Town & Country group show in NYC

Leon Reid IV public art proposal

Town & Country is a group show opening next week at 320 Studios in NYC. It’s curated by my friend Keith Schweitzer at M.A.N.Y, Samson Contompasis from The Marketplace Gallery and others. Almost 2 dozen artists are in this show, including Leon Reid IV, Veng, White Cocoa, Olek and Chris Stain. Town & Country will only be open for 3 days (June 28th-30th), but it should be a pretty great three days. The opening is on the 28th from 6pm-midnight.

Photo courtesy of Keith Schweitzer

Vandalog and M.A.N.Y. present Up Close and Personal

In two weeks, Vandalog and Murals Around New York (MANY) will be putting on a pop-up show in a New York City apartment. Up Close and Personal mostly came out of two ideas: 1. Street artists tend to work large outdoors and we wanted to challenge people to make art on a small scale and 2. We’ve all seen artwork in galleries that either would only look good in a gallery but not in a home, or is just too big to fit into a typical apartment and we wanted to see something different from that. With Up Close and Personal, the show itself is taking place in an apartment on the Upper West Side, and we have capped the size of the artwork at 30 x 30 inches, with an emphasis on going as small as possible.

I’ve worked with Keith Schweitzer and Mike Glatzer of M.A.N.Y. to curate this show, and we’re really excited with the line up that we’ve managed to put together: Aiko, Chris Stain, Clown Soldier, Don Leicht, Edible Genius, Elbowtoe, Gaia, How & Nosm, Jessica Angel, John Fekner, Know Hope, Logan Hicks, Mike Ballard, OverUnder, R. Robot, Radical, Retna, Skewville, Tristan Eaton, Troy Lovegates aka Other and White Cocoa.

Up Close and Personal opens May 12th from 7-9pm. We’ll also be open from 7-9pm on the 13th. Then noon-9pm and noon-7pm on the 14th and 15th respectively. Particularly on the 12th, it is possible that we’ll be shifting people in every half hour or so, since the space is a small apartment. The show is taking place at 217 West 106th Street, Apartment 1A, New York, NY 10025 – Between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenues.

Hope to see you in a couple weeks!

Chris Stain

Concrete Voices: a short film about The Living Walls Conference

The Living Walls Conference took place last August in Atlanta and included some Vandalog favorites like Chris Stain, Gaia, Jordan Seiler and Swampy. In fact, Monica Campana, a recent addition to the Vandalog bloggers, organized Living Walls (and that plays into the series of coincidences of how we met, but that’s a story for another day). Christine Sylvain just posted this short video from the conference:

CONCRETE VOICES from Birds of Prey Productions on Vimeo.

I’m also pleased to say that Living Walls will be taking place again this summer, and in two locations. There will be a conference in Atalanta again in August, plus another one in Albany, NY from the 16th-18th of September. For more info or if you think you would like to help make this year’s Living Walls conferences a success, email livingwallsconference@gmail.com for Altanta or livingwallsalbany@gmail.com for Albany.

More murals in Miami

Surge. Photo by Jeremiah Garcia

Some more of my favorite new murals in Miami, again mostly with Primary Flight. For more, check out my other Miami mural posts. Most of these photos are by Jeremiah Garcia for Ice Cream Man, which is an awesome project all about free ice cream. They have lots more photos on Ice Cream Man.

Joe Iurato and Chris Stain. Photo by Becki_Fuller
Remed (in progress). Photo by Luna Park
Mr. Jago, Ron English and Tristan Eaton. Photo by Jeremiah Garcia
Eugene Good and Tina and Jim Darling

Photos by Becki_Fuller, Luna Park and Jeremiah Garcia.

Weekend link-o-rama

A lot of events have been happening this week, most likely so that everyone can make a last minute push in shows and such before the holidays. Then we have nothing to write about. Gotta love when a whole industry shuts down for a month or so.

Blu (photo vua Nuart)

Anyways, so here is what has been going on:

  • Tonight is the opening of the London Miles Gallery “The Idol Hours”. The show is a group show that gives artists like Luke Chueh, Travis Lampe and Scott Young the opportunity to portray artworks from the art canon in a modern sense
  • Factory Fresh will be hosting a Block Part in Brooklyn Nov. 20th with a live mural painting from Gai, Imminent Disaster, Chris Stain and Skewville. The Burning Candy Crew will also be showing new portions of their ongoing documentary Dots
  • New Blu piece in France popped up recently. Such detail as usual
  • Remi/Rough has been busy in England lately. He has a new print released, designed the decor of the new Wahaca Soho eatery, and put up a nice piece in Birmingham with time lapse video
  • Finally, A Barry McGee retrospective will take place in 2012 in Berkeley, California in conjunction with the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. The two organizations were awarded a $100,000 grant by the Andy Warhol Foundation to put on the show
  • Unusual Image has some great photos of the Best Ever show that took place at Blackall Studios last night
  • Stolenspace will play host to the second solo show by Ronzo entitled “Crackney’s Finest.” The show will open Nov. 19th

Weekend link love

Billboard by Mobstr

This link post is definitely going to be a weekly thing. Hopefully it will allow me to link to things that I just haven’t had the time to cover here on the blog, my Twitter or Vandalog’s Facebook page. So here’s what you may have missed in street art this week:

