April 2010: Laguna in Almagro

Located in the land of La Mancha, the town of Almagro is one of many towns featured in the magical tale of Don Quixote. Street artist Laguna keenly understands how the region inspired Miguel de Cerventas; he loves painting in his beautiful hometown. Today, he shares a bit of his past and a taste of what's to come. He writes:

"In 1990, two classmates and I painted the road to the entrance of my town with cartoons from my history teacher."
"Every day, cars passed by and saw what we'd drawn; we almost got expelled from school."
"I paint with many people but I try very much to have time to develop my work."
"Crazy things happen when I'm out working. I have collapsed the building in which I was painting. Once, I sought refuge from the police among a group of Romanians (I painted their cars). Another time, some Ukrainian soldiers took us to a train station and expelled us from their country. We finished painting inside the station!"
"These days, I'm going to Morocco as a draftsman and illustrator. My first Africa's manga festival; then I'm traveling around the Arab world."

Gracias, Laguna! For more of his street work, head over to his Flickr.

In The Headlines

Thanks, track girls, for making this weekend completely awesome! I coach some of the toughest ladies out there, and they proved it in their races this weekend. So impressed! In addition to working forever, I also baked my mom a cake and thanked her for putting up with my sister and me. Now it's headline time!

Lastplak's shop opens in Rotterdam on June 6th.

Mark your calendars: Drone has a show opening in Lisboa two days earlier on June 4th.

Appparently, the president of East Timor likes street art.

Wow: a full list of all the places you can catch Banksy in San Francisco.

Swoon spoke to Gothamist about her recent collaboration with Urban Arts Projects; Londonist interviewed A.CE that same week.
Alsacherie decorated the Université de Technologie UTBM - SEVENANS with a collection of phrases in English.

Michael De Feo has a new show at NYC's Woodward Gallery. The exhibit runs through July 24.

Chor Boogie and Ashley Zelinskie traded ideas and came up with the glass spray paint can.

This year, Omino71 and friends will honor the 20th anniversary of Keith Haring's death with "Stick On Haring." If you want to participate, send your stickers by June 25. Shoot them an e-mail for more details.

Friday ProFile: Marco Romano Bhimani

In this electronic age, film cameras are becoming a rare find. The Impossible Project and Holga cater to a limited clientele instead of mass markets. It’s possible that many kids today may never work a film camera. Fortunately, photographer Marco Romano Bhimani knows his way around both mediums. “I had a digital camera back in the day,” he recalls. “Mostly, that camera was for documenting illegal graffiti in LA. I was shooting thousands of pictures, but I felt like if you really wanted to be a photographer, you had to do it in film. You begin to understand how light works and how light is going to respond to your film.”

As a junior high school kid in Pasedena, Bhimani tried his hand at graffiti with some of his buddies. “I still practice my tags to this day, but I’m 32 and I don’t go out in the street that much any more,” he explains. “I got caught out for that shit a lot, dealt with the community service and exorbitant fines. I’m not trying to fuck with that any more; that’s not my thing.”
While his tagging waned, his love of graffiti never abated. “Graffiti belongs in the street,” he argues. “Yes, at the end of the day, you are defacing someone’s property. Many people look down upon it, but I think graffiti is for graffiti writers and the people who appreciate it.” Bhimani loves cruising the streets in search of new subjects. “I think the locations pick me,” he insists. “Things on the street really speak to me, so I love cruising around to back streets. I’ve been working in South LA for the past 10-12 years. It’s really chill on Saturdays and Sundays, so I just go down and do my work: shooting still lifes, weeds, cracked concrete.”

Once he picked up a camera, Bhimani incorporated his love for graffiti into his work. “I’ve photographed lots of LA crews in the underground scene,” he recalls. “SKA crew, TKO crew, NCT…no legal beagles.” Spending time with his subjects leads to special bonds. “We get to talking and we have a connection,” he adds. “That’s what documentary photo is all about. You have a connection with these people, whether they’re models or homeless people. You get to know them, examine them, and see what they’re about. I think a lot of people have impacted my life through the photos.”

Over the years, Bhimani’s watched his city morph and transform. “Los Angeles as a whole is really different now,” he says. “It’s clean, almost safe, and it’s gentrified. Downtown is whiter and there’s lots more yuppy kids. The whole vibe of the city has changed. I remember parts of LA that were fucking drenched in graffiti and now it’s been clean for the past 7-8 years. I thought it looked beautiful when it was covered in paint.”
While Bhimani sees the grit and grime of LA, he still loves his city. “Every time I travel, I get homesick,” he says. “I want to go back to what I’m used to. I like evolution and change within my work, but I’m not able to accept it in my life. I’m a native of LA, and I’ll probably die in LA. I want to get a passport soon to see the things I want to see.” Through projects like the Green Wall series, Bhimani hopes people will learn that “LA’s not just made up of cute little books with photos of Dodgers Stadium or Santa Monica Pier. There are a lot of hidden jewels out here. I’m just trying to bring them to light.”

