The power of advertising and propaganda is undisputed, whether it is for toothpaste or war. We are being acted upon daily by people who would like us to do (or not do) something. Usually it is to give money for a product or service, but more than ever it is to stand by and allow bombs to fall or laws to be eroded.
Artists have been parodying the methods of advertisement and our willingness to be swayed by it almost since it began, perhaps as a way of alerting us of the deleterious effects of unthinking consumerism in general, or to give us the tools to comprehend and analyze the methods that are effectively driving our behavior. Invariably, our actions as individuals, citizens, and consumers are all folded into the critique.
Street Artist Mauro Carmelino, who writes SEBS as his moniker, recently completed an entire campaign of his own that questions many things we do and wonders if we are even aware of the lines between citizenry and consumerism we traverse these days.
Entitled “Slaves ‘R’ Us”, this series of handmade works are on the walls of Ajuda, a civil parish in the municipality of Lisbon, Portugal. Bright and simple designs that are cheerful enough, even if they belie a less pleasant series of questions for pondering.
“Democracy, the environment, freedom, security, employment and corporatism are all portrayed as products of a ‘Progress’ that seems to reach the expiration date,” he says as he describes the various elements in the campaign. In Carmelino’s view, our free will is seriously in question today. “We look back to past societies and feel we came a long way. Did we? Are we free when all our lives can be crunched into zeros and ones, somewhere on a server in California?”
The work looks welcoming and cartoonish on these aged walls and buildings, and if the artists intentions are realized, his greater messages will have an affect on the mind of the viewer. It helps that some of the locations of the walls provides a bit of context, like the silo-shaped building that has a warning about cow milk, “Some of these are inspired by the personal stories of people or are somehow related to the intervened walls,” says the artist.
Special thanks to the artist for providing these exclusive photos for BSA readers.
It’s very hard to see love as a force, as a power, but it is a reality.
For some it may be difficult to see art, much less unsanctioned public art, as a force for love and unmitigated passion. However it can be that as well.
We are not sure if those are the exact aims of Cane Morto over the course of 60 days (and nights) in Lisbon. But how else can you explain this force that drives and accompanies them? Working on something they call a secret project, this series of photos shows the sometimes grueling, sometimes langorous pace and profile of this always-experimenting troupe of Italian troubadors.
As ever it is Cane Morto’s misshapen figures, monstrous mugs, and obliquely Picassoesque references to longing and fear and God that roll themselves across surfaces in this Portuguese capital that full of museums and, increasingly, Street Artists inside as well as outside of them. The coarse work is rough-hewn and unwinding, unraveling, reforming; at times an energy hardly contained, perhaps because to do so would be a sacrilege – better to barely capture it here by camera than with a cage, this dead dog.
Happy New Year to All! Thank you for inspiring us to do our best and to those of you who continue to support our personal art project / cultural examination, we extend our gratitude more than ever.
Begun as an enthusiastic discovery of what was happening in a few neighborhoods in New York, we continued to expand our view into more cities around the world last year and into the history and future of the scene. We also aimed to provide you with a critical platform for examination of the street art/ graffiti / public art/ contemporary art continuum with interviews with artists, curators, collectors, organizers, observers and thinkers in the street, studio, gallery, and museum – trouble makers and taste makers alike.
In the end, it’s your observations and the conversations on the street that are most important. As we begin the year with over 300K fans, friends, and followers on social media platforms and 225 articles on the Huffington Post (thanks HuffPost team!), we feel like we get a valuable good survey of current opinions heading our way daily.
With in-depth interviews, investigative articles, opinion infused examinations, plain celebratory reverie, occasionally silly non-sequitors, and public appearances where we get to meet you, we get a good analytical look at an ever-evolving movement, glittery polish and warts and all.
As the new year begins we take a look back at the top stories chosen by BSA Readers in the last 12 months. Among them are two takeover pop-up shows in soon-to-be demolished buildings, a story about commercial abuse of artist copyrights and the effort to fight back, a street art community’s response to the sudden death of an activist street artist, a Street Art tourist trip, and a few inspirational women, men, and Mexican muralists. Even though we published at least once a day for the last 365 days, these are the most popular pieces, as chosen by you, Dear BSA Reader.
