You ever been old? Me either but if I ever get there I hope I can be slim and stately and marching around a water tank, protecting a natural resource that belongs to us and future generations. That would be good and honorable work.
Here are some pics of Jetsonorama’s new work on the reservation. Check out the windmill. Nice!
Chip Thomas and Thomas “Breeze” Marcus (photo © Chip Thomas)R E Z O L U T I O N
7 Artists will converge upon The Hive art space in Phoenix, Arizona on December 16th 2011 for the group show titled Rezolution (Resolution).
Rezolution (spelled with a Z instead of an S), is a focus on 7 artists who have experienced Native American Reservation life first hand and know the historical as well as the daily modern struggles, triumphs, smiles and cries better than anyone else in the so called American Dream Land. A popular term amongst Native people refers to these communities and land areas simply as “The Rez”.
Douglas Miles is an Apache artist from the San Carlos Apache Nation although he has already been recognized internationally and nationally for the last decade and more, Miles has recently gained the attention of the southern California gallery and street style art scenes. Miles brings stark depictions of strength with his stencils and illustrations of contemporary Apache women and warriors, while incorporating elaborate hand written typography that is heavily influenced by inner city “Cholo” writing which has its origins in Los Angeles.
Chip Thomas, a doctor on the Dine(Navajo) Reservation for the last 24 yrs, has recently taken inspiration from international street artists like Blu, JR, Os Gemeos, Gaia, and others by starting his own series of giant wheat paste murals from images that he has photographed and documented since first moving to Shonto, Az in 1987. Although not Navajo himself, Chip has seen a lot of love and support from his community of Shonto Arizona, as well as heavy outside criticism.
In addition to Doug and Chip: Anthony “Thosh” Collins (Photographer), Razelle Benally (Film Maker), Dwayne Manuel (Painter), Tom Greyeyes (Painter) and local Phx muralist Breeze will be participating. All 7 artists know what it means to live on a “Rez”, and have taken their experiences of everyday life, cultural identities and harnessed them into positive creativity through contemporary Photography, Film, Brush Painting, Charcoal, Graffiti Art, Propaganda, Stencils, Wheat Paste, Spray Paint, and more.
In many ways, the tool known as Art is now a modern warrior’s weapon and resource in being a voice for the at times seemingly forgotten original inhabitants. Rezolution is a platform to exhibit various styles and educate the unaware and unknowing populations about contemporary Native life, art work and the missions to break stereotypes and presumptions of what mainstream society portrays and exploits the American Indian as.
The imagery in this show will be truthful, abstract, blunt, surrealistic and ironically foreign to many eyes looking in from the outside.
-Thomas Breeze Marcus
Jetsonorama “Step” (photo © Courtesy of Jetsonorama)To see more images and to continue reading go here
Beginning today, 350.org is launching an international campaign to raise awareness on carbon emissions and climate change a number of Street Artists were invited to illustrate, with their art the relationship we have with fossil fuels.
Artist’s statement: “Insert__Here” is an interactive public art project conceived by Eve Mosher and realized with 350.org. The project capitalizes on community awareness of place and optimism around climate change solutions. The project invites people to place bold yellow “Insert_Here” arrows in locations in their community where they want to “insert” a climate change solution. For example “Insert bike lane Here” “Insert community garden Here”, “Insert solar panels Here”, Insert trees Here”. By placing these arrows along people’s daily migratory paths, individuals and groups can share their proposed solutions with the greater community.
Street Artist Jetsonorama has a new campaign in Flagstaff, Arizona and on the Navajo Nation reservation using his photographic wheat pastes to highlight the relationship of coal to health, economy, and people. As a health care professional, he sees the impact of burning coal vividly, and with a fresh faced model named JC, he makes the simple and powerful connection to the cloud of history that is fossil fuel metaphorically hanging over our heads.
Beginning September 24th, an organization called 350.org will launch an international campaign to raise awareness on carbon emissions and climate change and Jetsonorama joined with a number of other artists to illustrate the relationship we have with fossil fuels.
Here is how Jetsonorama describes the project;
“If the Navajo Nation and coal were to declare their relationship status on Facebook, they’d chose the ‘it’s complicated’ option. I live and work on the Navajo Nation where coal is mined and burned. That’s why I chose to work with this imagery and to use coal as a metaphor for a black cloud over the head of future generations.
I informally interviewed 16 Navajo co-workers and asked them to share with me the first thing that comes to mind when I say ‘coal.’ Everyone identified respiratory problems associated with burning coal in the home.
The Navajo Nation is home to 170,000 people who live in an area that is 27,500 square miles in size, or approximately the size of Ireland. Despite having land that is rich in coal, natural gas, uranium, water and timber, the Nation has an unemployment rate of 40% and over half of the Navajo population lives below the USA defined poverty line. A small segment of the population is able to provide a middle class lifestyle for their families by working in mining operations. The cost to the families who burn coal in their homes and to the environment is great, as indicated in my interviews. Interestingly, only 1 of those 16 identified CO2 emissions associated with coal burning as being a contributing factor to climate change.
Again, it’s a complicated relationship and hopefully the 350.org campaign will heighten awareness of coal’s dark side and strengthen support for more environmentally friendly alternatives such as solar power and wind turbines. We have plenty of sun and wind in Arizona after all.”
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Street Art is alive and well in Chicago and LA, two cities we’ve recently had the pleasure of touring with local expert guides. At our panel discussion at LA MOCA an audience member proffered the opinion that Street Art has peaked and is dead. Just like New York City itself, people have been pronouncing urban art and graff and Street Art as “over” ever since we got here – yet it all has a maddening and thrilling capacity for reinvention. It takes new forms and serves new purposes even as it thrives, distinguishing itself from what came before, as every new generation is bound to do by the laws of nature. We’ll let you know if it dies, promise. It’s like talking about the day music died. Ha!
