June 2010: Don Xid in Bogotá

Quick post today: gotta give exams and secretly watch New Zealand play Slovakia. Today, Don Xid checks in from Colombia to share thoughts on this past year. He writes:

"I started doing street art one year ago. I never really thought that it would work in the street, but I soon realized that it was a great place to share what I make. These environments are only found in the street. I paint in different neighborhoods of Bogotá, but I hope to bring my work to other parts of the world."
"Lately, I'e been painting with friends but sometimes I paint alone. For me, it doesn't matter."
"I like drawing a lot, and I always try to take my time. I look at the techniques that I'm using and stop to think about what I've done on paper. I can say that I have a definite style, but I'm still working on it."
"I love painting on abandoned areas or ruined land. I like environments filled with silence. I also like the center of my city because there is a variety of people and cultures. There's a lot of traffic and many graffiti artists paint down there, so it's a colorful part of town."
"I have met many wonderful and talented people through street art. Every day, I learn more and I am infinitely happy being able to know these people. They're like icons of the street!"

Gracias, Don Xid! For more photos, pop by his Flickr.

May 2010: Baltimore Love Project

Jess, Lindsay, and Hui-Chen are already in Baltimore and more folks are moving this summer (yes, Crockett, that's you). Therefore, I'm already working on a trip down this fall. When I'm there, I'll be sure to keep an eye out for Michael Owen's Baltimore Love Project. He writes:

"Street art and I met in Baltimore, in 2003, while I was attending MICA. The first date was a two-story wall on the front of a community center. We courted through my senior year, as my thesis focused on murals throughout the city and have been in a committed relationship over those last 7 years, though I am married. I just finished a 6 month adventure down in Miami, but am now back in Baltimore. While in Miami, I did a 6 story mural on a hotel, among other things. Baltimore has been the focal city of my portfolio with about 40 murals, interior and exterior, throughout the area. There have been some great pieces, but for me, The Baltimore Love Project is the crowning jewel."
"My work can be hammered out pretty fast, so I usually work alone. That said, I did a quarter-mile project last year, one of the longest murals in the country. I had an assistant with me most of the time on that one, due to the sheer volume of paint that needed to be thrown up. I have also worked with kids in the community on a few projects. My artistic style is, in part, a product of my understanding of and connection with minimalism. I want my art to engage and relate with the most people as possible, especially the pieces on the street. I strip down the imagery to this point where you know what's going on, but the details are questionable. Over the last year, I have experimented with some of the more loose and gestural brushstrokes found more in my studio/gallery work, while maintaining a very straight-forward and graphic approach."
"I often like to paint in very public places, during busy times. I have my audience in mind throughout my concept and design stages, so I enjoy hearing what people think (usually). My studio work is my break from the chaos and a nice quiet balance to the more communal process of street art. Oh and being on a sunny wall is great too. "
"My 'experiences' are more humorous than crazy. For example:A shady car pulls up while I'm painting a mural. The man cracks the window and asks 'Do you paint murals?' As I look around at the quarter-mile project I am about to complete, I reply, 'Uh, yes'. 'My boss wants a mural,' he states in his thick Eastern European accent. A card is passed through the window opening and drives off. The card is shiny and gold in color, much classier than the car. Then again, it was for a Larry Flint Hustler Club. I just laughed.""I am currently knee deep in the Baltimore Love Project, a self initiated, city-wide project consisting of 20 identical, love-themed murals. I am also about to show with Dirty Pilot, put a mural up in Seattle this summer, working on a cloab in NYC later in the fall, and showing at various fairs during Art Basel Miami in the winter. I'm also futilely working on maintaining my tan, now that I'm back in Baltimore."

Thanks, Michael! I'm excited to see these murals in person sometime soon. To get involved with the project, visit his website.

