s only now that I’ve really had a chance to sit down and write about it. I thought that I was going to write this really long post, but the environment at Living Walls is difficult to capture in words, so this post isn’t nearly as long as I would have hoped.
Living Walls is, as far as I can tell, the best mural conference/festival/program going on right now in North America. Living Walls doesn’t tend to just invite all the artists who are painting at other mural events around the world. They invite good artists. Sometimes those artists are guys like Roa who are everywhere, and sometimes it’s women like Miso who have only ever painted one or two murals. As a result, Living Walls sets trends among mural festivals.
Lex and Sten
For their main conference this year, Living Walls really bucked popular trends and tried to put street art on a new track by having a festival made up almost entirely of female muralists. While guys like Gaia, LNY and I were still invited to speak at the lecture and panel portion of the conference, the murals by Lex&Sten and Indigo&Andrzej Urbanski were the only two where male artists were contributing.
Martina Merlini
While the murals weren’t as amazing on the whole as they were last year and the crowd of artists wasn’t nearly as rowdy (although that might have been a plus), this year’s Living Walls did bring some great work to Atlanta and really showed that there are some underrated female street artists and muralists out there who could be on the mural circuit as much as guys like Jaz or Roa. My hope and expecting is that the top-tier of artists from the conference will get more attention brought to their work thanks to Living Walls and some will start getting invited to a lot more mural festivals. As I’ve said in the past, I do not generally get excited to give artists preferential treatment based on them belonging to some underrepresented group, but I can see why an all-female Living Walls may have been the right move for this year even if the quality of the work did drop slightly.
Jessie and Katey
This Living Walls conference had more artists than ever before who were either more on the community mural side of the spectrum or had never painted a mural before. The results of that move were mixed, but there were some artists like Jessie&Katey and Mon Iker who took the opportunity and absolutely crushed it.
One thing I have to add isn’t so much about the art though. Whether Living Walls were inviting only artists that none of us have ever heard of before or stealing their line-up from Nuart, it would still be at least one of the best mural conferences in the world. That’s because Living Walls’ secret is in their amazing staff. Living Walls has best team of volunteers of any mural festival I’ve ever seen or could imagine. They are unbelievably dedicated to the festival and to getting more world-class street art and murals in Atlanta. Every day, the media team led by Alex Parrish was up until something like 4am putting together a video of what had gone on that day, and then they’d be back up at 7am to start filming all over again. Just last week, I was emailing with Keif Schleifer, their Logistics Director, who was spending her free time advising me on cherry-pickers. The day of the Vandalog Movie Night, volunteers showed up out of the blue to help us set up and run the show. Laura Calle and pretty much everyone else on staff who spent their own money to pay for the gas to drive myself and the artists around Atlanta. The drag queen who was a volunteer last year and this year helped arrange a drag show for the Living Walls Block Party. The artist assistants who stand in the hot sun alongside their artists all day long, offering any help they can. And of course, Monica Campana, the Executive Director of Living Walls, who is the amazing glue holding everything together without ever sleeping or slowing down. Everyone on staff or volunteering at Living Walls works at least as hard as the artists, and they were certainly working harder than me. After visiting two years in a row for just a few days each time, it honestly feels like I have family in Atlanta.
Tretze and Heits in Sabadell, Spain. Photo by Startape Photographe.
Just listened to the new Flying Lotus album, if you’re wondering why all these pieces look they’ve been beamed down from the Astral Plane.
ToonsMr Pee in Paris. Photo by SOKE.Pez and Mize in San Francisco. Photo by FunkandJazz.Outsider in Paris. Photo by Vitostreet.Lolo Emak. Photo by Morac19.Dazer in Brighton. Photo by 4foot2.Oker and Mesk in Portugal. Photo by MrDheo.Chiba Love in NewcastleGary at Trellick Tower in London. Photo by Ironlak.
Due to the layout of Baltimore, the city makes the perfect playground for rollers. Built of bridges and tunnels, most of the graffiti spots contain elaborate pieces at eye level with equally as astounding rollers above them. The combination of these tunnels and the large amount of abandoned factories in the area makes for perfect spot to do elaborate, typographical rollers.
Nugz, Nanook, and Overunder
Even more astounding to me than the work itself was the number of familiar names I came across in, essentially, middle-of-nowhere Baltimore. People like Reverend, Nugz, Overunder, and Cash4, who had become my household names in New York had found themselves equally as prolific in this city. Through partnering up with local artists such as MTN NGC and Avoid, these New York artists seamlessly blended into the Baltimore scene, creating some interesting visual combinations in these spaces.
Avoid and FishoReverend, Nugz, and TenceCash4 and DroidNSFTence and StarNugz and ValGauzAvoidGaiaMTN NGCNanook, Overunder, and BloksCash4 and DroidHell NationCash4, Avoid, and Droid
On Sunday, Saber executed his latest skywriting campaign in New York City. About a year ago, Saber did something similar in Los Angeles to defend murals/protest LA’s ridiculous mural regulations. This time, Saber is defending the arts in general against Mitt Romney, who has said that a Romney administration would stop funding the National Endowment for the Arts, National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service. The bold action was caught by photographers around the city and organized on twitter and instagram under the hashtag #defendthearts. Nearly 200 photos of the skywriting have been uploaded to instagram under the #defendthearts hashtag, and probably more without the hashtag.
Photo by changsterdam
In full, Saber’s message read: “Artists designers musicians writers actors poets patrons #DefendTheArts #RomneyHatesArt #gopfail Protect NEA PBS NPR No Cuts #ArtIsInspiration #ArtCreatesJobs #WhatInspiresYou #OccupyWallStreet #art #graffiti #streetart Haring Kase2 Sace IZ StayHigh149 AWR MSK EKLIPS REVOK RETNA MSK Twitter at Saber #DefendTheArts (flag)”
Photo by Adam GreenfieldPhoto by changsterdamPhoto by changsterdamPhoto by changsterdam
Seeing this piece by Isaac Cordal for the MUU Street Art Festival in Zagreb, Croatia, I couldn’t help but think of John Ahearn’s sculptures where life-sized people sort of jump off the wall. Not that that’s a bad thing. Hell, it’s great. Isaac’s work is cool, and John’s work is too. I just want to make sure that John gets some credit as a possible inspiration for this particular piece of Isaac’s.
Speaking of protest art, some revolutionary graffiti and street art was recently painted over in Egypt and that’s been causing quite a stir, with Egypt’s prime minister backing the artists and even calling for more revolutionary graffiti.
What do people think about this work from ABOVE pointing out the 24% unemployment in Spain? A mural that simply points out such a depressing fact without any obvious rage or anything behind it seems to me like it’s doing practically the opposite of what murals should do, but maybe it’s a good way of making that fact more known. Thoughts?
