fun times with strafe

Berlin July 07

2009-02-08T13:09:00.001-08:00

I had really limited time in Berlin, and I was disorganised as hell, so I hadn't sorted out any artists to meet. This was my own fault because people had made some suggestions when I was still in Melbourne but I hadn't followed them up. Anyway, despite this, it was a pretty nice first visit. Stayed in a hostel close to Mitte, and spent the first day resting, then the next cruising around on a fat-wheeled bicycle that I hired. I can see why so many artists love this city. It has a really chilled vibe, and so many interesting crumbling buildings to squat in and/or paint. I missed the Berlin wall though! I was still on my bicycle, went off the edge of my map, spent ages cruising around trying to work out where I was, and then had to rush to get the bike back before the hire place shut. That was a bit disappointing!

This tower mostly kept me orientated!

The Brandenburg Gate

The Jewish Memorial. This and the museum were incredible.

Dom Berlin

Met these kids painting a wall - they gave me some good directions for graff places.

Slobben.

Faile Collective.

Don't know who this is, but I love it......

Banksy.

Unknown.

July Travels: NYC street art and graffiti

2008-02-25T16:28:00.000-08:00

Of course one of the major reasons I wanted to see NYC was the graffiti. Now I doubt I really touched the tip of the iceberg in my time there, but here's what I snapped anyway.

5 Pointz

Logan was kind enough to take me out on a trip to 5 Pointz in Queens, which is pretty much an old factory which has been completely bombed, but is mostly legal these days. I think there are even some studios inside now. Logan wanted to see this too, so we took a trip out one afternoon. The sheer volume of coverage was incredible. All the best pieces IMO were around the other side......... Def. going back here next time I'm in town.

Other pics from around town:

July 07 travel: New York - wall decay

2007-07-19T16:57:00.000-07:00

In general, I was revelling in the layers and layers of paint, rust, stickers and general decay in NY. I think this is the point where I just started taking ECU details (often abstract) of walls and surfaces. DUMBO, in particular had all sorts of amazing worn away textures:

DUMBO

DUMBO

Queens

Williamsburg subway

July Travels: Logan Hicks in NYC

2007-07-16T09:35:00.000-07:00

Logan is another person I met at the 06 Melbourne Stencil Festival. He, John and I hung out pretty solidly, and got on like a house on fire. He came back to Melbourne for the K-Swiss tour later in 07 also. I'd originally talked about paying him a visit in LA, but then he and his girlfriend Kristen had a bit of a radical life change, and moved to NYC. Honestly, I wasn't that gutted to miss out on LA, and I had NY on my itinerary anyway. Logan's girlfriend Kristen was pregnant also, and they've now had a baby boy, Sailor Logan Hicks.

NY rocked. It seriously did. For some reason I didn't expect to like it so much, but I found myself loving the pace, the people watching, and the mishmash of everything. Logan and Kristen had snared themselves a pretty nice little place in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. So I scored the comfy couch bed, and generally intruded upon their space (which they'd only just moved into) for about 5 days.

We developed a nice little routine where Kristen and I would go to one of the many bakeries around their place to pick up coffee and pastries for breakfast, then Logan and Kristen would get their work done during the day while I gallivanted around town going to things like MoMA and the Guggenheim. Then generally we would meet up for a meal or similar in the evening. As well as this, they took me out for a nice picnic with a great view of the skyline, plus Logan showed me around DUMBO (District Under Manhattan Bridge), and we went to a few openings in the neighbourhood too. Actually I was expecting the work in the shows to be amazing, but we both agreed it was pretty underwhelming..... I guess a good example of writers who start doing gallery work late in their career, but it doesn't seem like their work suits a gallery space.

My lovely hosts - plus the very snuffly bulgy-eyed Petunia and Beatrice.

Hip kids outside a hip Williamsburg exhibition opening.

All the standard taxi chaos in Times Square.

Some warehouse art/afternoon we went to.

Lister is also in NY now. He seems to be doing brilliantly. Check out his site here.

I also caught up with Rupert - one of my old school friends from way back in the day. He is a pretty brilliant classical guitarist, and got a scholarship to the Manhattan School of Music a few years back. Now he's doing his post-grad at Yale. We did a few classic tourist activities like walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, then having a picnic in Central Park. Was a really nice afternoon chatting and seeing where we were both at after all that time. Oh, and we went to the 24 hr Apple store, and I emerged blinking into the light about $500 poorer. I knew it was a bad idea....

Bustling iCommerce.

I have now realised how much of a luxury it is being able to stroll around a massive gallery for hours on end.... MoMA and the Guggenheim were definitely highlights for me. I would have liked to get around to some smaller galleries too, but that's for another visit I think.

MoMA

Nice op-art (detail), Guggenheim

Every time I see Bauhaus design work, I go all weak at the knees.

guess who

I guess I just have too many street art/graff pics to put them in this post, so I'll dump them in the next one.

