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Graffiti Art by D.O.C.S. Takes Inspiration from Nature

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:42:09 +0100

by Hannah Clare Gordon, 07/24/10

filed under: Art

Careful trompe l’oeil is hardly an artist’s technique you expect a tagger to employ in his graffiti work. But these often miscalculated and misunderstood artists have a lot to teach the world about style and artful urban transformation with a message. D.O.C.S (Doing Only Crooked Shit) is the graffiti-writing duo of Ausias Pérez and Felipe Perdomo, who recently created a piece called “Here Lies Street-Art” located on the banks of the River Ebro in Zaragoza, Spain. A surprisingly lush piece applied with a 2D medium, these artists are sowing the seeds for the revival of street art in Spain.

Their piece’s leafy appearance, set upon a contrasting backdrop of stone, was inspired by the natural foliage of graveyards. Likewise, the message is delivered in the form of an epitaph, ultimately suggesting that street art is deceased. In observing this piece the viewer is forced to consider the decline of street art, and D.O.C.S symbolically uses nature to advocate the rebirth or ‘fertilization’ of street art.

The members of D.O.C.S. are multi-nationals living and working in Valencia, Spain and Leeds, UK, multi-tasking as visual artists, graphic designers, illustrators and as self-proclaimed hustlers.

Graffiti suspect caught "white handed" in Cranston

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:39:42 +0100

CRANSTON, R.I. -- An abandoned backpack, a strong odor of spray-paint vapor and a rustling in the woods led police to a suspect hiding in bushes with white spray paint on his hands.

The man, D**** S******, 20, was charged with vandalism and is being investigated for graffiti at 15 other locations in the city, Police Major Robert W. Ryan said Friday.

Ryan said that at 11:15 p.m. Thursday, Sgt. Joshua Dygon was patrolling the bike path under the Crawford Street Bridge in the Arlington section of town when he noticed a black backpack containing several spray cans.

He noted graffiti and smelled spray paint propellant, Ryan said. After officers Kim Carroll and Andrew Leonard arrived, they heard movement in nearby woods and found Sanchez lying on his back trying to conceal himself in the bushes, Ryan said. S****** had white spray paint on his hands.

S****** was charged with one count of vandalism and ordered to appear in District Court, Warwick, on Aug. 5.

PEETA Solo Show @DaBakery

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:29:33 +0100

The All City Blackbook Show

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:29:52 +0100

Graffiti NYC: Artists of the Third Rail

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:20:47 +0100

      Graffiti NYC: Artists of the Third Rail features photographs, works on paper, paintings, sculptures, murals and live presentations by Martha Cooper, John Naar, Richard Hambleton, Snake1, Noc167, Jamestop, Stayhigh149, PNUT, Cap1, Tracy168, Futura2000, Dondi, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Phetus, among other legends of the third rail.

      Benrimon Contemporary is pleased to announce a group exhibition that demonstrates the trajectory of the history of graffiti in New York City. Graffiti NYC: Artists of the Third Rail is curated by Molly Sampson in collaboration with Mario Ramos (ARE) and Claudia Bumbac (DIA), owners of 1HUNDREDB; a Lower East Side storefront gallery that serves as the mecca of NYC urban art and graffiti culture. Aerosol Art has festooned New York City’s concrete facades and steel traincars for over four decades, it began as a humble trend of “tagging” in 1969 and transformed into what is now referred to as street art. The scope of this artistic genre has swelled in size to encompass a myriad of styles ranging from painted murals to wheat pastes and stickers. Graffiti as a fine art form has been the subject of controversy since the first appearance of street art into galleries nearly forty years ago, yet overtime, this rebellious and living art form has become a prominent component of the art historical canon.

      As urban art culture has grown in popularity and adapted various forms, art dealers saw an opportunity to promote a new art form within the white walls of a gallery. Graffiti artists began to exhibit works in galleries and museums in the 1970s, and subsequently adapted their graffiti techniques into works that fit the gallery mold. Graffiti NYC: Artists of the Third Rail will present a range of canvases and works on paper that tracks the pulse of NYC street art over the past forty years. This paradigm-shifting art genre will be exhibited as a retrospective of NYC’s writers’ culture.

      Photographs are an essential method of documenting graffiti since they are a permanent way to capture such a transient work of art. Photography has prolifically prolonged the short-lived existence of graffiti pieces that were cleaned off, painted over and disbanded, while successfully becoming its own artistic form. In the absence of photographic images, graffiti would be all but a vague memory in the minds of New Yorkers. Photographs from the 1970’s and 80’s will provide the present day viewer with the opportunity to walk the streets of NYC painted inside out at the height of graffiti’s explosion.

      Graffiti on subway cars was a phenomenon witnessed by New York City’s straphangers during the early 70’s and lasting in intensity until 1989. Though the art on train doors today is mostly limited to photographs or black book sketches, the gallery will pay homage to the origins of graffiti by incorporating actual NYC MTA subway doors into the exhibition. These doors will be painted as a live installation to demonstrate graffiti techniques and auctioned off during the exhibition’s opening night to benefit The Bowery Mission.

