Friday, October 28, 2011

COPS PAINTING GRAFFITI?


Looks like law enforcement in the UK is getting into the street art game.

Saw this on the BBC web site and had to share it.

-- Eric Deal

Gloucestershire Police have stencilled the number of arrests the force has made on streets around Gloucester.

The street stencils, applied at 30 city sites, are to highlight the force's "harder approach" to lawbreakers as part of Operation Scorpion.

Since its launch in September, the countywide operation "aimed at tackling any low-level issues" has led to 102 arrests in Gloucestershire.

Supt Rob Priddy said the stencils were a way to "draw attention to our work".

Read more on BBC.co.uk

Thursday, October 27, 2011

NEW BOOK: GRAFFITI 365


I received an advance copy of this book a few months back, but decided to wait till it was available for purchase to blog on it.

This book is unique in that it is perhaps the first book to cover both street art and graffiti effectively. It is written by Jay Edlin aka TERROR 161/JSON, an veteran of New York's subway graffiti movement. He's a cat with a reputation of being difficult to please, so the selection of artists in the book is real cream of the crop -- no scrubs or mid-level players here.

365 covers the artists with succinct and at times witty profiles. The book is a crash course in both street art and graffiti.

In an era where literally thousands of images of graffiti and street art are available in books and on the Internet Graffiti 365 has some rare gems..Don't sleep…Grab it!

-- Eric Deal

From the Publisher
About the book
Graffiti 365 delivers the first real insider’s view into the contemporary graffiti and street-art scenes, as well as their antecedents. A fun, wide-ranging survey of the international graffiti movement, this book uses more than 600 rare, previously unpublished, or legendary images to introduce and describe important artists—from Blade to Banksy—and styles—from bubble to wild. Along the way, Graffiti 365 covers different eras, cities, legendary walls and crews, police and public responses to graffiti, and more.

The author of Graffiti 365, J.SON, has been an artist and historian of the graffiti movement for decades—he started writing graffiti in 1973 and retired in 1984. Unparalleled in its breadth and depth of coverage, Graffiti 365 is a wide-angle snapshot of an entire movement.

About the author
Jay “J.SON” Edlin has written for The Source, Blaze, and Mass Appeal. He recently was interviewed for Jon Naar’s Birth of Graffiti.

Andrew “Zephyr” Witten is the author of Dondi White: Style Master General and has written for Vibe, The Source, and Juxtapoz.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Support KickStart MARE 139 Exhibit


ARRACK MODERN ART

Presents

Carlos MARE139 Rodriguez

STRUCTURAL INTERVENTIONS

Help Kickstart this amazing exhibition by donating your support and receiving art in return. I can’t do this with out the help of our creative community and our supporters so help spread the Kickstarter url-http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnwendelbo/mare139-graffiti-sculpture-the-carrack or donate to the cause.

The more support we receive the more expansive the effort will become to advance the exhibition in the gallery and public space. This will be a groundbreaking effort for my sculptural graffiti works and I hope you all can be a part of it. My collaboration with John Wendelbo will push into new boundaries and we want you all to own a part of it by becoming advocates for the show.

What are we doing?

a LIVE 28 foot long, 8 foot tall graffiti and stencil mural outside the Carrack on Parrish Street Saturday Nov 19th: you, your kids, somebody gets to bring home a part of the wall, and it’s all during Durham ART WALK.

What’s the deal?

The wall mural has been subdivided into a bunch of panels of different sizes, some 1’x1’ and up to 4’x8’. We are pre-selling only blank panels ahead of time to pay for the show (we have a seriously wild installation for you that week end indoors at the Carrack): you can purchase a panel, you have no idea what will be on it besides the excellent Art of any and all MARE139 / WENDELBO collaborations. What you do know is that it’s going to be awesome, raw, genuine and authentic. Of course panel sales stop before the beginning of the performance, wouldn’t be fair otherwise! We also DO NEED to pre-sell $1000 within the next two weeks to make sure all goes smoothly.