PANTØNIO from Portugal has been racing with the rabbits across buildings, facades, and last week into a parking garage. The last time we published his rapid liquid rabbits was a year ago when he encircled a room at the La Tour Paris 13 installation. Today we get a look at the process for this underground work that appears to pull you quickly along up and down the ramp into the subterranean parking.
“I thought this theme would be appropriate,” he says of the aqua and blue blurring mob of burrowing bunnies, “It is a metaphor for the aggressive nature of shoppers sometimes when they are in cars and in shopping malls like this.” Yeah, you can see where PANTØNIO is headed with this hare racing scene and you can check it a little closer by clicking the image below.
“In our city of Reggio Emilia in Italy there is a very big factory named Officine Reggiane that is completely abandoned. It was famous in Italy for its metal work production (they made the Orient Express train, the crane used for the Costa Concordia, and then there was the longest occupation of a factory in the history of Italy here).
Now this is a major venue for graffiti and a refuge for homeless people. We began going to the factory more that two years ago and some of the people living there became our friends; in particular a man named Abidi, who we named “the boss of the Officine Reggiane”.
So a few weeks ago Abidi announced to us that he is leaving the factory to go back to Tunisia: he had found a wife! So, we thought about a gift we could give him. We are poor, very poor, we just had the paint, so one night we went in the factory (usually we go during the day) and we painted a big portrait of Abidi in the principal part of the place. It’s a gift for Abidi but also for us and for our memories of the Officine Reggiane.”
Eco-tourism is so popular for vacation travelers right now. You know, treading light and your carbon footprint and all that. Then there is Plastic Surgery Tourism for those whose nose is slightly twisted or who otherwise feel your personal epidermal brand could use a “refresh”. For half the price of back home why not travel to a fashionable cosmetic surgery destination and you won’t have to worry about someone seeing you buying brie at Balducci’s with a bandaged beak.
In the wake of the global growth of interest in art in the streets, one form of tourism that may soon be blowing up could be graffiti excursions, street art sightseeing, or even mural journeying. New York has been a magnet for years for aerosol artists calling us to help them hit up walls while they are on “spraycation”, but this is just the opposite.
You may wish to plan your trip abroad hunting the elusive wheat-pastes, stencils, fill-ins, hoping to capture an exotic local throwie. And why not take a few selfies with your favorite works by Street Artists that you only previously saw on Instagram?
Street Art photographer Stephen Kelley went on his own art safari last month in Lisbon, Portugal with his fiancé and he checked out a lot of the work that has been organized during the past couple of years by the internationally known local VHILS and some of his friends in a project entitled Underdogs.
“Underdogs is an international working platform based in Lisbon, Portugal that aims at creating space within the contemporary art scene for artists connected with the new languages of urban visual culture,” say the organizers, and they have curated a program of some large-scale pieces around the city in an intelligently grand and contextual manner that makes them seem like the installations have been there for decades, not a handful of years. Urban or contemporary, it has serious fans.
Today Mr. Kelley shares with BSA some of the shots he got during a relatively short trip to Lisbon, along with some of his experiences and observations.
“In preparing for the trip we used the Underdogs project as one of the references for the map,” he says. “I was able to convince my travelling partner and fiancé to rent an apartment in the Bairro Alto area. This was a good central point for the spots I wanted to hit. We were only in town for 3 days so I had to balance your standard tourist locations with my off-the-beaten-path art spots. She appreciates the work and is incredibly patient but I can only get away with dragging her into so many back alleys and train tracks.”
“Immediately after leaving the airport the taxi unintentionally drove us by a block-long Os Gemeos, Blu, Sam3, Ericailane, and Lucy Mclauchlan mural. We told the taxi driver that I was in town to shoot art in the streets and in buildings. He mentioned I should check out this street where a group of artists painted a series of murals about the local government administration. I put that on the list,” says Kelley.