Thanks, Marco! You can check out more of his photos here. That's all for now. I'm gearing up for two meets this weekend. Fortunately, my sister is home and life is good. I'll be back on Monday with news, stories, and of course more pictures. Enjoy the weekend!

April 2010: Esco in São Paolo

When it comes to street art, São Paolo is one of the great South American capitals. As the birthplace of pixaçao, the scene grew rapidly to include different styles. Today, Esco shows us his unique style and shares crazy stories from the field. He writes:

"Well, I first started painting walls when I was nine year old. It was in some college event. But I really started with this graffiti art for about six years ago. I started making pieces on the street with tags and pixo."
"Everytime that I can work with more people, I do. I think that's essential for my work, having friends with me while I'm doing this act. I prefer my best friends at these moments, but if they are not there, i find new company or I go alone."
"I just like painting abandoned house, factories, and places that are forgotten by people. Those place always have a lot of history to share. I try to see those histories and talk about it with my work. For some years, I just drew letters. During those years, I started going to the street and grabbing walls, so letters greatly influence my present work."
"Once, I was on the street bombing doors with a friend when we saw a good wall for this work. However, it was near a cop post. So we thought that if we could make it, it would be very hard but good. So my friend started doing his piece and when we were finishing, we saw many police cars on the street. Now I think that we should have stopped there, but our reaction was to finish faster. When my friend was almost done, I saw six cops getting out and running in our direction. I got REALLY scared, picked up my backpack, and started running across the street. Those cops looked at my friend, but they came for me. That moment, I thought that they woud kill me! I had very bad luck this day. I was running when I saw another police car with some more cops. They looked the situation and came for me too. I crossed a small street and passed by a bar that was with so many people that saw the situation. They started to scream 'THIEF!' 'THIEF!' All of that happened really fast; then a cop started yelling for me to get down on the ground ! I did what they told me and they asked what I was doing running. I told them I was doing graffiti and nothing big happened. They let me go and didn't give me any problems, but the situation was really funny."
"Now I am starting to see how this work can be very big and communicative. I think those letters for me is easier to do, because I can do that anywhere and it's different than my other kind of drawings. It is some kind of graffit work, but it isn't; it has roots of São Paulo 'Pixaçao', but it isn't pixaçao. It is a product of me reading everything I see into urban art. I am a teacher at a prison for kids ages 11-18, so I see art in everything."

Thanks, Esco! For more São Paolo walls, visit his Flickr.

April 2010: Crimson Cisa in The Hague

Crimson Cisa is constantly busy; I'm glad he found time to answer some questions for Illicit. When he's not getting up in the streets, he's probably in the library researching for his undergraduate thesis. Applause, you rebellious academic! Today, he takes a break and shares his plans with us. He writes:

"My headquarters is located in The Hague, Holland, but I travel a lot. I’m a regular visitor to Berlin, Germany and Lvov, Ukraine. Since I am mostly into stickers right now, I put up my stuff anywhere I go. Holland is a pretty small country, so it is easy to visit a lot of different cities and spread your work quickly."
"My first memory of drawing something on a wall is the time I used a key to scratch a bird and a lake or something in the hallway of my preschool. My mother was called in to come get me, but I can’t really remember getting in trouble. After that, I think I was 11 or 12 when I started doing stupid tags and what I believed were throw ups."
"To be honest, I enjoy working by myself. I just like to zone out, listen to some music and do my thing. Most of the things I make are pretty personal to me and I don’t like being rushed or distracted. I do really enjoy sketching with friends. My regular partner in crime is Smoke (http://www.flickr.com/photos/smoke1esaga/). He’s not very active, but we do try to motivate each other :) When the both of us are not too busy, we have a day every week when we just hang out, draw stuff and try to come up with new ideas."
"One time, Smoke and I got busted. This happened in the most ignorant of ways. We were done putting our stuff up, walked away and went to a store a couple of blocks further. We’re checking stuff out and everything is cool until two cops show up and ask us for ID. I tried playing dumb and was denying everything, but that didn’t really work. We had to go outside and the cops took us to the police station. They told us that they saw us while we were busy and waited until we entered the store so we couldn’t run. After keeping us in little waiting cells at the station for about an hour, they gave us a fine and let us go. This was probably one of the most idiotic things that ever happened to me. Why did they drive us all the way to the police station? Why didn’t they just give us the fine and let us go? Why didn’t they just bust us right away? Why were they keeping us at the police station for over an hour? Getting busted by the police and getting a fine obviously sucks balls, but the whole experience of being treated like some big time criminal just made it so much worse."
"Right now, I’m working on a couple of new sticker designs. One of these I named ‘The Cult Leader’. I think people will enjoy that one a lot (at least I really hope so). I’m also putting some finishing touches on a new canvas. I painted it together with my girlfriend (talk about bonding experiences hahaha). The canvas is called ‘Ik ben een vliegtuig’, which is Dutch for ‘I am an aeroplane’. It has to do with being a bit crazy and having a ‘crowded’ mind. The last couple of weeks were really stressful for me and I felt really restless. A great way of relieving stress is spreading your arms and yelling; ‘I AM AN AEROPLANE!’, while running through a library."