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Anthony Lister, Banksy, Herakut, Jetsonorama, Kid Zoom, KWT Crew, No Teef, Shepard Fairey, Skewville, Snacki, and Swoon.
Thank you to Nick from Pawn Works Gallery and Brock in Chicago for their hospitality and again thank you to all the people in Los Angeles who made us feel at home with welcoming smiles and generous hearts.
Banksy in Chicago (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Skewville also contributed a piece to “Street Art Saved my Life: 39 New York Stories” currently on view at C.A.V.E. Gallery in Venice Beach, Los Angeles.
Lister contributed a 3 mask installation to “Street Art Saved my Life: 39 New York Stories” Currently on view at C.A.V.E. Gallery in Venice Beach, Los Angeles.
Swoon contributed a piece to “Street Art Saved my Life: 39 New York Stories” Currently on view at C.A.V.E. Gallery in Venice Beach, Los Angeles.
Jetsonorama is a contributing guest this week with images of work he just recently put up in the desert. He sent along a brief but funny intro to the images:
“I installed this piece and shot these images this morning at Cameron, near the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Chris is a local. He and his wife had been up all night gambling at Cliff Castle Casino. He said they lost about $400.00. His wife was pissed because she lost the money. Chris needed some space from her anger and his response was to get an 18-pack, trusting better times will come soon” ~ Jetsonorama
On the Navajo Reservation the built environment tends more toward the horizontal than say, Manhattan. The similarity is that the man made structures for both are constructed on soil first belonging to the proud tribes of people we now call “Native Americans”.
Mary Reese, by Jetsonorama (photo © courtesy of the artist)Arizona based Street Artist Jetsonorama calls the Navajo Rez home and it is here where he plans most of his installations of wheat-pastes. The flat lands and sun parched structures, sometimes crumbling back into the dust, provide a suitable open-air gallery for his photos. The images are not somber, rather they are pulsing with life and possessing some urgency as if to remind you that these places are very alive and life stories are unfolding here.
These recent pieces are at the Cow Springs Trading Post. Judging from the scene, not much trading takes place there nowadays but Jetsonorama enlists its walls one more time to display the inhabitants of the area.
Belgian Street Artist ROA visited Mexico in January (see “ROA’s Magic Naturalism”) and now we have a video of his large installation in Mexico City. Whether in the detritus of the big metropolis or the bucolic country landscape, his unique and now iconic images of dead and alive animals rendered in perfect monochrome palette are never out of tune with their surroundings. Perhaps one key element in achieving this sense of context is ROA’s insistence on using as subjects the animals native to the land where he is painting.
ROA was invited by the art promoter MAMUTT ARTE in collaboration with the Antique Toy Museum Mexico (MUJAM). In the country for 3 weeks, ROA left about 15 murals in various locations like Mexico City, Guanajuato and Puebla and also collaborated with Mexican artists Saner & Sego.
“It was fascinating during the installation to observe neighbors who have seen one another for years stopping to hang out, talk and meet one another. So it’s cool to think that after the images are down, the friendships will continue.” ~Jetsonorama
Street Artist Jetsonorama likes to take pictures of people and create large scale portraits of them to wheatpaste in their own community with the goal of fostering connectedness among neighbors.
Using a friends’ building in San Francisco for a backdrop, he worked last week to put up portraits of two people and a neighborhood dog, BB. The Dogpatch section of San Francisco is the only part of the city left standing after the 1906 earthquake and the fires that followed it. Officially deigned a historic district in 2003, the nine square block section was initially an immigrant neighborhood with hand-built workers’ cottages, factories, and warehouses, many still standing.
Jetsonorama gives us some background on the project here:
“Bruno Mauro of Ampersand International Arts in Dogpatch knew I’ve been exploring the idea of using art to build community through my wheat pasting project on the Navajo nation. He was kind enough to literally offer me his home (after consulting with his wife, Surma), to pursue the idea of community building using his home as a canvas.
In exploring this idea here, Bruno suggested I meet Patricia Parker and her mother, who have lived in Dogpatch in their current house for 50 years or so. Both Patricia and her mom attended Irving M. Scott school, which was built in the 1890s and is the oldest standing public school in San Francisco. Together, these two people are dogpatch history, and they know it.
Imogen Doumani lives across the street from the gallery and from Pat. She represents the youthful vibe coming into the neighborhood. BB the beagle is representing those who give the area it’s name.
The piece is composed of regular bond paper from Fedex/Kinko’s adhered to the wall with wheat paste I made. It’s susceptible to the elements and will go away with time. My hope is that the conversations and community-building started with this project will continue long after the piece is down.”
Street Artists in sunny Gray Mountain, Arizona took a trip to the Navajo Reservation this weekend to hit one of their favorite abandoned sites. The juxtaposition of their work on the storage tanks as sculptures against the AZ sky somehow makes their impact profound. Add to this the fact that the three hadn’t realized their individual pieces would all carry a central theme of fertility until installing them, and the site could take on a mystic quality. Or maybe they were just freaking themselves out chewing on some peyote.
The unplanned coincidence began to take on an added dimension as Joerael worked on his fertility medicine man character and Jetsonorama installed the mother and child image. Yote’s rabbit, a traditional symbol of fertility, and ear of corn, a symbol of harvest, finished the theme. Whether the theme arose from the land or from like minds, this co-incidental installation is further evidence of the fertile soil that the current street art crop is planted in.
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Crotched objects began appearing on the street this year. © Jaime Rojo