      Graffiti and street art are normally viewed in public outside of institutional spaces. The gallery acknowledges the natural setting of this art form and will allow the art to thrive in its proper street environment by having two murals painted on the gallery gates for the duration of the exhibition.

All the best,

Zandie Brockett

Benrimon Contemporary, LLC

514 West 24th Street, 2nd Floor

New York, New York 10011

t: +1 212 924 2400

f: +1 212 659 0054

e: zandie@benrimon.com

w: www.bcontemporary.com

Summer Calender:

Graffiti NYC: Artists of the Third Rail

July 15 - August 10

Younger than Moses: Idle Worship

August 12 - September 6

President Obama Gets Graffiti Art and Organic Beer as Gifts

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:17:06 +0100

Image from einesigns

It's a tradition: heads of state exchange gifts when visiting each other. So on his recent trip to the USA, Prime Minister Cameron has given President Obama a piece of graffiti art by British graffiti artist Ben Eine. In fact it was a swap: in return, Mr. Cameron was given a litho by the American Ed Ruscha.

What a rise in fame and status for graffiti. It used to be called defacing public property. Then the elusive Banksy began getting thousands for his pieces. And now the President of the USA has it hanging in the White House.

Ben Eine is a newer and quirkier gaffiti artist than Bansky, who has become almost old hat; making world tours and popping up in Canada and the USA. Eine has been in the graffiti business for almost twenty years, starting when he was 14 years old. His pseudonym comes from the word one, which morphed into uno and then the german eine.

Much is known about him; he has been photographed, he lives in the east end and he has three children, works as a full-time artist and shows his work in galleries.

Images from arrestedmotion

His latest project, which is hardly graffiti, and more art, is located on the shuttered doors of shops in the east end of London. Called "Alphabet Street", he spray painted a letter on the door of a series of shops, all with the permission of the shop owners. They collaborated about the colour of the letter that they got. And some fit the shop, for example Flying Burrito got an F.

The street looks magical now and the locals love it: "The nicest reaction is seeing kids skipping down the street calling out the alphabet - or," he adds, "parents saying my work has helped their kids learn their A to Z."

Image from Wychwood Brewery

Cameron's other present started the battle of the beers. It was a bottle of Hobgoblin organic beer. Served warm, it was made by a brewery in his constituency. Wychwood Brewery has been making Hobgoblin since 1995 and now it is the fifth best selling bottled ale in the UK. In exchange, President Obama gave him a bottle of Goose Island 312 from Chicago, to be served cold. Not to be outdone; it is also an artisanal beer.

Graffiti artist jailed for £40,000 spree

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:13:30 +0100

A 4ft 3in graffiti vandal from London caused £40,000 of damage in areas including the capital on a "tagging" spree - using a stepladder.

M******* M******* was jailed for daubing his personalised signature on buildings and trains in 11 London boroughs, as well as Hertfordshire, Sussex and Kent.

The 27-year-old, who admitted causing criminal damage at an earlier hearing, had carried out a campaign of vandalism over two years, British Transport Police said.

M******, of Castleton Road, ******, south London, was sentenced to nine months jail and given a five-year anti-social behaviour order at Blackfriars Crown Court.

Using handwriting analysis, detectives compared a tag M***** daubed on a train at Three Bridges with police photographs of the same tag in various other locations.

Detectives executed a search warrant at M******'s address in M****** and recovered a number of items relating to graffiti, including pieces of paper with the tag sketched on, as well as paraphernalia such as spray paint cans, marker pens and photographs of Mandell associating with other known graffiti vandals.

After being questioned in custody, M****** was released on police bail while investigators carried out further inquiries.

The court heard that M****** continued to offend while on police bail, daubing a train with graffiti in Shepherd's Well, Kent.

Detective Constable Colin Saysell said: "Vandals like M****** who commit graffiti offences often believe that their work is art - sadly, when the chosen canvas is railway property it cannot be considered art and is nothing more than wanton damage that costs thousands of pounds to clean up.

"Writing graffiti on the railway or elsewhere is not a harmless pastime and we hope the sentence handed down to M****** acts as a deterrent to other like-minded individuals."

Graffiti Tagger Turns Entrepreneur

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:08:25 +0100

DENVER -- The hiss of spray paint cans echo in a southwest Denver neighborhood as three young men decorate a cinder block wall. This is not an act of vandalism, but rather a mural intended to prevent tagging."It's looking good so far," said 20-year-old Ratha Sok, a graffiti artist.Sok understands the lure of a blank urban wall to taggers because not so long ago, he was part of the problem.
Lacking the money to buy art supplies and canvases, he started tagging at 15 years-old.