Thanks, man! For more sticker photos, check out his Flickr.

April 2010: KVLR1 in Belfast

Belfast is full of political murals, but dig a little deeper and you'll find KVLR1's pieces all around. Along with a crew of old friends, he decorates Northern Ireland's capital with stencils and freestyle spray. Today, he checks in to talk about Base, stickering, and projects for the future. He writes:

"I'm based in Belfast in Ireland. I've been doing a lot of stuff here lately. We've managed to get a lot of legal walls and have been taking our time over doing pieces collaboratively with a few other artists from here. I have done a little bit of stuff in Dublin and Cork in Ireland and a bit in Manchester, New York and Thailand."
"Where I grew up there was a lot of derelict space and we painted a lot in run down buildings and stuff. I kind of didn't paint on the streets for a long time while I was at college. I studied graphic design and began to get my head around computers and technology. I then worked as a tee shirt designer and started to make a lot of stencils and exhibit stuff. Then I progressed back to doing walls with stencils at first and then more freehand stuff with brushes and spray paint." 

"I enjoy collaborating with others but still do a lot of work solo. We have a bit of a collective between us called Spoom. It's myself, Frizelle, Dogboy, Bad Seed, Redmonk and Horse Goat. We've been painting together for years and get along really well. I do a lot of work with organizations like Spearfish and Trans. We co-organize street art festivals like Base which had over 20 street artist from Ireland, UK and Europe. This gives people the opportunity to paint with others they normally wouldn't meet. "
"Other than my home town, I really enjoyed painting in Thailand. It was a good way to meet the locals. I've done some stuff in bars and things. When I painted a wall or something, they would hook me and my friends up with free food, drink and banter. There's also a cool street festival in Manchester called Eurocultured (pretty much the same thing as Base over here) which was great fun, sunshine, painting, cold beer and live music... a fine combination."

"I don't have any exciting stories really. I was out with a few stickers one day on my bike and a plastic bag got caught in my wheels. I was trying to pull it out whilst coming down a hill and went straight into a lamp post. I didn't hurt myself or anything. When I recomposed myself, I looked to the traffic waiting at a red light and there was a bus load of people pissing themselves laughing at me.. I had to laugh myself."
"We've been doing some posters for a dude in Paris called Urban Hearts. He gets street artists from all over the world to send him paste-up pieces. When he collects enough, he hits them up in various cities across the world. It's cool to have one of your pieces on a street in São Paulo, for example, even if you've never been there. We're also working on our website for the summer: SpoomCollective.com We're going to do a big show / party in Belfast for the launch, which should be a laugh. I'm getting a couple of walls to paint in town with a few heads and should really start gearing up for Base in the summer."

Thanks, KVLR1! For more photos of his work and the rest of Spoom Collective, visit his Flickr.

In The Headlines

This unexpected heat is messing with my head. I'm not feeling my best this morning, so I'll skip the weekend update and go right to the headlines.

Jef Aerosol's new show, "Girls, Girls, Girls," opens May 7 at London's Signal Gallery.

Ox recently took over a series of billboards in NYC. See if you can pick them out.

Time Out: New York interviews Shepard Fairey about the past year and his plans for the future.

Mommy, where does street art come from?

YZ's new series, "Back to the Roots," is taking her all over the globe, including Guadeloupe.

Melbourne street cleaners painted over one of Banksy's murals; public outcry ensued. Should his pieces be protected because they're "valuable?" Leave me a comment with your thoughts.

Skewville talk about their cardboard sneakers in Bushwick and beyond.

San Francisco digs Banksy's new pieces in Haight-Ashbury, the Mission, and Chinatown.

Here's a discussion of the politics of street art.