“We decided to take a taxi to the area where I had located some C215 work. The taxi driver asked why we were going to that location/area,” says Kelley. “Once we arrived at the location I brought him with us to show him the art. He was incredibly impressed with the C215 mural I showed him and said he’d bring driving in town for 25 years and had never been on that street or never seen the artwork.”
“One evening in town we took a ferry over to Almada with a great view of the 25 de Abril Bridge (the same architect who designed the Golden Gate Bridge),” says Stephen. ” You can walk up the coast toward the bridge and there are two quaint eateries that make for a perfect sunset meal or drink. The waterfront is covered with graffiti and is a good representation of the art in the area.”
As with any vacation, planning your means of transportation is key – and Kelley and his girl realized Lisbon is not quite as pedestrian friendly as other cities, mainly because of the topography. “One of the first spots we hit was the harbor area for the Pixel Pancho and Vhils collaborations. After that, with intentions to continue to explore, we had our first encounter with the hills of Portugal,” he says. “The taxi driver had reminded us that Portugal is the city of seven hills. He was not kidding, walking the streets of Lisbon is no joke and a workout and a half. We quickly realized public transit or taxi was the best way to see Lisbon.”
Like most tourists on vacation, the events that make the most impact may be the unplanned surprises, like actually seeing work in progress. Stephen explains, “One day we started to head toward the Belem Tower and a How Nosm mural. On the way we ran into Vhil’s in progress working on a water tower outside the World Photo Press exhibition at the Museu da Electricidade. I tried to wait for more action shots but he was taking a break and I couldn’t wait.”
“I also recommend taking a trip up to the castles in Sintra. It’s a 30-minute train ride from the center of Lisbon. The castles are breathtaking and shouldn’t be missed. Sintra was one of the highlights of the entire stay. The train ride also gave me an opportunity to see all the trackside graffiti that is quite common in Europe. The highway and train graffiti are very common, which was much different than what I am accustomed to in the US,” says Kelley.
BSA travels with ROA to Austria, Canada, Great Britain, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the US.
Today we visit with Street Artist, urban naturalist, and globe trotter ROA to see what walls he has been climbing since we last checked in with him and his traveling curious circus of animals. Alternating between the cuddly and the killing, the endoskelton and the excrement, the pugnacious, playful and the putrefying, this Belgian world citizen is no romantic with his subjects and he isn’t asking for you to be either necessarily.
If you consider the brutal natural and man-made world that animals have to survive in and the ruthless depravity of humans throughout the ages (including right now), perhaps ROA’s depictions of these regionally based creatures are a healthy counterbalance to the fictional storytelling we customarily see in large public depictions of animals. Rotting Big Bird, anyone?
In one instructive example, a local town meeting in Chichester in Great Britain erupted into a heated debate this spring and a vote was called over whether to remove one of ROA’s fresh paintings from public view. The aerosoled portrait featured a rotting badger lying belly up and pock-marked across the front of a neglected building.
“It’s not appropriate, it’s grotesque and I hope it will be removed,” said the district and parish councilor who was outraged at the factual representation of a dying animal, according to a local website. The article does not mention if she was equally outraged at the culling of badgers locally, which ROA was drawing attention to, or if she would call the culling of undesirable animals “grotesque”.
You wouldn’t cheapen the spray-painted monochromatic realism of ROAs work as activism per se, or even moralizing. Sometimes a bear is just a bear.
But sometimes the poses and positions and selectively illustrated details are more pronounced than one may see in nature, so clearly his desire is to draw attention to them. And why not try to give a voice to them? Otters don’t do email and bison hooves are too clunky for texting and nary a narwhal has his own Facebook page. If they have been displaced, marginalized, or are suffering, you won’t see a cluster of clamoring squirrels arrayed before a bank of microphones and cameras issuing a press conference.
