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It was only a matter of time until the San Diego Union Tribune caught on to what’s going on at The Glashaus. A big congrats to our neighbor Greg Brotherton for the so well-deserved recognition. If you haven’t checked out his work, you simply must! Here’s the UT’s take on the Barrio Logan art scene. Read it if you will…then come down and check it out for yourself. You are welcome here!
Details on the September 4th Barrio Logan Art Openings at The Glashaus, The Bakery, & Voz Alta here!
Oaxaca based artist and tattooist Dr. Lakra just got into town for tomorrow’s opening at MCASD. He’s painting into the night on the West wall of the Miriello Grafico building at the edge of the infamous Barrio Logan neighborhood. Some of you might recall the art show we held at this building a couple years ago.
Barrio Logan is an appropriate location for the artist with its rich tradition in Latin American street art including Chicano Park, one of the most densely concentrated areas of murals in the entire country and the site of a crucial show of civil disobedience by the local community.
Dr. Lakra was a very nice, soft spoken dude. With our studio just around the corner from “The Logan” building, we couldn’t be happier having his art so close. The full shot below shows what’s left to paint tonight, and apparently he’ll keep painting toward the right (if he has time).
There were plenty of onlookers during the second day of work on the OBEY GIANT mural in South Park (San Diego) by Shepard Fairey and his crew (day one here). The crowd was a good mix of photogs, hipsters, fixie riders, random curious ladies taking neighborhood walks…and along came a man who seemed to be plucked straight out of a Quentin Tarantino film.
He moaned some nonsense about how he “owned most of all this…” property next door to the mural, and whined, “I gotta look at this every day!?” The hipsters had some fun chatting with him as Grandpa Grumpypants kept staring up with fire in his eyes at the scissor-lift while Fairey & co. cut huge stencils of a cloaked figure.
It was interesting to see the artists cutting their stencils directly on the cinderblock building. Seems like a mundane detail, simply a time-intensive task required to get a huge mural up on the side of a building – and indeed it is.
But it’s also a reminder that the patronage of a museum like MCASD (or for that matter, lending our own wall to Mike Maxwell) can make a world of difference for what an artist is able to do with a public work. Having several days to underpaint, create background patterns, wheat-paste in several layers, and overlay figurative images with enormous grid-based stencils is a lot different than showing up at 3am with a pre-cut stencil and a couple cans of aerosol.
Both modes of operation have their owns merits, but they are vastly different when it comes to decorative complexity or the context created by risking arrest.
We’re pretty happy about the freedoms granted to the artists of Viva La Revolucion, and hope the extra time they’re spending on these pieces will open more dialogue with Grandpa Grumpypants or anyone else who’s a stranger to street art.
After putting up an enormous mural in Hillcrest (check Carly Ealey’s beautiful photos for Sezio here), Shepard Fairey and his crew were back at it, this time in the South Park neighborhood of San Diego. They have the underpainting and some stenciling out of the way, and we’re excited to see the progress in the coming days.
With MCASD commissioned works popping up all over town (officially or otherwise), it’s been like a street art Disneyland in San Diego over the past several weeks. Undoubtedly, the carpet-bombing from Space Invader, Barry McGee mural, Os Gemeos’ human step ladder, and the large-scale OBEY GIANT murals underway are creating tons of excitement leading up to the Viva La Revolucion exhibition opening this Saturday.
But the hype is a little uncomfortable, and immediately stirs up the dialogue that came out of the brilliant (mock or doc- umentary ?) Exit Through The Giftshop. But the excitement is also simply a good reminder that art should be a part of everyday life.
We also can’t help being stoked to live 4 blocks away from an in-process OBEY mural.
More updates from the field soon…
The upcoming exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD), entitled “Viva La Revolucion,” has generated a tremendous amount of dialogue around the idea of street art, and with that dialogue – controversy. This came to a head with Barry McGee‘s (TWIST) mural across the street from the city hall. Mike Maxwell has been documenting as well as contributing to the explosion of murals showing up on walls across the city, and caught some great footage of McGee’s team attacking an enormous wall while under scrutiny.
Although it’s a common practice to commission walls for artist murals, and we totally understand the value of MCASD grabbing some walls for these artists, we find it a little ironic that an exhibition specifically about the street art movement includes officially sanctioned walls for artists (especially if the MCASD backs down under local criticism).
The beautiful thing about the museum’s exhibition is that while some walls are “official”, some are very much unofficial works done by the artists under their own accord. You may be able to take the street artist off the street, but you can’t take the street out of the street artist.
We’re looking forward to watch this play out over the coming weeks (the exhibition opens to the public on July 18th), and see how MCASD handles ongoing criticism and subsequent education/outreach. One thing is for certain so far: this museum is doing their job by starting dialogue and pushing this city to consider what contemporary art is or should be.
The very talented Mike Maxwell has been busy painting the walls of downtown San Diego. Below’s a time lapse video documenting his recent mural here at The Bakery in Barrio Logan.
See more photos here.
He also gave this wall a 70 foot mustache at 14th & J with his so-called “Everything That Has Ever Existed”. Awesome:
We’ve launched into month 6 at The Farm Proper, our mobile urban farm experiment at The Bakery.
What we’re harvesting: Aztec spinach, strawberries, wild arugula, pole beans, magenta lambsquarter, purple radishes, beets, kale, tatsoi.
The Farm Proper is an experimental project created by a collaborative of artists, designers, and backyard growers to inspire urban cultivation and pocket farms. Using abandoned/defunct shopping carts as our medium, we have designed a scenario to take over a temporarily available industrial lot to provide the community with organically grown food.
Our intention was to start a conversation and indeed it’s begun with some welcomed coverage via Fast Company and designboom of Milan, Italy.
Check in on the farm at Facebook or Flickr for an evolving set of photos. And don’t be a stranger – we’ve got some events planned for this summer at the farm. Sign up for updates here.
On 15 May 2010 Set & Drift hosted a Seed Bombing Potluck at The Farm Proper.
The Farm Proper is an experiment in the urban landscape.
Set & Drift, in collaboration with mi-workshop, have repurposed an industrial dirt lot outside The Bakery in the Barrio Logan neighborhood of San Diego, California. The farm is comprised of abandoned/defunct grocery carts filled with vegetables cultivated organically by a collective of artists, designers, backyard growers, and other creatives. It’s a project meant to inspire urban cultivation and pocket farms. Using abandoned shopping carts as our medium, we’ve designed a scenario to take over a temporarily available industrial lot to provide the community with organically grown food. The designer is the new farmer!
Above: An assemblage of artists and designers discuss and farm: Mike Maxwell, Kevin Joelson, Patrick Kenney, Sean Kelley, Scott Ballum & Stacy Kelley
Project details here.
Full Flickr set here.
Below: Architect Miki Iwasaki of mi-workshop builds architecture for the pole bean climbers.
Art and Copy, A Film by Doug Pray, is coming to Birch Theater in North Park June 24th.
ART & COPY is a powerful new film about advertising and inspiration. Directed by Doug Pray (SURFWISE, SCRATCH, HYPE!), it reveals the work and wisdom of some of the most influential advertising creatives of our time — people who’ve profoundly impacted our culture, yet are virtually unknown outside their industry. Exploding forth from advertising’s “creative revolution” of the 1960s, these artists and writers all brought a surprisingly rebellious spirit to their work in a business more often associated with mediocrity or manipulation…
Details found here.