Friday ProFile: Woozy

As a 10-year-old kid growing up in Athens, Woozy was intoxicated (both literally and figuratively) with graffiti. “I remember the spray effects and the dizziness of the toxic inhalations that I felt after painting,” he laughs. Graffiti books and movies from the U.S. flooded into Greece and encouraged him to paint outdoors.

When he grew up, he attended art school and spent his spare time spray-painting everything. While balancing student life and street art can be demanding, he’s found the time to bomb France, Brazil, China, Thailand, Italy, England, Germany, Holland, Portugal, and Spain. “For me, traveling around the world is a great pleasure,” he insists. “It helps me express my views and interact with other cultural elements and people I come across.”
While urban spaces can be hostile, Woozy recognizes that they are an integral part of his work. “As you grow up, you can see that you enjoy illegally creating art,” he says, “but you can also judge things in a more mature way. The more you observe, the more you realize your creation is a product of the surrounding environment.”
One of Woozy’s favorite painting experiences took place abroad in São Paolo. “During my stay, I was influenced by society’s local structure and the intense social inequalities,” he recalls. “I attempted to add color to the big, grey surfaces. I wanted to inspire hope and change by adding a drop of paint to an endless grey reality. The potential audience is huge, too, because so many millions of people live there.”
While the action of street art is a radical statement, Woozy doesn’t believe his pieces are particularly revolutionary. “I don’t have the ambition to be the one who radically changes things with one intervention,” he insists. “I’m not someone who can successfully judge all issues. I try to be modest and make people think and analyze rather than just offering up complete conclusions.” The medium’s danger combined with a city’s unpredictable streets push Woozy to paint everywhere.
Woozy's 2010 is completely packed so far. This year, he’s planning a big exhibition in Athens and challenging new installations. In the future, he hopes to travel to Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. “I love communicating and interacting with local cultures and civilizations,” he explains. “I consider this a key part of my work; those elements are the basis of my perception and inspiration.”

Thanks, Woozy! For more photos, take a peek at his website. This weekend calls for warm weather, football get togethers, prom chaperoning, and a celebration for one of my best friends who's moving in a week. I can only imagine the exhaustion I'll feel Monday, but I've had practice so I think I can deal. Enjoy!

Friday ProFile: Oré

In the beginning of Beautiful Losers, Ed Templeton says, "I think as a kid, you're always drawing, coloring, and doing crafts and that seems to be totally normal as a thing you do as a kid. I think kind of a weird tragedy is when you become an adult, you 'grow up' and you stop creating. You stop coloring and involving yourself in the joy of creation. I just feel like I was lucky enough to never really lose that." Fortuantely, French artist Oré has two young sons and the high school students he teachers to remind him how to be a kid. Based in Normandy, Oré has left experimental pieces in Le Havre, Caen, Paris, Marseille, Toulouse and other cities outside of France.