But slowly and gradually and almost systematically the former graffiti artist has been raising the awareness of even the dullest among us bipedal primates that the animals we are sharing the world with are plausibly pissed about that whole “dominion over nature” clause that pious Pulcinellas spout when justifying treating some animals like trash even while their blue-blooded poodles are having pedicures. Now that you think of it, this may not be exclusively about the animal kingdom.
Certainly we have all learned from ROAs travels that nature isn’t pretty – and can possibly be very alarming – and he won’t likely let you forget it.
So start trotting, galloping, swimming, scurrying, slithering, and scurrying! We have a lot of catching up to do with ROA as this year he’s been in Austria, Canada, Great Britain, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the US.
“For his first visit to Montreal, the Belgian Street Artist named ROA says that he had a great time creating this ‘still life’ with a bison and a bear. When talking about his inspiration, ROA says that he was impressed with the history of the so-called American bison, which was incredibly abundant in the early 19th century, numbering more than 40 million. After being hunted almost into extinction with a population of 200 a century later, the bison slowly have reestablished their numbers in Canada to 700,000. He decided to add a bear laying on top because it tells a similar story of a native mammal in the region.”
“This is the first time I actually painted a narwhal,” says ROA about the curiously speared whale that lives year-round in the Arctic.
“Their tusks make them a unique example of a species; in a way the narwhal is a mythical sea creature; The unicorns of the sea,” explains ROA about this Swedish piece. “The young male narwal that I painted here is unfortunately caught in a fishing line. I wanted to draw attention to how they and many other species become a victim of hunting and pollution.”
Here is the painting referred to above that upset a number of people in Chichester and called for a vote to take it down (it was 50/50 so they’ve left it up).
Regarding the Badger Cull 2013
“After several emails from Louise Matthews about the upcoming badger cull in GB, I painted a badger to support their efforts to save the badgers,” says ROA. The controversial practice in Britain has gained a number of very adamant foes, including Brian May from the rock group Queen.
“If you have ever witnessed a squirrel fight, you might recognize the action,” says ROA of these two enraged fellas in mid air. He explains that when the North American Eastern Grey squirrel (top) was introduced it caused the red native Squirrel (bottom) to lose habitat and population, so now the red one is protected by conservation laws.
ROA would like to thank the Southbank Centre at the canal.
” It took me a detailed search into the Dulwich Picture Gallery to find an animal expression that was involved with the daily life of the time and express on it’s own a fragment of the ordinary life. My eye was caught by a pooping dog in a large scale hunting scene; I found that an interesting detail. The people of the museum told me they have more hunting scenes with this same curious detail, but those were currently not exhibited.”
Dulwich: ‘Baroque The Streets: Dulwich Street Art Festival’ May 10-19, 2013. The festival was organized by Street Art London & Dulwich Picture Gallery
This week seemed busy on the streets of New York after LA graff writer Saber started us off on Sunday with a sky-writing campaign that was politically charged arts advocacy and a social media-soaked smackdown of the right wing in the US. From culture-jamming to political commentary to social advocacy, it looks like some Street Artists are getting back their voice in many pieces that are espousing a message. Not all of them of course.
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Bast, Billi Kid, Creepy, Classic, Espo, Home Sick, JB Rock, Jeice 2, Meer Sau, ND’A, Olek, OverUnder, PM AM, Reader, and Ugo Rondinone. Locations include New York, Istanbul, London, Portugal, Sicily, and the Pilbara desert in the Northwest of Australia.
As he paints the giant 8-shaped snake biting it’s tail, the Italian Street Artist JB Rock explains his new piece this way, “This is a portrait of our modern society and especially of my beautiful but very counterproductive country. For this work I’ve been inspired by the UROBORUS concept, remixed with the Infinity symbol”.
“I traveled up to Port Hedland which is an industry Port in the North West of Australia and painted some walls and found objects in the desert as part of a residency with FORM gallery,” says the Perth-based Creepy.
Capital Soars with Huge New International Street Art Murals
An Amazing Week in DF with Interesni Kazki, El Mac, Saner, Sego, Roa, Herakut, Vhils, and Escif
Gazing out at the sweep of metropolis that is modern Mexico City, you’ll have to catch your breath once in a while. A culture known for it’s historic public murals of the 20th Century, it looks like a resurgence is at hand, but this time the muralist are international Street Artists, and the scale is soaring.
