HyperQuake

This is epic and engrossing, def worth 10 minutes of your time.

BIG BANG BIG BOOM

BIG BANG BIG BOOM – the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Since March of this year, Shepard Fairey has been installing murals all over town, and I, like many artsy people my age, think it’s great, as greater Cincinnati is sorely lacking in much public art, plus, well, his stuff is cool. I even got one in my neighborhood.

But as is probably not unexpected, the subject matter of Fairey’s pieces have been pretty seriously divisive here in the middle Midwest. Some responses have been positive and thoughtful:

“Many people, when they saw [the Silverton mural] and we talked about what it meant, thought it was beautiful,” Wade said. “We talked about how depicting disturbing images is not the same as condoning them.” Source

Fairey’s Silverton mural, pre-paintover

Other responses have been with outrage and paint. Both the Pike Street and Madisonville murals have now been covered over with white paint. Amusingly, while the Pike Street removal was carried out by the owners of the building the mural is on, the Madisonville mural was NOT authorized to be painted over, and the incident is being referred to as vandalism against the mural. So, wait…is Shepard a vandal, or are the people painting over his work the vandals?

“I think adults will see [the Pike Street mural] as a commentary on war, but kids will see it as a school kid carrying a big rifle,” [one local resident] said. “On the other hand, I think its removal is a travesty. It’s an awful commentary on the lack of tolerance in our society.” Source

Pike Street mural, pre-paintover

Apparently everyone’s favorite stenciling Brit has been busy on the West Coast in recent weeks in promotion of his new film, Exit Through The Gift Shop.

“I’m thinking of quitting the art world. I want to do something a bit more creative.” Check out TONY’s interview with Banksy here.

Stenciling conjures up images of floral and fruit patterns in my head.

I think I can safely attribute this to the type of old-schools stenciling I believe I’ve seen my grandma do in the past. Not that stenciling of that sort is bad, it just isn’t necessarily my cup of tea.

Well, I stumbled onto a Tweet out in the Twitterverse the other day that shows that stenciling is more than just a bunch of pastel flowers or pretty images of fruit.

Old-School Stenciling

This tweet I stumbled upon was about Sten and Lex; Italian street artists that utilize an approach to stenciling called ‘hole school.’ Apparently, they cut a huge stencil, basically paste it on a poster (it appears the canvas they use is primarily wood as far as I can tell), paint over the whole thing in black and then peel everything away leaving behind a negative image. Through the removal of the stencil, scraps are left behind as the stencil is destroyed. From there, the scraps are actually left on and are allowed to become part of the art. The resulting stencils are just awesome.

Sten & Lex Stencil

If you want to see how the whole process goes down, check out the quick video below. And if you find yourself in Brooklyn in the fall, you might want to look up their showing at Brooklynite Gallery.

STEN LEX stencil poster from STEN on Vimeo.