LEE Quinones

One of the great pleasures of my youth was watching and photographing the work of Lee Quinones. Without question, Quinones is one of the movement’s most influential painters. He set the bar high. It inspired scores young artists to raise the level of their artist ambitions and in turn drove the movement into true art. His paintings—created in cramped quarters and in nearly complete darkness—were never short of flawless. —Eric Deal

TALES OF RTW

PRESENTS GALLERY: 64 Washington Avenue Brooklyn, NY. 11205

May 4, 2012 at 6:00pm until Friday, June 1, 2012 at 9:00pm

The first gallery show ever as a group, The Rolling Thunder Writers of NYC Subway Graffiti fame. One of the most prolific, heavy-hitting graffiti crews in the history of Graffiti art. RTW covered the period from 1976 well into the end of subway graffiti in the 1990's. Known for their very psychedelic origins..from Central Parks Bandshell to the One Tunnel...where Hippie meets Hip-Hop, the Funk gets stronger! and beyonder!. The show will be a two part endeavor:

Part-1: April 6th
DR.REVOLT-ZEPHYR-BILROCK-QUIK-CRUNCH-PADE-REGAL192-TKID170-KEL1st-RICH2--KR1--TRIKE-SAR-MEO-CAVS-STRIKE-WHISPER1 -KLASS-CHOCI-KB-RCA

Part-2: May 4th
The legendary MIN ONE!

BE THERE OR BE SQUARE!!!!!

KAVES designs label for 2011 Beaujolais Nouveau

The marketing director of the firm where I work gave me the most thoughtful holiday gift. She knows about my passion for graffiti and street art and gave me a bottle of

2011 Beaujolais Nouveau. The label just happens to have been designed by Brooklyn's own "Mr. KAVES". And so the bottle sits in my fridge. The New York Daily News recently ran an article on KAVES and the design.

-- Eric Deal

STYLE WARS REVISITED

Henry Chalfant, the producer of the film Style Wars just shared some information with me regarding the film and its restoration effort.

Pitchfork features an interview with Mr. Chalfant, Linda Habib the film's line producer and two of the artists featured in the film-- Carlos" MARE 139" Rodriguez, and John "CRASH" Matos.

Read story at Pitchfork.

Support the Style Wars fund raising drive at Kickstarter.

COPS PAINTING GRAFFITI?

Looks like law enforcement in the UK is getting into the street art game.

Saw this on the BBC web site and had to share it.

-- Eric Deal

Gloucestershire Police have stencilled the number of arrests the force has made on streets around Gloucester.

The street stencils, applied at 30 city sites, are to highlight the force's "harder approach" to lawbreakers as part of Operation Scorpion.

Since its launch in September, the countywide operation "aimed at tackling any low-level issues" has led to 102 arrests in Gloucestershire.

Supt Rob Priddy said the stencils were a way to "draw attention to our work".

Read more on BBC.co.uk

NEW BOOK: GRAFFITI 365

I received an advance copy of this book a few months back, but decided to wait till it was available for purchase to blog on it.

This book is unique in that it is perhaps the first book to cover both street art and graffiti effectively. It is written by Jay Edlin aka TERROR 161/JSON, an veteran of New York's subway graffiti movement. He's a cat with a reputation of being difficult to please, so the selection of artists in the book is real cream of the crop -- no scrubs or mid-level players here.

365 covers the artists with succinct and at times witty profiles. The book is a crash course in both street art and graffiti.

In an era where literally thousands of images of graffiti and street art are available in books and on the Internet Graffiti 365 has some rare gems..Don't sleep…Grab it!

www.abramsbooks.com

-- Eric Deal

From the Publisher

About the book

Graffiti 365 delivers the first real insider’s view into the contemporary graffiti and street-art scenes, as well as their antecedents. A fun, wide-ranging survey of the international graffiti movement, this book uses more than 600 rare, previously unpublished, or legendary images to introduce and describe important artists—from Blade to Banksy—and styles—from bubble to wild. Along the way, Graffiti 365 covers different eras, cities, legendary walls and crews, police and public responses to graffiti, and more.

The author of Graffiti 365, J.SON, has been an artist and historian of the graffiti movement for decades—he started writing graffiti in 1973 and retired in 1984. Unparalleled in its breadth and depth of coverage, Graffiti 365 is a wide-angle snapshot of an entire movement.

About the author

Jay “J.SON” Edlin has written for The Source, Blaze, and Mass Appeal. He recently was interviewed for Jon Naar’s Birth of Graffiti.

Andrew “Zephyr” Witten is the author of Dondi White: Style Master General and has written for Vibe, The Source, and Juxtapoz.

Support KickStart MARE 139 Exhibit

ARRACK MODERN ART

Presents

Carlos MARE139 Rodriguez

STRUCTURAL INTERVENTIONS

Help Kickstart this amazing exhibition by donating your support and receiving art in return. I can’t do this with out the help of our creative community and our supporters so help spread the Kickstarter url-http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnwendelbo/mare139-graffiti-sculpture-the-carrack or donate to the cause.

The more support we receive the more expansive the effort will become to advance the exhibition in the gallery and public space. This will be a groundbreaking effort for my sculptural graffiti works and I hope you all can be a part of it. My collaboration with John Wendelbo will push into new boundaries and we want you all to own a part of it by becoming advocates for the show.

What are we doing?

a LIVE 28 foot long, 8 foot tall graffiti and stencil mural outside the Carrack on Parrish Street Saturday Nov 19th: you, your kids, somebody gets to bring home a part of the wall, and it’s all during Durham ART WALK.

What’s the deal?

The wall mural has been subdivided into a bunch of panels of different sizes, some 1’x1’ and up to 4’x8’. We are pre-selling only blank panels ahead of time to pay for the show (we have a seriously wild installation for you that week end indoors at the Carrack): you can purchase a panel, you have no idea what will be on it besides the excellent Art of any and all MARE139 / WENDELBO collaborations. What you do know is that it’s going to be awesome, raw, genuine and authentic. Of course panel sales stop before the beginning of the performance, wouldn’t be fair otherwise! We also DO NEED to pre-sell $1000 within the next two weeks to make sure all goes smoothly.

Hi Arts NYC pledges to match $2,500 towards the show if we meet that goal!

To get more info, view a video of a 3D sculpture we will be using as the basis for one of our lay-ups, or to buy a panel now and visit our kickstarter page here! (simply follow the ‘back this project’ button once you’re there).

See you on Saturday November 19th downtown Durham at 111 west Parrish Street!