The project “All City Canvas” invited nine artists from around the world and locally to use some of Distrito Federal’s prime real estate as just that – a canvas. With cranes and rollers instead of ladders and cans, these are some of the largest works we’ve seen by some of these artists. Here’s Portugals’ Vhils on the Dolores Building near La Alameda, there’s Germany’s Herakut on the side of the oldest newspaper in Mexico El Universal, and look way up to see LA’s El Mac signature portrait on the side of the Hotel Reforma Avenue. After eleven months of work getting permission from building owners, convincing city leaders, and securing major corporate sponsors, the capital of Mexico now has a few more major public art pieces that will blow you away and the resulting collection further secures this city of 21 million as one of the growing hubs of the Street Art scene.
We spoke with the three guys who organized the festival to get an understanding of the logistics and their aspirations for the project. As organizers and innovators with ties to their own arts organizations in Mexico City, each one of these guys hustled to make it happen; Victor Hugo Celaya of ARTO, Roberto Shimizu of MUJAM, and Gonzalo Alvarez of MAMUTT. Participating artists were Interesni Kazki (Ukraine), El Mac (USA), Saner (Mexico), Sego (Mexico), Roa (Belgium), Herakut (Germany), Vhils (Portugal) and Ecif (Spain).
Brooklyn Street Art:Often Street Artists are relegated to the buildings that are abandoned and in a state of decay. In this case, your program featured work on the sides of some of the most important buildings in Mexico City. How did you get permission to do this?
Victor Hugo Celaya: Since the beginning, we wanted to offer an unique experience to the city so we took urban art to everybody – youth, businessmen, doctors, moms… In order to make a huge impact, we worked to obtain the best spots in Mexico City. Each of these buildings is seen by thousands of people each day and are all located in the city center of Mexico City. It was a difficult job, but in the end we got everything set up. The impact would not have been the same if we had painted other walls.
Brooklyn Street Art:Mexican culture has a proud tradition of public murals. How does the style of Street Art in 2012 differ from that tradition? Roberto Shimizu: Obviously the Mexican history with mural painters and our cultural background, with artists like David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera – played a big part while we were conceptualizing the project. Mexico City has the perfect moral background to invite the best urban artists in the world to intervene its walls to create huge murals. We wanted to innovate and create a new link with the past with some of the renowned urban artists of our time.
Brooklyn Street Art:Did you have difficulty persuading building owners to allow this work on their property?
Gonzalo Alvarez: It was difficult to get to the owners, since these people are important business people that don’t have “a lot of time”. Nevertheless, after a lot of work and perseverance we got to show them the project. Once we got to them, we realized they are great people who were interested in getting involved in new innovative projects for the city. At the end, all of them were very happy with the outcome of the festival.
Brooklyn Street Art:Is there a graffiti/Street Art “scene” in certain areas of D.F.? Victor Hugo Celaya: DF is one of the biggest cities in the world – the 2nd biggest, so it is a natural hub for the urban art scene. The movement is very alive at the moment and it is giving Mexican artists an opportunity to show themselves to the world. With this project we wanted to make a statement to the world, that urban art is not only for young people that live in and around big cities – it’s for everybody – doctors, politicians, business people, Moms, merchants… For example, the intervention of the W Hotel, which is located in one of the most “posh” neighborhoods in the country, was very disruptive because nobody could have imagined an urban artists painting a huge mural on the same terrace where they usually eat their lunch or have their business meetings.
Brooklyn Street Art:In the last few years we have been seeing many international Street Artists traveling to large cities around the world doing commissioned work for local festival organizers. How do these traveling artists affect the art scene in the local Mexican context?
Gonzalo Alvarez: This was also very important to us when we were conceiving “All City Canvas”. First we wanted to show young artists that if you do a good job doing what you like, you can actually earn money and travel around the world. You can take your art to other cultures and if you are good enough, you could influence someone else.