Oré works hard to see the world through the eyes of a child. "Very often, adults don't see what children observe with attention," he insists. "Children discover the world and are very attentive to their environment." This novel way of seeing the world led him to embrace a unique type of art. "I started doing graffiti in 1989. I was in a neighborhood where hip hop culture was just arriving. Few people knew about graffiti and there were about six or seven people who were doing it. It was magnificent; I was practicing a new activity known to very few people. Like the majority of my peers during this period, I was influenced by Subway Art and Spraycan Art because they were simply the only books published on graffiti. There weren't any magazines or the internet."
As a pioneer of French graffiti, Oré experimented to hone his style. "When I began tagging, I was looking for a name with a few letters to write quickly in the streets," he recalls. "I wanted to choose letters which worked well together, formed a named, and sounded good together. I liked to tag O, R, E, and these letters worked well together. When I added the accent to the E, it formed the name 'Oré,' which sounded good."
After seven or eight years of pure graffiti, a series of fortunate events impacted Oré's style."Graffiti was developing and people were already spreading tags throughout the country," he says. "At the end of the '90s, people grew tired of tags and stopped paying attention to what they saw on the walls. I started to create a more personal aesthetic. My travels to Mexico profoundly influenced me. I discovered Pre-Colombian art and became equally interested in Arabic letters. For me, the link between tags and calligraphy is evident. Like lots of graffiti writers in France, I read Hassan Massoudy's calligraphy books."
People usually respond positively to Oré's work. "I had a great painting in a wonderful spot at the university. All the students new this painting. One night, one guy destroyed it by tagging, so I decided to repaint on this spot. I went on a Sunday afternoon. Some guys were playing soccer nearby, but they stopped playing and came up to me and said, 'Stop doing this right now, fucker! You're painting over Oré! We love his paintings!' I answered, 'Do not worry, guys! I'm Oré. Someone destroyed my painting three days ago. I just wanted to paint it over!' At the beginning, they did not believe me. But after five minutes, they saw my way of painting and they finally believed me. I was so happy and proud to learn that people could protect my paintings like this. For a graffiti artist, I think it's the most amazing thing."
Styles may change, but Oré feels like he's hitting his stride. "I would like to continue in the same vein that I've been working for the past three years," he admits. "I'll collaborate with musicians, directors, photographers, and other painters. I never thought that graffiti could grow into such a big scene." No matter where street art takes him, he doesn't feel like the movement will fade any time soon. "The drive to express oneself in the street is a vital need. It will never go away."

Thanks, Oré! Stay current with his work by visiting his website. That's all for now! I'm ready to relax this weekend and mentally get ready for San Fran next week! If you're in the CT area, the Trinity Hip Hop Festival is on today and tomorrow. I might pop up there and check it out. You should, too!

January 2010: Rub Kandy in Rome

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with ancient Egypt. I built pyramids in my backyard, dressed up as Cleopatra for Halloween, and pored over books on hieroglyphics. Perhaps it's this last point of interest that makes me like Rub Kandy's works. His unusual paintings and sculptures punctuate the city with enigmatic messages. Fortunately, he wrote in to decode them. He writes:

"When I started, the word 'street art' wasn't used. In the the 90's in Italy, we used to talk about 'lettering' or about 'aerosol art'. When you were making a line with a spray-can, you had to take care that color didn't drip. Even the word
'graffiti' was 'out'. Like everybody, I used to do 'pieces' with letters and puppets. I moved away from pure writing because I preferred to watch the art world. Now that I'm doing some art expos and I'm seeing a lot of good street artists doing art expos, I envy the young bombers who ravage the city, who break open metro manholes, who recharge the markers with acid. I'd really like to have that rage now."
"I can rely on an hell-bent-krew who inexplicably still trust and help me. I think that, when you deeply wish for a thing, there is a glow which lights up your face; your energy spreads and the others follow you. I don't work much with others street artists, but there isn't a certain reason. Maybe I personally don't know many street artists."
"I always try to move widthwise. I mean when I learn a new technique, I mix it with the old technics. I move continuously, trying not to do what I already did. I wanna be a beginner forever; I hate the professionals.I wanna learn and change. When someone tell me I'm doing great works, I start to do others. When you arrive, you die. A lot of great artist try to be recognizable. They look at the fashion world as a model of diffusion, so they fill the world with faces, stars,hearts, skulls, arrows, each one like the others. They wanna be recognizable: they do branding, great branding. I don't want this, I don't want to do branding. I just try to do good works, just the works attesting for themselves. As my friend Ester always tells me, 'The good mum wants hers sons to grow up healthy and strong, the good artist wants his works to grow up healthy and strong'. So I try to make healthy and strong pieces,'cause I'll turn from them. I hope my works will outlive fashion."
"I don't have a favorite place. I do this: if I walk and I see a good location, I try to accurately plan everything. I'm not able to work with other people watching me if I don't have a plan. When I did RATZINGER, for example, I worked for a week in my lab, but the installation took five minutes. If I want to try new techniques and styles, I go work in abandoned buildigngs to play freely."
"I'm working on a series of anamorphosis work. I'm mixing two of my passions, photograpy and painting. I'm sending you a pic for your great blog!"

