Tag: murals

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Farewell CELLspace; Farewell Murals

I spraypainted Scot t Williams's huge gorilla on the back door of CELL.in 2010. It is gone (as is the piece that replaced it) due to tagging.
I spraypainted Scott Williams’s huge gorilla on the back door of CELL.in 2010. It is gone (as is the piece that replaced it) due to tagging.

Almost to the day today, I arrived in San Francisco in 1997 with two suitcases (one full of camping gear) and a vague idea of what I wanted to accomplish in the City by the Bay. The words that kept bouncing around in my head were: diversity, creativity, and adventure. I had no idea there as a dot com boom and that the vacancy rate was under 1%. I didn’t even know what a vacancy rate was! I did know that I wanted to be part of something amazing, and if possible, somehow create amazing cultural bits that others enjoyed.

In 1998, I started volunteering for CELLspace, which at the time was a funky underground artist warehouse with folks who had a similar vision that the one I was chewing on. Years later, I tried to move on and open my time and life up to other amazing projects. So CELL got put on the backburner, until 2008. That was a crucial year for CELL, now a nonprofit with paid employees. While on the road touring for the book and for the Conscious Carnival, word started getting back to me that CELL was financially imploding. I wasn’t surprised.

Then I got a call from Jane and Tony Verma, two long-time Metal Shop artists, asking me to help them curate a stencil exhibit on the facade of CELL. Things were bad at the time and CELL’s doors were shut (all the employees and most of management were very far away from the space) due to no one being there to maintain and run things. But the Metal Shop was still holding their cluster together. The Metal Shop designed and built an amazing metal window-covering mural, complete with space in the bottom for showing art. They had reached out to a few artists in Stencil Nation, but needed more. Stencilada was born, and thus began my final run of volunteering for CELL. Continue reading “Farewell CELLspace; Farewell Murals”

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SF Chron: SF murals become targets for vandals

S.F. NEIGHBORHOODS Graffiti marring much of city’s street art – vandalism on the rise
Matthai Kuruvila
Published 4:54 pm, Thursday, December 27, 2012


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/SF-murals-become-targets-for-vandals-4150191.php#ixzz2GeFBUSjw

Muralists around San Francisco say that they’ve seen an increase in vandalism of murals by taggers, who are defacing the art with their monikers.
Vandals have wrecked murals from North Beach to the Tenderloin. In the city’s liveliest mural zone, the Mission District, muralists say it’s been particularly bad. Street paintings made in months have been ravaged in seconds.

“There’s been a very specific mural destruction going on,” said Russell Howze, a muralist and author who does street art tours of the Mission District. “There’s really no logic. I don’t know if there’s any organization or conspiracy behind it. More than anything, these murals are well-loved and huge amounts of time have gone into them.”

Vandals this year have defaced parts of the Mission District’s Clarion Alley, a 20-year-old street museum of murals. “Gold Mountain,” a North Beach mural depicting Chinese history, had to be repainted when the building owners couldn’t keep it free of graffiti.

Continue reading “SF Chron: SF murals become targets for vandals”

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San Francisco’s Street Art

The Mission District: San Francisco’s Street Art

16 December 2012
Hanna Wolf
From the Fair Observer (link here)

Street Art – The Fun Loving Criminals?
For many decades, street artists have made San Francisco’s Mission District one of the most colourful and fascinating places to see [7], mirroring the city’s vibrant multiculturalism and diversity.

We are walking through some of the stinkiest alleys in San Francisco, yet still tourists from all over the world come here to take pictures and admire the street art gallery surrounding them. Whether huge murals, stickers on the floor or graffiti: art is all around in this area of the city.

Our tour guide Russell Howze, who offers street art tours through the Mission District, has been walking through these alleys for 15 years, and still he discovers new pieces. “Once you train your eyes, it’s everywhere” is what he tells us as he points at a street light covered with almost torn off stickers and scribbled words, which would normally never catch someone’s eyes as art.

