Heya HappyFt pardners. Haven’t posted much in the past weeks because I’ve been laying low, reorganizing, re-energizing, and trying to land from a year or so on the road. So not much has gone on in these yon parts of the Left Coast. Well, I did come out of a great men’s meditation retreat at Spririt Rock a few Wednesday’s back and landed smack into Christine Marie and Dan Cantrell’s Rootabega Opera. I’d known about their project for months and was never sure if my schedule would allow me to be part of the show, but they had a small part throwing shadows that they kept for me! And I jumped in slowly but with relish and spanch. Great to land back into the “shit” as Wes Nisker calls life, into an amazing fantasy land of shadows, clowns, and amazing live music. The flame throwers and metal art of the Fire Arts Festival also provided a strange take on reality after a week of looking inward.
Here’s a YouTube teaser that Christine edited last night. I threw the sun shadow. Hope you all enjoy it.
Life will return to HappyFt soon as well. For all the micro-latest, head over to FaceBook. For stencil goodness, keep the RSS feed humming over at Stencil Archive…. TTFN
Got to paint stencils at Peat’s St. Louis studio. This is the final globe piece on vinyl, which I gave to Peat in appreciation.
Giving a stencil demo at Mad Art, St. Louis. This time, the globe’s going on a piece of vinyl Peat gave me to paint.
Peat knocks out a Keith Haring stencil at my Mad Art presentation. He also showed videos of his works.
The SN spread and demo area in the foreground. I’m showing them A1one’s recent Green Pencils in Iran. Mad Art, St. Louis.
Believe it or not, I found two stenciled stickers in the jet in this photo. But most of my time at City Museum was spent climbing, sliding, scooting, etc. FUN!
Me and Peat put on some amazing masks by Milwaukee artist Jeremy Wolf, and hang out in one of Mad Art’s jail cells. St. Louis
After baking in the sun at the graffiti flood wall, I cooled down at the Arch while I waited for Peat to give me the grand tour of the city.
Made some globes for Box Car Books after the great presentation there. The folks who hung out during the painting got to spray some stencils themselves.
Some of the Da Vinci HS students who stopped by my presentation in Davis, CA. Most of them went to Mrs. Burke’s class afterwards and cut some stencils.
Just posted this up in the HFt Productions page, and thought you all might like to see the final listing of all the tour dates from the past year. Every thing adds up to 60 stops, with only two cancellations. THANKS again to ALL the people who helped keep me on the road, in the air, and in the spaces with all these fun, stencil-related events. Things I did this year: digital slide presentations, skillshares, street art tours, stenciling demos, book signings, stencil VJ’ing, exhibits, interviews, window displays, budget stencil art sales, and much more!
Back in April, FORA.tv recorded the Stencil Nation presentation at Booksmith up on Haight St. in San Francisco. It has been posted on their site for a while (over 700 views, who knew?) but I decided not to spread the word until I finished the touring. With the Year of Stencil Nation finally complete, I present to you the presentation in all its guts and glory. Or should I say umms and uhs. This presentation changed over time (in Middle America, I opened up the presentation with pics of stencils and street art from Iran), and was always different. So here’s a unique slice of what was going down on tour a few months ago.
If you have Windows Player installed, you can see the Dec. 12, 2008 version of the presentation from A Cappella Books in Atlanta, GA (recorded by the Atlanta Forum Network).
The week has flown by. I drove over the Canadian/USA border at Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls almost a week ago. Got to see the falls from the bridge, and I didn’t need to stop to catch any other view. The border guard didn’t flinch at the big bike box in the back. If he had looked, he would’ve found a partial bike made from used parts. The back tire of the bike Martin Heath made for me began to squeak again. It started up after I pushed the coaster break. Martin said the back tire was shot and that I’d have to find another one in San Francisco.
Martin gave me a pass to see the opening of the Short Film Festival up on Bloor St. Then I went to CineCycle, helped pack the bike, and watched some amazing 1960s Serioscope jukebox music reels. They were dated, but extremely interesting to watch. I said final goodbyes to Janet and then Martin and I pushed the bike to my China Town flat on a dolly. Toronto was fun! Can’t wait to post the stencils from there when I get a chance. Continue reading “B-Town, Paint Louis and Beyond”
CNN is on here at my hotel room in Buffalo, and the main news story is how “citizen journalists” in Iran continue to cover the breaking stories with cell phones, Twitter, and FaceBook. Iranians are risking their lives to submit video footage to network news stations. Over on Huffington Post, Nico Pitney is blogging about Iran, using sources from all over the web, and doing a bit of vetting to discount some fake citizen journalism.
As some of you may know, I have stencil work from Iran over on Stencil Archive. I don’t know the artist’s real names, nor any details about their lives. But I do understand that doing graffiti in Iran comes at a great risk. Larger than the risks that other artists face, since graffiti is considered an evil Western-influenced activity by some fundamentalist Iranians. Since the protests started, I have been concerned about the artists, fearing their safety and hoping that they’re keeping things real in the streets. They’ve gotten in touch and are OK. But extremely excited and concerned about losing their votes in the recent election. They have reacted by doing what they do best during these amazing times in Persia. They’re keeping art in the streets!
My data mining has dug up some blogs, and Dub Gabriel has started blogging for a friend in Iran who is telling his version of the story. Here’s a photoblog that I have gone to to look at photos. Here is a Flickr stream of some current art in the Iranian streets. Iran is blocking some major web sites (like YouTube), but Flickr seems to be available. And it’s easy to get around the government blocking: Dub Gabriel is easily helping his friend in Iran post information, probably via simple email exchanges. So posting some of these sites is a simple act that I can do to help the thousands of green-clad people in the streets of Iran.