Secondly, many artists in Mexico have no money to travel to other countries, and many of their influences come from the pictures they see on the Internet. To have this world-known urban artist in Mexico City was an unique opportunity for these young artists to watch, compare and learn their techniques.
Brooklyn Street Art:Can you talk about the vibrant youth culture in Mexico City and how it responds to this kind of work? Roberto Shimizu: Yes, Mexico is a young country, and more than half of the population is under 30 years of age. We noticed how important cultural events like this are for the young people. Each day thousands of young Mexicans congregated outside of the buildings the artists were painting – they wanted to watch the work and to understand the artistic process of the artwork. Also we offered a series of conferences called WORDS and a gallery exposition called WORKS to offer different points of view of the urban art scene. What we found is that young people in Mexico are very keen to learn and participate in these kinds of projects.
Also on the other hand, the feedback from the Mexican youth is very honest and direct. If you are doing something wrong they will let you know – also they’ll let you know if you are doing something right.
Depois de dois anos sem expor individualmente, Eime regressa com novos trabalhos de stencil.
(After two years without participating in a solo exhibition, Eime returns with some new stencil works.)
A visit with Street Art collective Faile in their Brooklyn studio finds the industrious duo at the center of a small cluster of assistants working on many projects simultaneously.
The air of collaboration is evident in this maze of activity – as well as an appreciation for process. The multi-level ex-industrial building has been reconfigured internally over the last decade to contain and accommodate the adventurous appetites of the childhood buddies who took their Street Art from Brooklyn to the Tate, with many stops along the way.
This doesn’t happen for everybody, so in this first visit of two before their upcoming debut solo show at Perry Rubenstein Gallery on November 4, we looked for clues about the creative and working DNA of Faile. In the ten quick long rotten beautiful years of this century they’ve plowed through many experiments methodically from simple one color small stencils on light posts to now museum quality raft-sized wooden block collages that take months to screenprint, saw, sand, and assemble.
In a pretty remarkable run through the neighborhood and the globe the two Patricks have used aerosoled stencils, screen prints, wheat pastes, roller tags, animated video games, carved wood, vinyl sculptures, spinning prayer poles, even alabaster and tile reliefs in their ever growing collection of work. Cumulatively, the forays have given depth and resilience to their nearly iconic pop imagery.
Since returning from their Lisbon temple installation mid summer, where their piece (two years in the making) became a focal point for that city’s first biennial, the Faile dudes are now making a multitude of these “wood paintings” here in their Brooklyn studio. Among the many silkscreens stacked against walls, rolled canvasses in tubes, and pieces by Banksy and Shepard Fairey adorning the walls, there are open wooden boxes, maybe 20 or 30, full of small wooden printed blocks laying open on tables and shelves.
Brooklyn Street Art: When the blocks get that small they are almost just a texture.
Patrick McNeil: Exactly, or just color palette. It’s so modular you don’t get stuck with anything, you get to explore a lot and if it doesn’t work you just put it back the way that it was or pull it apart.
Brooklyn Street Art:That’s right, you can reverse yourself pretty easily
Patrick McNeil: Yeah you just kind of build a piece and then realize it works better in something bigger – so they are very loose in a sense. It seems very precision-y and thought out but it’s much more looser than it looks.
The selective sampling of images that create the Lingua Faile has steadily grown into a library of totems, symbols, pulp art snippets, typefaces and signifiers set free from their context and recombined with a lucid dexterity, a splash of irony, and an inner voice that says, ‘go for it’. It’s an old-skool visual sampling that doesn’t need autotune for anything, just a hyped sense for combining clips and dropping it on the beat. Talking to them, one sees that it’s a loose intuitive sense that is guiding the process.
Patrick McNeil: And I like what is happening in this one, it’s still coming along. That one, the bottom needs to be worked out. It’s really top heavy. And we’ll kind of pull some colors down. That one is just kind of getting started. This one’s kind of in the middle right now; Just slowly working on blacks and switching things up.
