Blu’s giant wall art
|Not only is the scale of the things Italian street artist Blu is doing on the street, impressive — he does these huge pieces with just rollers with long extensions — even more amazing is how quickly he works. If you haven’t seen the stop motion animation he did, you should. It’s an animation on the walls of a street in which he’s painting, then buffing, then painting it again, with a succession of characters moving all around. It’s just insane how much work it takes to create these things. I don’t think anyone has ever done anything like it.
Tagged: building art, graffiti, street art
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Richmond-based graffiti artist Chip7 has a style that is at once urban and also vaguely tribal with their crude lines and rich patterns. Read more
My background is in street art and there are a lot of people historically who I’ve really liked. But in terms of new people, I particularly love the work of Brooklyn artist Judith Supine. It’s a surreal combination of old engraving art mixed with hand-drawn and painted images. He does paste up posters, but they’re not just square, they’re cut-out shapes of these interesting looking characters. The closest thing I could compare it to are the Monty Python animations. Read more
Street art has always been a place for creative freedom. Due to its very nature it’s also a maverick art, with the varying and diverse styles found being part of its appeal. From Shoreditch in London where works by the likes of Banksy, Invader and Sweet Toof live side-by-side – enlivening the streets with their subversive and eye catching design, to Berlin, where they’ve turned the notion of graffiti on its head by using jet sprays with stencils to clean parts of a dirty wall, producing a new piece of art. Being displayed on the streets that are so familiar to us, it often remains hidden, as our familiarity blinds us to it. Read more
Also by SHEPARD FAIREY
I’m a big fan of Alex Turner’s side project, The Last Shadow Puppets. It’s just really good music. When I first got their record, I didn’t know if it was a re-issue or if it was brand new. It doesn’t sound like a jokey pastiche. It sounds sincere.
Al Farrow’s gun part sculptures
Al Farrow just did a show with me at the Martin Irvine Gallery in Washington DC. He builds religious reliquaries and mosques out of gun parts: AK47s and Uzis, in particular. They’re really beautiful. It sounds gimmicky but it’s actually extraordinary. The newer stuff that he’s doing is extremely time-consuming. His work is very meticulous, and the beauty of the craft is a striking contrast to how instantly and senselessly life can be taken. Read more
The futuristic retro sounds of DJ Z-Trip
This guy is my favorite DJ. He’s the inventor of the mash-up, but his skills go way beyond that. I love to DJ, but when i do, I play a lot of classics. I don’t stick to new stuff because I’m not trying to pull out the top forty banger for the club. That’s what I like about the way Z-Trip plays. He actually inspired me to start DJ-ing in the first place. He mixes hip-hop with classic rock, eighties, and all sorts of weird stuff you wouldn’t think would go together. He’ll have people dancing to Deep Purple, for instance, who would never usually listen to a Deep Purple record. It’s a real skill to be able to entertain and educate at the same time. That’s what I try and do with my art, and that’s what I enjoy about DJ Z-Trip: that ability to slip the cool, lesser known songs in there, which works because of the inertia of the stuff people do know. He understands how to navigate that balance.
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Manilla-illustrator Anjo Bolarda’s certainly has a lot of tricks up his sleeve. Bubbly and colorful, this stuff is like my high-school sketchbook come to life — albeit, a much cooler version of it!
Jean-Julien Pous’ Seeking You is an animated love letter to the city of Hong Kong. It presses all the same buttons as Blade Runner and In the Mood for Love, with a touch of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s gothic style, and though it’s really amazing eye candy, it also smacks of creepy, orientalist expat. Here, an entire Asian city is exoticized, fetishized, and finally anthropomorphized in a rather unsubtle way. Why are so many creepy old European dudes so lecherous when it comes to Asia?
Producing only 100 limited edition pieces of each style, Melbourne’s Who Am Eye are a burgeoning cult label. Read more
Sculptor Richard Stipl creates disturbing, gothic, vaguely religious tableaus using hyper-realistic, resin casted figures that quite often are engaged in some bizarre behavior, covered in blood, leaking gore, or otherwise frozen in some horrific pose. A friend of mine said, ‘If you’re going to develop that level of skill, why would you use it to make such ugly things?’ I kind of like gross things, though, so it doesn’t bother me. Read more
I’m enjoying the writing on the recently launched The Epi-Cure blog, which discusses the ‘latest scientific studies on health and nutrition’, and features interviews with ‘expert scientists, dieticians, and nutritionists’. The site’s founder and editor, Michelle Grey, also runs tasty, healthy recipes from New York chef Benjamin Towill, including today’s installment: Stuffed Zucchini Flowers [above]. Hmmm hmm. Read more
Not much more needs to be said about this. Ricky Gervais, the funniest man in
Peter Morén, one third of the Swedish group — Peter, Bjorn and John — that gave us some of 2006’s catchiest moments with their collection of eminently whistlable tunes, has a wonderful debut solo album out called The Last Tycoon. Read more
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Karen Caldicott’s clay head models
British born, New York-based model maker Karen Caldicott has been making clay heads for all major US publications over the last decade. Read more
There is not a medium that UK illustrator Lizzy Stewart cannot wrap around her little finger to make the most beautiful, whimsical images. Read more
Wheeeeee! This game is so freaking fun! You move your cursor over each dot to make them split into four smaller dots ad infinitum.
Yum, yum, cupcakes are fun. These creations are so clever, so arty, so damn bizarre that it would almost be a shame to eat them. Almost! Read more
With the recession still biting, it may be time to whip out the glue and the cardboard and make your next pair of cool kicks. Don’t know how they’d manage in the rain though? Read more
Thanks to Sony Australia, four Lost At E Minor readers will win personal audio prizes, including the new 8GB Walkman S series video MP3 player and the MDRXB500 Extra Bass headphones. Read more
Originating in Shanghai, the Feiyue sneaker first appeared in the 1920s. Made of light material, the shoe has crossed continents, arriving in Europe in 2006 where it was picked up by a team of French enthusiasts, fascinated by sneakers and urban culture. Read more
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Jox McRox said | 28 May, 2009
Blu is da main man! absolute mclegend, GO McMENTAL!