Was browsing Turntable Lab today and saw this trailer for an new film about Artisto Mucho Importantio – Jean-Michel Basqiat. Directed by Tamra Davis.
Looks pretty coo’.
Category Archives: Graphiti
Whats that? Roy Ayers was in Victoria last night?!
In addition to steenburgs Miami Vice stencil on the bar of Victoria, I give you…Mr Roy Ayers! by none other than yours trully. Plus a cheeky lil L.W.A.P.D ad at the bottom. safe yeh.
Wheely boards
I always liked Dalek’s decks – yeah I’m biased and yes John the trucks are still on and have probably fucked the paintwork, but it’s cool as they’re never coming off.
If I was gonna get another one it would probably be Stefan Marx’s Lousy Airlines deck.
Mixer Can
Anyone remember these? A couple of geniuses (genii?) from South Korea have done the same with spray paint. It’s got two control wheels, one for hue and one for balance to control its output, although I couldn’t find anything about different nozzles. Should it prove any good, it’ll massively reduce the hassle of carrying 72 different colours about, and allow beginners (and those writers who refuse to shoplift and paint in halford’s touch up range) instant access to every colour bar the metalics and, er, white.
If that wasn’t good enough, it’s all been done to stop empty cans filling up landfills. Apparently it won a red dot award, find out more here.
ROA
It’s probably inadvisable to elaborate on why I was looking up pidgeon’s guts on Google images. Let’s just say that my last week at work is likely to push the envelope of office pranks. After an increasingly spiraling search, I came across this chap. According to his tumblr site, ROA’s Belgian – which would seem to be all there is to learn about him.
The majority of his work (at least that I’ve looked at) seems to involve putting huge drawings of small (ish) animals throughout a variety of urban landscapes.
But the images I like the most are those that interact with the features of the surface upon which they’re painted.
Time Lapse
Blu and David Ellis collaboration = time lapse animation around a courtyard. Check it out, it’s awesome. Fact.
Hotel des Arts
It’s not a good sign when I’ve only been in the office fifteen minutes and I’m already trawling the web for places I’d rather be. That’s not to say it isn’t useful, at least I know where I’m staying next time I make it out to San Francisco.
Hotel rooms are usually all the same. Sure, they have different quality furnishings, different sizes of bathrooms, a flat screen TV or a little portable, other than that it’s an off white box with a bed in it, hopefully a window. Generally, when you stagger in at three in the morning, the only difference between establishments at either end of the price scale is whether or not you have to wait for a man to let you in, or a man has to wait for you to turn up, and then let you in.
The Hotel Des Arts on Bath Street (located just north of the heart of Googleland) happily bucks this trend. Instead of painting with fifteen shades of cream, their rooms have been completely decorated by commissioned artists, and the results are amazing. Not only is it situated a 5 minute walk from the bar with the best view in the whole city, as you can see below, they’ve even managed to cater for John.
This hotel is awesome. Fact.
Rosemarie Fiore
Tom’s Adam Neate post reminded me of Rosemarie Fiore’s prints made with fireworks. Her site’s well worth a look as she seems to be that rare breed of artist, who manages to be truly creative within a wide range of styles, media and influences.
The Gunflakes and Evel Knievel pinball machine prints are definitely worth a look, but make sure you check out the subway window prints.
Images of MTA trains speeding past dimly lit platforms, literally covered in bright murals are iconic of New York. Whichever side of the art/vandalism fence you choose to sit on, it’s inarguable that this is one of the images the word graffiti evokes. Similarly, it’s hard to ignore the substantive artistic legitimacy of both the work and the movement itself, specific cultures within the art world rarely last for more than a couple of decades and tend to be exclusive. Graffiti is accessible and honest. It’s an open playing field in which its participants have free reign to create their work, instantly relinquishing ownership upon its completion, the finished piece sent off to loop the city.
For the past 30 years the MTA and various city bodies in New York have been on an unending campaign to eradicate graffiti. Operating under the assumption that writers will be deterred if they know the result of their work will only be visible for a few days. One of the results of this saw writers begin marking the carriage windows, scoring their names instead of painting them. In response to this the current rolling stock is about to complete a specialist glass refit to make marking the windows impossible(writers are now using acid pens).
This is what makes Fiore’s prints so important. There are countless galleries that document the work on the outside body of the cars (149 st is one of my favourites) but few to none devoted to window etching. Fiore’s print documents an equally important and prolific part of the culture that saw the rise to mainstream acceptance of writers such as Futura 2000, Zephyr and Revok. Printing the images on the window forces us to look at a form of vandalism inside the carriage, with the same reverence and artistic considerations we willingly apply to damage done on the outside.
Lemonade... 