Twenty years ago, Chinese students occupied Tianamen Square, and were eventually brutally crushed by the People’s Army. Last night at my presentation at Hallwalls, I showed some photos of the street art and stencil work in Iran. I made the comment that things might have ended differently in 1989, had the students used cell phones and cameras to let the whole world instantly watch and witness their experience with seeking freedom and democracy. I don’t know if today’s coverage in Iran will bring a huge change with their culture, but I know that our ability to witness it first hand is a sweet experience. CNN is showing international rallies supporting the Iranian democrats, and I am sure that those attending these rallies are snapping pics and taking phone vids of the scene. And they’re MMS’ing them to friends in Persia. And they’re instantly posting them online.
Together, we can witness what is happening half the world away, and thus our compassion expands for those who desire the basic freedoms we all should have. Hopefully, this will drive change in the world and bring lessons of unity and equality that we should’ve learned over and over again. If not, then we will once again have to see similar uprisings happen, and have to relive the painful images of oppression. That being said, don’t forget the recent struggles in Tibet, the ongoing pain in Palestine, and other suffering around the world of people who don’t have the technology to give us the first-hand experience.
Up on my domino soap box (as Tino displays Stencil Nation), I explain how bikes and stencils taste as good together as peanut butter and chocolate. Last Saturday, forty people came along for Tino’s two-plus hour tour of the city’s cut-out wonders.
Friday night ended up being a random chain of events. I had no plans really, and considered a Blue Jays baseball game. But Goran Bregovic was playing his Balkan beats for a free concert, and that seemed much more important to go to. After wandering by the book store to check in with them, Tino just happened to be at the cafe next door. Charlie from the bookstore introduced me and it was finally great to meet one of the featured photographers in my book face to face.
Tino knew about the concert and decided to go. I’d planned to meet up with a pre-party but Tino said that they were all down at the square where the concert was going to be. So we hopped on our bikes and rode down into Toronto’s version of Times Square on Yonge St. (complete with animated ads running up the sides of buildings). There was a crowd, but we found the party via a trumpet call and a ghetto blaster blasting Roma beats. Once we arrived, I re-met some folks I’d met in Portland last June during the Car Free Conference. They were plenty drunk already, and we all danced our way deep down into the crowd and close to the stage. Guess a boom box of Roma beats spreads the Red Sea for a good spot to dance. Continue reading “Street Art Four Hours Straight”
The Trumbull-Plex presentation went well last night. Jhon showed up with a large platter of Middle Eastern food and began to set up for the show. Nicole Macdonald showed up with a digital projector and her movie “A City to Yourself.” We got things set up quickly, so I found some spray paint in the shop area and sprayed a stencil on Trumbull’s door. Instead of the usual red flags, I sprayed black flags in honor of their philosophical leanings.
We didn’t start on time since no one had showed up at 8pm and Jhon said that everyone felt that 9pm was always the start time at Trumbull-Plex. So the movie began around 8:40, with about 10 people in the comfortable chairs. Third generation Detroiter Nicole’s movie showed scenes of an empty Detroit as she spoke about what the mostly emptiness means to her. She showed fields of grass and flora with rotting houses in them. Some were painted orange by students, maybe in protest to the decay around them. Continue reading “Soggy Drive, Soggy Sneaks”
The sun finally shines today in Detroit. Which is a good thing, since I’ve borrowed a bike from Trumbull’s bike shack. Headed out towards Third St. with things looking chilly and overcast for the day. Then the sun pops out from behind the haze and the clouds turn fluffy. Time to peel off the hoodie.
Jhon from Trumbull gave me some great tips for where to discover stencils. Hit the ped bridge over Highway 10 and found some. Found some on Willis St. in front of the Avalon Bakery. One was a great paste up supporting Pingree for Mayor. I found Pingree’s statue later, with another paste up of him on the pedestal (Someone had added a funny mustache). The plaque said that he was the “The Idol of the People” and had been the first to warn citizens against the evils of private corporations. After biking through the post-Fordist ruins of the city, which has slowly lost buildings to encroaching nature in the past five decades, I now understand why this former mayor is popular with a stencil artist and his friends. Continue reading “Pedaling Thru Motor City”
While going for a walk, I stop at a house to pick up some things that I had recently left there. People are in the kitchen setting food on the table for a brunch. I don’t know anyone but manage to find a small inflatable raft and a shirt that belong to me. I walk around some, trying to find a place to stash the items, and annoy the brunch’s host. Still wanting to stash the items so I can continue my walk, I go out onto the patio and then notice two more items that belong to me. I pick up my travel towel bag and a T-shirt with a screaming hand on it, and fold everything up to fit in the bag. I keep looking for a place in the bushes by the road to stash my items, aware that I’m not welcome inside the house anymore.
I have been assigned to duel and kill a gentleman, who has hired me for that reason. He has also hired a second person, a female, to make sure that he dies. In the back of a restaurant, I stand to the left of the man while the woman stands on his right. We’re both pointing rapiers at him, and he half-heartedly holds one as well. I give an advance with my blade and he blocks it with a clank of his own. Distracting him in this manner, the woman easily checks him from behind and puts her rapier’s point onto the back, top-left of his torso. “Finish it,” I demand, but she only guides the man to a booth on the other side of the restaurant. Food is frantically served to the family at the ajoining booth. A child grabs a handful of spaghetti and splats it on his plate. The man at the booth asks us where he can find a realistic wig. I tell him that he can find something in the yellow pages, or maybe go to the high-end dress shops on Montgomery St. “Those who can afford good wigs, go to the Financial District,” I say.