Brooklyn Street Art:So you’ve used a lot of powdered pastels…
Patrick McNeil: Yeah…
Brooklyn Street Art: let’s see, blasting fluorescents…
Patrick McNeil: Well a little bit, yeah. There are not too many fluorescents, well, that pink is probably the only fluorescent. Well, there’s yellow on that one. But none of these have any fluorescent.
Brooklyn Street Art:I’m thinking of the DeLuxx Flux thing you did with Bast.
Patrick McNeil: Yeah Perry made the rule, “no fluorescents”.
Brooklyn Street Art:Oh okay. Well it’s good to have that guidance.
Patrick McNeil: Yeah, we might sneak one in there.
Patrick McNeil: Then we were looking more at abstractions, breaking color groups up, pushing it really far.
Brooklyn Street Art:Yes that’s an unusual combination of the violet and the grey. It looks fresh.
Patrick McNeil: Yeah, it’s kinda switchin’ it up. We kind of like tweak things and leave them up for a while and then switch it out. It’s kind of interesting.
Even though the new book, their first, is coming out to mark the first 10 years that took them from Brooklyn streets to group shows, street art exhibitions, galleries, and museums around the globe, the creative partners are focusing right now on the work at hand. A decade of work, play, and planning together has created a shorthand of cues and patterns and symbols that makes their work move quickly without much strife or discussion. In the studio it’s equal parts industry and creativity – where real world dedication to process and structure adds a loose tension to the spirit of play.
Brooklyn Street Art:Are you both the leader? Or do you take turns being the leader? Is there one who just says “THIS is where we have to go!”
Patrick McNeil: It goes back and forth really.
Patrick Miller: It’s pretty rare when it is “This is the way it has to be and there is no room for discussion”
Brooklyn Street Art:So you don’t come to loggerheads?
Patrick McNeil: No, we’ve known each other since we were 14 so we’ve got a pretty good friendship.
The new block collages, or “wood paintings” started about a year ago and the artists introduced them at Cour Carrée du Louvre for the FIAC in Paris. With a loyal fanbase that hangs on their every print release and microsite revelation, the new pieces were an instant hit and complete success. The scale of pieces at that time seemed manageable and something you might carry as part of your luggage; however some of these new wood paintings for the Rubenstein show might well be snagged by Swoon for walls in one of her Konbit shelters.
Brooklyn Street Art:How do you achieve a sense of balance? You have the professional, personal,… family is growing.. How do you guys achieve a sense of balance regularly?
Patrick Miller: For one, we treat this like a pretty regular thing in the sense of working Monday through Friday, pretty much 9:30 to 6:00.
Brooklyn Street Art:So you have a schedule and a structure.
Patrick Miller: Yeah, so we have structure in that sense. It’s a business after all on some level, and it has to be thought of in that way too. I mean it’s tough some times when we have big shows going on and we’re traveling and trying to not be away from the kids for too long. But you know, I guess I never stopped to think about it. It was nice last year because Patrick and his wife had their second child and we had our first within a few weeks of each other, and so that worked out really well, in the sense of timing-wise. We were able to slow down a bit.
Brooklyn Street Art:You know I was just thinking about the blocks and interactivity. I wonder if you could make a piece where some of the blocks were free and the person who buys it could play with the blocks.
Patrick Miller: Hey, you’re really onto something!
Patrick McNeil: Let’s go upstairs.
Brooklyn Street Art:You’ve already thought of this!
We shuffle eagerly behind our hosts like hypnotized penguins out to the darkened hallway and up some stairs to a high security print room that is pristine and plum full of stuff that might make you cry – things they’ve collected, been gifted, or just like to entertain visitors with. They could drop names but the brothers Faile are more interested to show one of their newest inventions, a wooden tray of blocks that form a puzzle – well, six actually. The lo-tech games perfectly marry our current digital longing for interactivity and the latent one to become a Luddite.