  • My Love For You Is A Stampede of Horses and Arrested Motion have two sets of amazing photos from Fecal Face‘s 10 year anniversary show at The Luggage Store in SF. This show has a pretty sick line up including Barry McGee, Margaret Kilgallen, Jim Houser, Swoon and Maya Hayuk.
  • Nychos’ solo show at Pure Evil Gallery (in cooperation with End of The Line) opened on Thursday. Go here for the press release sort of info or go here for photos from the opening.
  • That I May See, Matt Small’s latest solo show, opened last week at Black Rat Projects and it looks absolutely stunning. My family and I can’t thank Matt enough for his support of the Robert Shitima School in Zambia, which is where Matt and Black Rat Press have decided to donate 40% of the proceeds from this show.
  • Eelus, Logan Hicks, Eine, Lucy McLachlan and others are headed to Gambia next month for the Wide Open Walls project.
  • OFFSET has once again put together an interesting conference of creatives who will be speaking next month (October 1st-3rd) in Dublin. OFFSET 2010 will have presentations from Gary Baseman, Steve Powers, Marc and Sara Schiller of Wooster Collective and many more. Early bird tickets are available online for 150 euros (with discounts for students thankfully).
  • A very touching work of street art in Brooklyn.
  • Just Seeds has put together Resourced, a set for political posters that you can download and print at home. There are designs by Gaia, Armsrock, Chris Stain, Josh MacPhee and many more artists.
  • When I first heard about JR’s new Unframed project, I didn’t really care for it. Basically, JR is wheatpasting other photographers (often famous) photographs around in cities. To me, this sort came out of left field. I don’t mind when Blek le Rat does similar things, but with JR, I always liked the stories behind the photos as much as the images themselves. I thought that with Unframed, that aspect of the art would go away. Luckily, Angelo at FAME Festival reassured me in an email and said once I learned more about the project, these would be just as interesting as the rest of JR’s art. Because I trust Angelo, I waited and didn’t write anything about Unframed or JR’s piece at FAME Festival. Earlier this week, Hi-Fructose’s blog posted a better explanation of the project as well as some photos of Unframed taking place in Switzerland. As usual, Angelo was right and after reading that post on Hi-Fructose, I’ve been convinced about Unframed.

Photo by Mobstr

New walls from Chris Stain and Billy Mode

Chris Stain and Billy Mode

Chris Stain sent over these images of two new walls that he painted recently in upstate New York. When he’s at the top of his game (as he definitely is in the above wall which is a collaboration with Billy Mode), Chris is one of my all-time favorite stencil artists.

Chris Stain

Photos by Chris Stain

Dozens of artists in Beacon, NY for Electric Windows

Last weekend, residents of Beacon, NY were treated to live painting by a couple of dozen artists, including some of street art’s finest. The artists were their for Electric Windows. Steph mentioned the event last month, but here’s the short version: artists paint panels which then go on display in the windows of a former electric blanket factory. An interesting idea, but I still think the best part of this event was the chance for members of the public to wait such talented artists work. Papermonster has over 100 photos from Electric Windows on his blog. Here are some of my favorite pieces from the event:

Papermonster
Elbow-toe
Gaia
Chris Stain, one of a few artists at the event who worked directly on walls
Ron English

Photos by Papermonster’s friend Ren, except Elbowt-toe’s piece which was photographed by the artist

Aint Goin Home Soon: Chris Stain and Leon Reid IV

It gives me great pleasure to share with everyone that artists Chris Stain and Leon Reid will be exhibiting at the  Creative Alliance right here in Baltimore. The exhibit opens Sat May 8 at the right by Patterson Park from 7-9pm, On view May 8-29 Free. Opens w/ From Mountains to Maryland at 5:30pm, and FUSION: Hip Hop on the Mountain at 9pm

As every schoolchild knows, John Henry was a giant of a man, who wielded a 20 pound hammer as though it were nothing, and won an epic contest against a steam engine, only to die on the spot. Henry was a slave, or former slave, and the battle that cost him his life is said to have taken place in Talcott, West Virginia on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. Built from found materials by Leon Reid IV, a statue of John Henry towers over this Main Gallery installation, amidst Hoovertown shacks made of wooden pallets and railroad ties made of cardboard. Giant stenciled murals by Chris Stain form a backdrop melding WPA-era social realism and urban graffiti, expanding on the themes of John Henry’s story—struggle and pride, race and dislocation in the face of technological and economic change. In this way, their installation serves as an ideal introduction to Urban/Appalachia, Creative Alliance’s series examining the long and complicated relationship between Baltimore and Appalachia, from past generations seeking work in city steel mills, to a generation today shipped to prisons in the mountains.

Born in 1972 and raised in East Baltimore, Chris Stain is a New York-based, self taught print maker and stencil artist inspired by NYC subway graffiti and poster design. His work has shown in museums and galleries internationally, and been published in books, magazines, and websites about street art and urban contemporary culture. Leon Reid IV was born in Virginia and raised in Ohio, an African American public artist who manipulates urban spaces, monuments and architecture with sardonic visual puns. He received his M.A. from London’s Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design and recently completed a public commission titled The Great Recession in Stavanger, Norway.