Hi Arts NYC pledges to match $2,500 towards the show if we meet that goal!

To get more info, view a video of a 3D sculpture we will be using as the basis for one of our lay-ups, or to buy a panel now and visit our kickstarter page here! (simply follow the ‘back this project’ button once you’re there).

See you on Saturday November 19th downtown Durham at 111 west Parrish Street!

Sunday, October 16, 2011

NEW JERSEY GRAFFITI






I'd recently been on New Jersey Transit and it looks like there is some effort to get some graffiti moving on it. I saw remnants of pieces buffed off the train exteriors. It felt like almost ever other train had a car with a buffed painting. I even saw some incomplete pieces… as if the writers got raided or the train pulled out of the yard before they could finish. The system also has plenty of track side pieces. It's not New York 1976, but, hey, it made my day more interesting!

Eric DEAL CIA


Saturday, October 15, 2011

THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN GRAFFITI







Like I said, I haven't been blogging much...Back July I attended a book launch party for The History of American Graffiti, Roger Gastman and Caleb Neelon's latest book. It was held at The Hole, Kathy Grayson's new gallery located on the Bowery in lower Manhattan. The big draw at the event was the presence of a group of New York's pioneering graffiti artists who are featured in the book. TAKI 183, SJK 171, SNAKE1 MIKE 171, LAZAR, ROCKY 184 and others signed books. The event drew more folks from art world circles than graffiti writers, but many were in attendance, like PAID 3, REVOLT, ZEPHYR, TERROR 161, WANE ONE, IVORY TM7, T-KID 170, DOC TC5 and giants such as LSD OM and FDT 56.


About the book

The scope of the book is quite vast, in fact if feels a bit like an encyclopedia. It covers modern graffiti from its beginnings in Philadelphia and New York but also touches on earlier movements like freight train monikers and Cholo graffiti. What really makes this book stand out is that it sheds light on many cities that have been generally overlooked like Kansas City, Cleveland, New Orleans and others. My personal favorite part of the book is the photo of a tag by JULIO 204, one of New York's earliest writers.. To the best of my knowledge it is the first and only book to publish such a photo.


The History of American Graffiti --The big picture!


Eric DEAL CIA


From the Publisher

The History of American Graffiti By Roger Gastman; Caleb Neelon, Harper Design, Hardcover

JAMES TOP HIP HOP USA SNEAKER BATTLE







JAMES TOP is constantly putting together unique events. For the past year he has been working with HIP HOP USA on series of graffiti art battles set on a pretty unique canvas— sneakers. In July I dropped by one of the battles.


Organized by Terry Nelson for Hip Hop USA, and curated by JAMES TOP, the exhibitions include photographs of the artists' original paintings on subways and hand painted recreations of the paintings on Hip Hop USA's white canvas sneakers.


Artists represented in the exhibition include: STAY HIGH 149, JAMES TOP, JESTER, SPAR TFP, KING 2, KING BEE, SLAVE, TON, AZ ONE, LAVA I & II, PASER aka Popmaster Fabel, SHADOW TR, ALE ONE and many others.


I vibed on some cool music and art chilled with JAMES and my man REE MTA, but the a real highlight of the evening was meeting KING 2 for the first time. KING was one of my childhood heros. During the mid 70s he ran with guys like TRACY 168 and PEL. He banged out a lot of great pieces on the IRT 4 line. He was one of the best of the era, so I expected a bit of arrogance, but the cat was totally humble. What a day!

STREET ARTIST JR IN NEW YORK




I have been busy with personal stuff, so I did not blog much over the summer, but now that my time is freeing up a bit I figured I'd share a few things.


Over the summer the French street artist visited New York City. JR is best known for pasting large scale portraits in public spaces. JR is the 2011 recipient of a TED Prize. www.tedprize.org The New York Times ran a great article on him last year.



Here are photos from his 2011 visit to New York City.