Patrick Miller: (The puzzle boxes) kind of came up in Paris, so we just developed these pieces on the side totally on their own. Then we started thinking there are some situations and combinations that we really liked. Each one is printed on all six sides and you can manipulate it and play with it.
Brooklyn Street Art:Hours of endless pleasure! How do you prevent them from getting damaged?
Patrick McNeil: That’s just part of it.
Patrick Miller: I don’t think they’re going to get too damaged. They are already sanded and their meant to be touched. We’re actually making a site, because it’s really hard to show them.
Brooklyn Street Art:Have you thought of customization on the site so people can select options and order it?
Patrick: Yes we’ve thought of that but effectively you’d have tons of combinations.
Faile wood blocks at the studio (Photo @ Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art:Have you thought of doing an app for these so people can play with them?
Patrick: Yeah and that is something that may come out of it. The people that we work with… That would be a fun thing, as a little game. And it’s actually pretty simple because the navigation is just like ‘click’ and it turns it. It should be a fun little site. It’s been fun to do these little micro sites.
Brooklyn Street Art: Right, with a phone’s motion sensor you could roll the blocks around. Wow, you guys are on top of it.
This visit draws to an end with a promise to rejoin shortly before the show to see the progression. But before we go, the new book is placed with slight aplomb on the counter. The one and only copy they’ve received from the printer, we stare at it like cats at an aquarium. The splashy pink raging dog cover says the thing about Faile you might not notice on a casual tour; these guys are ferocious in their desire to succeed and have built a body of work to prove it.
Tentatively peeling back the pages of the book, we see that the first image is the simple stencil of a figure carrying a canvas with his back to you and the words “A Life”, their first name, across the top. Anyone stumbling home drunk through industrial Williamsburg in the late 90’s would remember what curiosity was sparked with this humblest of images scattered everywhere. Later they anagrammed it to form their current name.
Brooklyn Street Art:So “A Life” got converted to Faile, which is just the opposite of what you’ve done!
Patrick Miller: Yeah it was always kind of about growing from it and making the most of all your failures.
Brooklyn Street Art:Did you both design the book?
Patrick Miller: We worked on it with a friend of ours. It was such an undertaking. But it’s good. It’s definitely a pretty personal book in the way that it’s written, very friendly, an enjoyable read. It’s nice just to have the works on print.
Patrick McNeil: It’s nice to see the earlier work, and it’s nice to see how the process goes because it’s chronological as well.
Brooklyn Street Art:Who is going to have seen all of this stuff besides you two? Nobody.
Patrick Miller: It’s a nice way to put it together for yourself too, after 10 years of working on Faile it’s nice to have this.
Fundraiser, Print Show, New Gallery Opening in Brooklyn
Don’t miss the opening and fundraiser tonight of Brooklyn’s newest gallery, called 99%. The silent auction will feature new prints by Swoon (left) and Gaia (right) as well as Bast, Chris Mendoza, Cycle, Dennis McNett, Doze Green, Ellis G, Eric White, Esao Andrews, EZO, Ian Kuali’I, Imminent Disaster, Jeremiah Ketner, Jose Parla, Kenji Hirata, Lady Pink, Martha Cooper, Martin Wittfooth, Maya Hayuk, Mel Kadel, Morning Breath, Nathan Lee Pickett, Orlando Reyes, Rage Johnson, Ricky Powell, Rostarr, Ryan Humphrey, Skewville, Tara McPherson, Tono Radvany, Voodo Fe, Xiaoqing Ding, Yuri Shimojo
Happy World Cup!!!! Here is Tsatsulow,the Best Soccer Freestyler in the World
FIGMENT on Governors Island – Interactive Art for Everybody (Free Free Free)
The Figment Festival on Governor’s Island boasts so many live arts and activities for free this weekend that it is guaranteed to relax and exhaust you simultaneously. A number of street artists are going to be there performing live, as well as a number of interactive installations and performances to challenge and titillate.
Governors island continues to expand and grow, and FIGMENT this year is no exception. Check the ferry schedule (free). There are ferries from Brooklyn again this year. Visitors are encouraged to bring bikes and food.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