July Travels: John Grider/Broken Crow in Minneapolis

2007-07-09T16:00:00.000-07:00

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/

Melbourne Empty Show - Feb 07

2007-05-17T01:42:00.000-07:00

Damn. These have been a long time coming. They're from the Empty Show in the 3rd week of Feb 07, but my scanner was broken, and then then when it was fixed, I got too lazy to scan all of these. The Empty Show is an initiative that has been happening in Melbourne (and in other areas in Aus) for a few years now. Local artists take over an abandoned space (often due for demolition) and spend a week or so creating art. Then there's an 'opening'. where everyone runs around taking millions of pics. This site was an abandoned metalworks factory in the city near Flagstaff station. It's bizarre being able to paint through the day while passers by walk by absolutely oblivious. Awesome space, but I think I might have inhaled some asbestos......Cheers to Vexta and Braddock for all the organising.

Braddock

Opening

Opening

...

Opening

Lio

Mask & Lio

Vexta & Lio

Miso and Lio

Yok

Natuk (I think...)

Miso

Ghostpatrol

Ghostpatrol

The aftermath....

Collab wall with Lio

2007-03-19T20:43:00.000-07:00

I'd seen Lio's work at the Empty Show, and really liked his stuff. Got in touch with him and we'd soon organised a wall. It was a very last-minute arrangement. Luckily I had a day off, and fortunately Vexta tipped me off that Monkey was happy for us to do the side of St Jeromes.

Was a solid afternoon's painting. Then Rob (Pixxil) strolled by at precisely the right time laden with excessive amounts of camera gear and took millions of pics. Some nice ones in there.

Wall Commission - Collingwood

2007-02-18T19:09:00.000-08:00

This was a job organised under the banner of PinXit, who knew a friend of their publicist was keen to have some interior work done in his apartment.

I had met Ghostpatrol and Miso briefly at last year's Stencil Festival, but hadn't worked with them before. This job came along at a pretty good time, and GP and I both put our hands up for it, with Miso coming on board a bit later.

This was a really open brief, which we all appreciated. It was really nice to not have something too prescriptive. The only stipulation was that it needed to involve some sort of metamorphosis or progression, which wasn't too hard to incorporate.

The design

This whole project involved a lot of meetings, drafts and planning, and way too much mapping and measuring for my liking, but the end result is very satisfying, and something that I think really suits the owner's aesthetic sensibilities.

Wall 1 was 5.25 x 3m, Wall 2 was 6 x 3m, there is meant to be a flow between each wall when you look at them from a particular angle.

Cheers to Dave and Thom @ Envo Photography for the pics: www.envophotography.com.au

At work on my monster flytrap.....

Miso and the mega-deer.....

Miso, Ghostpatrol and a very big canvas....

Wall 1: complete

Wall 2: complete

Piece in Collingwood

2007-01-20T19:49:00.000-08:00

Found this one right near my house on the way home yesterday. Trying to work out who the artist is. Looks like Sabre, AMN crew?

Love the linework on the character in this. I'm wondering whether it's the same artist responsible for the Munch-style female figures on Rose St.

Actually this character reminds me HEAPS of Silouette (USA), who also has an Art Nouveau influence, and similar faces on her characters.

Dskyzer Tees

2007-01-17T17:47:00.000-08:00

Gaz (Dskyzer) is one of those people I met and had a good chat with a while back, then saw his work at the Letterheads exhibition at Wooden Shadow Gallery in Richmond last September, but didn't realise it was his. His was one of my favourite letters, and when I was trawling around and saw the same design up on his myspace page, I sent him a random complimentary note saying how much I liked his style. Then we put 2 and 2 together, and worked out we already sorta knew each other.

Dskyzer is of the old skool Melbourne graff scene that was going off when I was about 5 years old. Anyway, how wicked are his designs? These are some of his tees he's been selling (I'm sure he won't mind me posting pics up here), of which I have now purchased four. The best thing about buying tees from Gaz is that you also get the experience of hanging out while he prints them, which is always random, and always hilarious.

You can look him up and buy tees here: www.myspace.com/dskyzer

Latest stickers

2007-01-17T06:14:00.000-08:00

Put these up before work this morning. Yeah I know stickers don't really count, but I'm grasping at straws right now, as I have no new work cut to put up.

These little guys haven't really seen the light of day until now, however. Did some canvases with them for the Stencil Festival last year, then sold them to some Prahran punters at Tusk Gallery before I got pics of them.

Russian Stencillers

2007-01-17T05:47:00.000-08:00

So while I'm waiting for the laptop here to digest these enormous large-format PSD files, I've been doing a bit of a search around for some stencillers in Russia. I randomly came across 2 artists on SR a while ago doing some really fresh work, and made a mental note to check them out in more detail.

Check out the wicked number above. Their style is totally my cup of tea. They are called the incubus project, and are based in Saint Petersburg.

Then there's also this guy, Zakut, who I think is in Moscow. Nice work on the detailed scales.

This is great news. It has encouraged me to think that I'm not necessarily committing stencil suicide by moving over that part of the world. On my previous visits I hadn't seen much graff or stencils to speak of, and was starting to wonder whether much existed. Was obviously hanging with the wrong crowd.......

There's a very brief mention of The Incubus Project on Wooster here: http://www.woostercollective.com/2007/04/08-week/

Plus they sell some apparel etc through Redspective in Berlin here:
http://www.redspective.com/shop/