July Travels: John Grider/Broken Crow in Minneapolis

July 07 marked the beginnings of my move to Russia, but I took some detours along the way - partially to catch up with some artist-friends and see what was happening in their neck of the woods.

After 5 days in Denver visiting my friend from university Steve, I headed to Minneapolis, to stay with an awesome guy I met in 06, when he came out to Melbourne for the Stencil Festival. John Grider (or Broken Crow) needed a place to stay, so I said I'd put him up at my place. Little did we know that he, Logan and I would end up forming such a formidable party team throughout the festival.

I think everyone that knows John says that he's a wonderful and very driven artist, but almost more importantly, he's fantastic company, and insightful. I was really excited to see John in his home setting.

I met John's girl Christin for the first time, plus his stepson Jake. Actually Christin was pregnant, and they've since had a baby girl, called Weather. We spent a few days out at Christin's family's cabin on a lake, which was beautiful.

John's little family.

John getting some serious lilo action.

One of the many frogs Jake caught.

Once we got back to Minneapolis, we had a bit of time for John and Christin to take me around to see some of the bigger pieces he has done around Minneapolis. When I first saw John's work, in Melbourne, it was standard size. Since then, being a complete nutcase, he decided to work out how to do larger stencils. Now I have seen big pieces before, but never any this large - usually you'd have to do it freehand.

Private commission: had to stand on a dumpster and peer over the fence to get this shot.

Massive shark, collaborative wall.

Salon Stella: this is one of the pieces that got everyone talking about John's work.

Obviously John tiles his designs to get them that large, but he cuts from MDF or similar substances using a tool called a rotozip, which is a little bit like a smooth-bit drill. Very messy preparation when it's hot as hell and all the sawdust sticks to your sweaty body, but John was nice enough to help me enlarge and cut out one of my designs.

John and the roto-zip.

Me tangling with the roto-zip.

All up, it was a really nice chance to catch up with John in his own setting, and see what his life is like there. With his new baby, I think he's doing a lot less travelling right now, but I'm sure there are still massive things in the pipeline for him.

Check his myspace here: http://www.myspace.com/brokencrow

His website here: http://www.brokencrow.com/