The Higher, the Better

Walking through Mission and Valencia Street we come across walls with both illegal and legal graffiti, stencils and other street art styles. Comics as well as posters and abstract pieces look down on us from the left as we try to read a graffiti on the right. Unlike in European metropolises, in San Francisco trains are no major hotspots for graffiti. The sprayers here prefer trucks instead and almost every truck we pass during the tour wears at least a small graffiti tag.

Continue reading “San Francisco’s Street Art”

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[u] Paz at CELL

Over the past week, Paz de la Calzada brought her charcoal to CELL and drew on the curved green wall in the Main Space. She has been drawing strands and I got to know her down on Market Street at her charcoal piece on The Strand Theater (which was recently purchased by ACT and will become a 300 seat house for shows that are too small for their Geary theater).

Paz was not working these past few weeks, so she gave her talents and vision to CELL for free. This is really the only way I can get art on the walls at Bryant Street. I do it for the love and others seem to be into sharing it for their love as well. Paz did the interior piece in a day. Today, before SpaceCraft, she showed up with a charcoal drawing on paper. I hauled out the tall ladder and she climbed up and pasted it on the wall near 2060 Bryant (ACT’s prop shop). It is small and delicate: tiny strands coming out of the brickwork. It will only be noticed by people who look for art surprises in urban space. Might be you!

UPDATE: Paz came back after a bit of rain and wheat pasted a 3 foot long charcoal strand onto the Bryant St. facade of CELL. Here’s a pic she snapped up, added to the other photos below. (4/15/2012)

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Murals at CELL

tito-na-rua-mission-street-comic-at-cell
Street comic by Tito Na Rua (Rio, Brazil) at CELL (3/2012)

My mural curating continues in 2012. Late last week I had three meetings about three different murals. I also have been in contact with Dia, the artist who painted the “Liberty” mural (now for sale) as well as the “Dia del Toro” mural over on the ACT shop entrance. Dia is going to paint a new mural at the ACT spot as soon as the weather cooperates.

Last Thursday, I met with Ray Balberan and artist Carlos Gonzalez. Mentioned in an earlier post, several panels from the 1980s RAP mural “Education is Liberation” magically appeared in the back of CELL. I took the panels, contacted the journalist at Mission Loc@l, and Ray finally met with me and Gonzalez to pick up the panels. Ray and Carlos were extremely happy to see the panels. Most of what has been found show gang banger skeletons committing violence. Though the message was education is the way out of the hood, the art is still quite powerful and a historical representation of the Mission District in the 80s.

Carlos Gonzales (R) and Ray Balberan celebrate the return of two lost 1980s mural panels
Carlos Gonzales (R) and Ray Balberan celebrate the return of two lost 1980s mural panels

Then I met with Paz de la Calzada to discuss her painting at a few spots at CELL. She will paint either wisps of hair or roots on the curved wall of the women’s bathroom as well as somewhere on the exterior walls of CELL (possibly the sidewalks). Then I met with Cy Wagoner to discuss the continued concept of the Native American themed wall at the 2048 Bryant entrance. I think we have an idea of how to move forward on this. The mural will possibly incorporate stencil, wheatpasted paper, free spray, and maybe other styles. If the rain ever stops.

Finally, Tito na Rua from Rio, Brazil stayed briefly at 2048. He does great street comics on walls. The Vexta stencil had been defaced by a tag, so I had Tito spray up his characters next to Meggs’s crazy SF monster. Looks great.

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I Display Found Mural for Mission Loc@l Article

rap-mural-panels

Article and Photos by Noah Arroyo (more photos on their page)

Artist Russell Howze isn’t sure how they got to Cell Space, but five more pieces of a historic mural series appeared at the art collective on Monday and will be turned over to its caretakers.

Howze said that when he arrived at Cell Space, at 2050 Bryant St., the pieces were in a back room. Continue reading “I Display Found Mural for Mission Loc@l Article”