"Wherever I was, I was leaving my mark," Sok said.This nightly ritual would end a year later when a graffiti detective connected Sok's name with his spray-painted designs."I woke up and the cops were there, and they were like, 'We finally caught this guy,'" Sok said.He was sentenced to two years in juvenile detention where he devised a plan to channel his passion and talent in a positive direction.
The result is 2Kool, a public art and clothing design company which also offers community workshops to help steer young graffiti artists down the right path. It is a goal he was able to work into his business plan with the help of the Greater Good Academy, which helps low income entrepreneurs turn ideas into reality, with an emphasis on responsibility."As the public demands and wants greener products, more ethical behavior, more community engagement from companies, those companies will be come more successful, will become more competitive," said Richard Eidlin, president of the Progress Group, which operates the academy.
The Greater Good Academy provided Sok with training in marketing and business planning, which allowed him to expand his business and move the office out of his bedroom and into a warehouse space in north Denver. The move, Sok believes, will increase 2Kool's visibility and help the graffiti artists change the perception of graffiti from public nuisance to public art and fashion. It's a plan intended to make amends for illegal tagging in the past, and to create a successful and meaningful career."I'm really confident that this business will help me be sustainable in life, because this is something that I love to do," Sok said.And it seems he is well on his way to meeting his goals.
Sok and his fellow artists have had their work featured in the New York Times, and recently installed two murals at Denver International Airport, which will be on display until September 2010.To learn more about 2Kool, visit be2kool.com.The Greater Good Academy is an eight-week training course teaching the triple bottom line philosophy of financial, social and environmental responsibility. Classes are scheduled to begin on Sept. 21, 2010. For more information, visit proggroup.com.

Houston Man Pops the Big Question with Graffiti

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:05:30 +0100

HOUSTON - When you’re confident the girl will say “yes,” you can use the side of an auto parts store to pop the big question.

On Friday, Shannon Reiswig of Houston carried out his plan to ask his girlfriend, Jessica, to take his hand in marriage. It involved paint, an artist, and a filmmaker.

“Both me and Jessica like street art a lot,” said Reiswig. “We are both photographers, and we follow street artists in town. I thought I would get a hold of a couple friends and see if they could help me out.”

Reiswig asked Houston-based graffiti artist Ack! to paint a colorful proposal on the side of a business in midtown, and he asked filmmaker Alex Luster to capture the big moment as Jessica was lured to the wall.

While the entire setup took a day, it only took Jessica a few seconds to mark “yes” on the piece of art.

“She was excited,” said Reiswig. “She was shaking and nervous about the whole situation, especially since Alex was videoing it, but she was really thrilled about it.”

Luster then turned the day-long project into an 81-second video and uploaded it to Vimeo.com on Sunday night.

“I thought it’d get a couple hundred hits online -- no big deal,” said Luster. “That next morning it just blew up. It went wild. It started getting few hundred comments and then emails and then text messages.”

By Wednesday morning, the video had already reached over 40,000 views on Vimeo.com. While Luster says response to the film has been great, he says the new fiancés are the ones getting the real attention.

“They are happy. That’s what matters to me, but I don’t mind it going viral either,” said Luster. “When I did it, I just did it to make something for them to preserve that memory.”

(In case you’re wondering, yes, the auto parts store gave them permission to use the brick wall. As a side note, filmmaker Alex Luster works in the promotions department at FOX 26/My20.)

Tube graffiti gang jailed for ‘epidemic’ of train vandalism

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:03:05 +0100

All Federal & State Prisons Call (888) 728-2726 to save today!

A teenage gang has been locked up for vandalising dozens of Tube trains and stations with graffiti.

The teenagers daubed the tag “FTS” all over the trains and filmed themselves on their mobile phones. One of the gang brazenly declared online: “If I get two years I'll still paint.”

The youngest gang member was only 14 when took part in the vandalism between April 2008 and June last year. Now 16, he was sentenced alongside a 17-year-old who also cannot be named and four older youths at Southwark crown court.

Passing sentence Judge John Price said: “The damage was a very large scale. Whole Tube carriages were defaced. It is an epidemic. We see it all over London.

“It is distressing for people, it causes chaos, carriages have to be taken out of use at enormous cost and repainted.”

Earlier, prosecutor William McGivern said the gang's damage amounted to nearly £60,000 and disrupted commuter services across north-west London and the suburbs.

The gang was in contact by email, phone or text to discuss targets, security and meeting places.

They would then get to work armed with bolt cutters, spray cans, permanent marker pens, acid and paint.

Most of the gang were arrested in July last year after a long-running operation by British Transport Police.

T** H******, 18, R****** B*******, 18, J*** B*****, 18, and E****** F******, 19, all of Pinner, admitted conspiracy to cause criminal damage and were sent to a young offender institute for nine months each.

The 17-year-old was given an eight-month detention and training order and the 16-year-old was ordered to undergo two years' supervision and comply with a three-month curfew.

Each defendant also received a three-year Asbo banning them from carrying graffiti-related items or from entering private railway property