You are too kind, Rub! For photos of this new series, stop by his blog.

January 2010: Just Do It, Miss Kaplan! in Tel Aviv

Inspired by the streets, Miss Kaplan uses everything from ribbon to flowers to rework urban landscapes. Scroll through her photos and you'll find her clever takes on city streets. Armed with her camera, she captures the sights of Tel Aviv. She writes:

"I started doing street art about a year ago. I am located in Tel Aviv, Israel.""The ribbon project was made a few month ago. I had the idea and just decided to do it. I actually had some more sentences I wanted to write; I might still do it. I wrote these sentences in three different locations. (It was hard to find them.) I took an assistant with me but did everything on my own. She helped me carry the cameras and of course, I needed the company. You know: working hours in the middle of the night can be not so nice sometimes. It took me a while to find the right places. I needed a specific fence, the kind you see in the pics. Others were not good enough and it's not so simple to sew. I needed an interesting spot to take the pics and a place I could work peacefully."
The first day was actually funny and sad. I started sewing the sentence and it took me about four to five hours. After I finished it, a big track came with huge white plastic fences. The driver said he had to cover the fence for advertisement. I couldn’t believe it. I was working so hard and now he was gonna cover it… so it was a lost work. But I learned a lot from that night."
"It was good because I had a spelling mistake, but still it was hard to believe that of all the places in the world and of all the fences in the world, he had to cover my fence. On other nights, you just meet really strange people at these hours. When I was working next to the beach, one crazy guy kept on bothering us. The day after, I came to take some more pics and someone had torn down the sentence. I don’t know if it was him."

"Now I am working on my 'Colleagues' creatures. I take hibiscus flowers and plant them in urban bushes. Sometimes I take the ribbons with me and just make a heart wherever I go. It depends on my mood. But now I am mostly taking pics: street photography, backyards, etc. But of course, I have some new ideas to make some other street art work. Every time I walk along the street, I feel like doing it. I am sure it's gonna happen one of these days…"

Thank you, Miss Kaplan! For more of her fantastic photos, take a long look through her Flickr.

January 2010: Jerm IX in Vancouver

Jerm IX may live and work in Vancouver, but you can catch his work all over the place. From the Bogotá Stencil Festival to Venice Beach, California, he makes his presence known. Armed with paper, stencils, and quotes (both his own and those of other celebrities), he shares his thoughts and images with people across the globe. Today, he checks in from western Canada. He writes:

"I toyed around a bit with aerosol in the early 90's, but it was about 4 years ago that we started the Jermalism campaign."
"My wife, Ninja IX, is my partner. We spend a good chunk of our time together creating pieces, which are hand-made with stencils and permanent markers, as well as wandering every nook and cranny of the city together. I have also enjoyed collaborating with several street artists, both locally and globally. But I'm at my best when I'm flying solo; that's when I make the best work because I'm brutally honest. I write alone, always.""When we came to the conclusion that we should be putting up our own work, it was just a matter of convenience. I found myself with access to unlimited amounts of purolator stickers, which I immediately began to stick together end to end and create large 'banners'. I chose to abandon the idea of tag form, or any sort of script, and settled immediately on the traditional store bought 2 inch stencil letters. I find that not only do the stencil letters give the illusion of authority or authenticity to the piece in its urban home, but also by removing any aesthetic and creativity from the letter style, the words themselves take center stage. Eventually when the sticker supply dried up, I happily moved on to tearing scrolls from large rolls of paper.""When you spend the majority of your existence wandering, you witness a lot of craziness. One night in a notorious drug alley in Vancouver's infamous downtown eastside, while pasting up giant band-aids with a few friends, a group of people jumped a guy behind us and literally kicked in his skull. Then they scattered it. It was vicious and made me feel sick. But 99 percent of the missions are pleasant."

