News Articles

Eclair Bandersnatch: Street Artist for the Snowden Age

Submitted by russell on Sun, 07/26/2015 - 13:36

Eclair Bandersnatch: Street Artist for the Snowden Age
Annalee Newitz, Gizmodo

Walk pretty much anywhere in San Francisco’s SoMa, Haight or Mission neighborhoods, and you’ll see one of Eclair Bandersnatch’s glittery stencils, often featuring “Saint Snowden” or Chelsea Manning. We talked to Bandersnatch about bringing art, tech and politics together on the streets.

Bandersnatch has been stenciling San Francisco streets for several years, and her subjects run the gamut from Godzilla to ladies who look like they’d be comfortable at a 1920s party along the Barbary Coast. Her vision is uniquely San Franciscan, mixing internet politics with a queer…

Now Experts Are Issuing Warnings About Sunburn Art

Submitted by russell on Mon, 07/20/2015 - 08:10

Now Experts Are Issuing Warnings About Sunburn Art

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, July 16, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Sunburns are painful and potentially cancer-causing, but that hasn’t stopped them from becoming an increasingly popular means of artistic expression.

Experts are now speaking out against “sunburn art,” a new social media trend in which people use stencils or strategically applied sunblock to create a do-it-yourself temporary sunburn tattoo on their bodies.

Participants then take pictures of their creations and post them on sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

The trend is worrisome enough that the Skin Cancer Foundation has issued an official position on sunburn art, warning of the health…

Shepard Fairey's Arrest Begs Question: Art or Vandalism?

Submitted by russell on Sun, 07/19/2015 - 20:02

How Shepard Fairey's arrest provides a new look at an old question: Is it art or is it vandalism?

By DEBORAH VANKIN AND DAVID NG (LA Times)

Shepard Fairey has never been one to play by the rules — and that's par for the course for someone in a street art community that exists on the cultural margins.

Or does it?

The L.A.-based street artist and graphic designer, best known for his 2008 "Hope" poster timed with Barack Obama's presidential campaign as well as the "Obey" image seen on posters and T-shirts worldwide, was arrested last week while passing through customs at Los Angeles International Airport. Authorities there noticed that Detroit police had issued a…

SF artist's Pride show squashed

Submitted by russell on Thu, 06/04/2015 - 07:38

SF artist's Pride show squashed by foundation, due to assault claims
By Chris Roberts @cbloggy (Examiner)

Street artist Jeremy Novy is no stranger to controversy.

Before he won commissions to put his signature stencils of koi fish on public and private property in The City, his art — pasted on sidewalks and buildings — sometimes broke the law.

Starting Monday, Novy — a rare LGBT street artist in the hetero-dominated world of taggers and stencilists — was supposed to have a monthlong gay culture-themed show in the Castro.

Called “…

On the midnight prowl with one of S.F.’s hottest street artists

Submitted by russell on Wed, 06/03/2015 - 19:44

On the midnight prowl with one of S.F.’s hottest street artists

By Ryan Kost (SF Chronicle)
June 1, 2015

The street artist known as fnnch stands at the corner of Capp and 19th. It’s just started to rain, the sort of rain you can feel but you can’t see unless you catch it in a car’s headlights. He’s staring at a postbox just across the way, freshly painted, a blank canvas. “I really want to hit this box.”

But there are people near it, drunken and rowdy people, people who holler at the woman pacing in front of the corner store. “I got a dollar…

Saving Murals from the SF Condo Boom

Submitted by russell on Fri, 03/20/2015 - 08:17

Various Works: 2050 Bryant, CELLspace
Know Your Street Art, SF Weekly by Jonathan Curiel
<< Photo: Icy & Sot with HA-HA (CELLspace, SF, CA)

On a wall just inside the building formerly known as CELLspace, an artwork delivers a defiant message: "NOT for Sale!" But the message is a lie — the building, whose exterior walls once featured some of the best street art in San Francisco, was sold and is slated for development. Last summer, two volunteers — artist Russell Howze and art editor Annice Jacoby — took down much of the outside art…

Grammarians are Pissed (Quito, EC)

Submitted by russell on Sat, 03/07/2015 - 20:22

Ecuador's radical grammar pedants on a mission to correctly punctuate graffiti

(Eduardo Varas in Quito and Jonathan Watts, The Guardian UK)

A pair of anonymous vigilantes are cleaning up Quito’s graffiti; by adding accents, inserting commas and placing question marks on sentences scrawled across city walls

In the dead of night, two men steal through the streets of Quito armed with spray cans and a zeal for reform. They are not political activists or revolutionaries: they are radical grammar pedants on a mission to correctly punctuate Ecuador’s graffiti.

Adding accents, inserting commas and placing question marks at the beginning and end…

Banksy's Upper Haight Rat Back in SF

Submitted by russell on Tue, 01/20/2015 - 08:59

Haight Street Rat: By Banksy. On display in the window facing Montgomery Street. 8 a.m.-8 p.m. Jan. 21-July 11. 836m, 836 Montgomery St., S.F. Free. www.836m.org.

Banksy’s 'Haight Street Rat’ graffiti holes up in an S.F. gallery
By Rachel Howard (original)
Updated 1:59 pm, Monday, January 19, 2015

A graffiti work by the stealth artist Banksy is back in its original street habitat — sort of.

Through July 11, the image known as “Haight Street Rat,” spray-painted on the…

Taking a Tour of El Castillo Cave, Seeing Ancient Hand Stencils

Submitted by russell on Fri, 11/21/2014 - 09:27

19 November 2014
A journey deep inside Spain’s temple of cave art
In Spain Arts & Architecture By Rachel Corbett, for the BBC

I gasped at my first glimpse of a cave painting: a crude red outline of a deer with one wild circle for an eye. Its iron pigments blazed under the lamplight. The illusion of a breastbone emerged, ingeniously, out of a hump in the limestone wall. After a while, a cave becomes a long black tunnel of sensory deprivation; the sight of this tender image jolted my breath back to life.

“Can you tell you’re in a sacred place?” asked Marcos Garcia Diez, the archaeologist who had agreed to show me some of the most breathtaking rock art ever created. “This cave is like a church and that’s why ancient people returned, returned, returned here for thousands of years.”

…

SF Banksy Tests Value of Street Art

Submitted by russell on Mon, 06/23/2014 - 08:43

Back when Banksy was in SF promoting his documentary, I got to meet Sami Sunchild and talk about the large rat that was on the side of her Red Vic bed and breakfast building (read about it). I introduced her to Banksy via my book as well as the artist's own. And her manager let me go onto the roof for exclusive shots of the socialist rat (see my photo below). Ever since I saw the empty space on that wall get replaced with plain wood by a work crew, I've wondered who took the rat and what it's fate was. At long last the SF Chronicle tracked the owner down. And Sami asked him to never sell it. End of story?