July 07 travel: New York - wall decay

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

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

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/