"Still firing off the scrolls and direct quotes, and very much enjoying it. I'm in the process of recording a hip-hop album and I'm also writing a novel with heavy street art themes. I have sent out over 200 paste-up packs of my banners around the world in the last week and a half. There are a few other projects in my head."

Thanks, Jerm IX! For more photos, check out his Flickr.

December 2009: Olivier in Paris

First off, I must say happy birthday to J, my cousin. Congrats on 22 years of life! To celebrate, we go to Paris to hear from Olivier Kosta-Théfaine. This versatile artist works with everything from spray paint to lighters, using the latter to burn intricate patterns onto walls and ceilings. Today, he shares a few photos and words about his experience as an artist. He writes:

"I did my first graffiti in 1988 in Paris's suburbs."
"In the past, I have collaborated with other artists. Today, I work alone."
"I develop my style by observing the city, traveling, and being curious."
"I like enclosed places, those who are not necessarily accessible by the greatest number of people. I paint in the tunnels of Paris, in old factories from the Socialist era in Berlin, and in hamlets abandoned in southern France."
"I love going to abandoned places to paint. It makes me feel like there is a treasure waiting to be discovered. It feels very strange, a sort of attraction and repulsion. Rediscovering a place that nobody seems have visited over the years is a strange feeling. The most formidable location is certainly an adventure!

Merci, Olivier! For more photos and news, take a look at his website.

December 2009: Erik Burke in Nevada

Born in the desert of Nevada (okay, Reno, but close enough), Erik Burke looked towards the horizon for graffiti inspiration. While he currently lives in San Francisco, he bebops back and forth between his hometown, the Balkans, and Baltic nations. No matter where his travels take him, he always makes sure to leave his mark. He writes:

"I started doing street art, or something along the lines of street art, in '98. I had just seen the best and last issue of 12 oz. Prophet which featured Os Gêmeos and I was amazed. I had been dabbling with graffiti but it never really fit. I saw their work and was like, 'Okay, you can do more than write your name.' So I became that weird kid in Reno that drew pictures and wrote quotes from the Tao Te Ching on rooftops. It was rad in those early stages of pure inspiration and naivety. I learned an incredible amount really quickly.

Over the next decade I would ebb and flow with traditional graffiti but always be in a mindset of experimenting with new mediums. I guess that is what categorized me more akin to the street art world than the graffiti world. Above all, I think that I just wanted to be out working in the street. It's funny though because now the public space seems to be more connected to the Internet than the actual streets. I can find out what's going on in the graffiti/street art world faster by checking a few Flickr contacts than by going on a bike ride through the neighborhood."
"I've had the amazing opportunity to collaborate with a lot of inspiring and amazing artists over the years. From the beginning, my brother has been a bad ass and always offered a helping hand or a tallcan. Broken Crow and I have made some rad murals going back a few years now and I love their graphic work and support. More recently, Cahil Muraghu has been inspiring me and we've been working on an intense west coast east coast mail exchange. Lastly my friend Yale Wolf and I have created a lot of work and murals in an almost telepathic way. All these people work in different and awesome ways but I try to work solo for the most part. It's a lot more stealthy to run solo and have no one dragging their feet. I also think there is something very genuine about doing something completely from your hand and head. Graffiti allows me a chance to define myself and even more so, find myself."
"I'm not really sure if I have developed a style yet in my work. But a proper aperture and exposure to the right amount of mischief is helpful.

