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/

Melbourne Empty Show - Feb 07

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

Me

Vexta & Lio

Me

Miso and Lio

Yok

Natuk (I think...)


Miso

Ghostpatrol

Ghostpatrol

The aftermath....

Collab wall with Lio

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

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

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

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

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.