I love traveling and finding spots that have a weathered character: the train layups out in the Nevada desert under a full moon, or near the beat up roll up doors of NYC, or in a bombed out building in Sarajevo. The place is definitely important but the recipe is always a little different.""I guess the craziest/luckiest thing that ever happened was while I was getting chased from a spot in Seattle by the cops. I ran through all these blackberry bushes and came to a house. The cops were right behind me and as I was running around the house there was nowhere to go except a small hole. Well, I stepped into the hole and it broke way into a spider web-infested basement and I just froze and tried not to breathe. I could see their flashlights and their feet and I just tried not to move as I felt spiderwebs covering my whole body. I stayed there for what felt like forever, just waiting. I saw the sun starting to come up and walked home to the best shower of my life."
"On a personal level, I've been having an art buffet. Sometimes I look at my work and am like, 'Man, people must think you are schizophrenic. Why can't you just pick something and stick with it?' But I think there is more to work than doing something over and over until you have mastered it, you know? I appreciate a craftsman but I respect a great idea.

That was my major qualm with most graffiti and street art. It was founded so much on repetitiveness that its only spontaneity was its placement. However, the catch-22 is that without the repetitiveness, the work loses its punch; it loses its narrative. So it's no wonder that when street artists have gallery shows they always struggle with its impact on the audience because they are fighting with that spontaneity that the street offers. Some artists pull it off though. Most don't. But there are many sides to it, I suppose.

I, too, spent the majority of the last few years concentrating on the repetitive, iconic, sloganeering of graffiti. It culminated in a video called 'Still Life' where I compulsively drew an abstract shape reminiscent of a piece of paper in the wind, a bird, a wind sock, a triangle with a tooth (as a graffiti writer once said). The shape was kind of a logo for me. The idea was that you float through life and cling on to certain people and places, but for the most part you are 'dust in the wind'. I've done a lot of floating the last decade from Reno to biking across the country to exploring the Baltics and the Balkans, and always leave some sort of bread crumb trail. It may be best summarized by H.R. Fricker, 'My graffiti is my shadow.' Or as my favority artist buZ blurr calls graffiti, 'an announcement of presence.'"

Awesome, Erik! Thanks for sharing. For more photos and info, visit his website.

Friday ProFile: Filippo Minelli

Filippo Minelli is not a lemming. From a young age, his rebellious activities stood out in the crowd. “In preschool, I put a steak in a vegetarian’s coffee and milk,” he laughs. As he grew older he discovered graffiti and put that rebellious spunk to good use. “When I was 12, I had an art teacher who loved graffiti,” he recalls. “Then I started noticing some of them in my city, especially the political ones, and started painting around, too.” For the past 13 years, he’s covered the streets of Franciacorta, Italy, with his gigantic text.

Fortunately, Minelli’s never faced law enforcement issues while he’s out bombing. While he usually paints alone, he understands the appeal of having a crew for backup. “Crews are for people who are together and pushing each other to get up. It’s more about getting up friendship,” he says, “so it's ok if you try to get out of your social situation for a period of your life.”
In the past, Minelli’s taken some heat from older graff artists for his new-school style. However, he’s learned to brush it off. For him, it’s all about enjoyment. “Graffiti is rage and style together, a kind of a war,” he explains. “I think it's a strong social expression. I don't know exactly what street art is because there's a lot of confusion around it. I'm not that interested in ‘graphic-designers’ painting black-and-white characters with no sense for the fun of doing it.”
“I'm meeting a lot of people from all over the world and that's amazing,” he insists. “I’ve been in many places. Till now, Bamako is just the best: easy people, trees in the streets, lot of markets, cheap life, the river, some good clubs and restaurants. On the streets, there's not a lot of graffiti or street art, just posters with images of famous rappers downloaded from the ‘net.”
No matter where he is, Minelli loves telling viewers to wake up. “I’d like to tell people ‘Go fuck yourself and go get a job!’ I love being rude sometimes to get the viewer’s attention.” In the future, he wants to keep living the life. "I am so grateful to taste great food all over the world, to own a studio in the same area where friends produce some of the world's finest wine and to have the possibility of doing my things with less compromises than before," he confesses. With each massive piece, he tries to push the envelope a tad further, making the street art scene "a bit more interesting than before."
Grazie, Filippo! For more gigantic texts, check out his website. After work today, I'm going to sleep for what seems like the first time in a week. Goodnight and good weekend!