Liu Bolin: Hiding In The City
Posted July 30, 2010 by icky in Housing, Land & Development | Comments (0)
I just saw some beautiful photographs by Chinese artist Liu Bolin, from a series called Hiding In the City, where he gets painted into his environment. These works were inspired by the destruction of his studio to (I believe) clear ground for the Olympic stadium in 2008.
There's a brief interview with him in White Hot Magazine which I quote from here:
Banner drop in Downtown Phoenix - Stop SB 1070!
Posted July 29, 2010 by Favianna_Rodriguez in Art & Politics | Comments (0)
Major Props to fellow activists and artists for this action they did today in downtown Phoenix. "In a daring act of civil disobedience in downtown Phoenix this evening, at least four activists occupied a tall crane near Central Avenue and Jefferson Street and deployed a huge banner that read "Stop the Hate," with red lines crossing out "287(g)" and "1070," reported the Phoenix New Times.
In their message, the group said some powerful words:
collage of the week (42)
Posted July 29, 2010 by nicolas_lampert in Justseeds & Member Projects | Comments (1)
Firebrands Reviewed
Posted July 29, 2010 by icky in Books & Zines | Comments (0)
There's a thoughtful (and critical) review of the Justseeds collaborative book Firebrands on Ernesto Aguilar's blog here.
(It's a great blog too!)
The Political Graphics of Jules Perahim
Posted July 28, 2010 by icky in Inspirations | Comments (1)
Jules Perahim was a Romanian artist who died in 2008. Most links to him on the web refer to his surrealist works (in the Dali vein of surrealism) produced while he was in exile, in Paris, in the 1960s and 70s. But Perahim's work before this leaves just enough milestones to trace an interesting path, from a young Romanian Jew involved with the socialist movement and avante garde art circles, to exile in the Soviet Union during the Axis-allied government during WWII and then returning with the Red Army and becoming part of the new communist government. Finally moving to France and being remembered for his work in surrealism. Between these broad strokes, I think, there's a story of an age....
Notes From the Front Desk
Posted July 28, 2010 by bec_young in Inspirations | Comments (3)
As you may know, Justseeds operations moved in May of this year from a city with some bridges, Portland, OR, to a city with more bridges, Pittsburgh, PA. The transition has included moments that fit all sorts of descriptive terms; from the ridiculous to the sacred. But now it's the time we've all been waiting for: the Front Desk is set up and the Chair is in place, ready to take action.
This week, we held a meeting at Espresso a Mano, a locally-owned coffee-shop a few blocks away, where the three of us may, or may not, be addicted to the the cold-brewed coffee. At the moment, we are in the midst of preparing for the sublime prints of the Resourced portfolio to grace the walls of our space. After a brief meeting, we headed to our neighborhood hardware store, where we consensed on Scotland Isle, a mid-tone green in the Asparagus family, in a record amount of time. This color will be the backdrop of our next several shows, so it had to be just right. The paint-mixer on duty was kind enough to let us know about the dangers of improper ventilation, that green promotes tranquility, and that you know you're dehydrated if your pee is too dark. It may also be noted, by the note-maker, the green is also the color of the heart chakra.
Please check out our event this Friday if you're in the area, otherwise, don't forget: ventilation and hydration are the keys to success!
Drawing All the Time: Week 34
Posted July 28, 2010 by colin_matthes in Inspiration | Comments (0)
I am making a bunch of drawings and sculptures of "plausible inventions." Here is one of them.
review of Watershed: Art, Activism, and Community Engagement
Posted July 28, 2010 by nicolas_lampert in Environment | Comments (0)
Third Coast Digest recently featured an article on the Watershed art show that I co-organized with Raoul Deal in Milwaukee. Here is a link to the article by Kelly Gehringer.
http://thirdcoastdigest.com/2010/07/the-art-of-conservation-via-watershed-milwaukee/
Exposición Grafica Viernes 30 de Julio ¡ANTE LA DESTRUCCIÓN AMBIENTAL, ORGANIZACIÓN!
Posted July 27, 2010 by santi in Art exhibits/shows | Comments (0)
EXPOSICIÓN GRAFICA EN LA ZAM
Viernes 30 de Julio
7pm
En la ZAM
Inaguración, y Presentación de la Serie de Carteles sobre CAMBIO CLIMATICO:
¡ANTE LA DESTRUCCIÓN AMBIENTAL, ORGANIZACIÓN!
Rad Teen Print of the Week: Michael Jordan!
Posted July 27, 2010 by mary_tremonte in Inspirations | Comments (0)
This week's Rad Teen Print off the week is from Desmond, a student at RUST (Radical Urban Silkscreen Team) in Hazelwood.
Students each picked an inspiring quote at random, chosen by Closing the Gap, a health program of the YMCA. Students then picked an image and laid out text. This was a first silkscreen project for all of them. It should be noted that printing a large solid area like this is hard to do for even a seasoned printmaker, and Desmond nailed it! More to come!
RESOURCED Portfolio Launch in Pittsburgh
Posted July 26, 2010 by shaun in Art & Politics | Comments (0)
Justseeds RESOURCED Portfolio Launch Reception
Pittsburgh, PA
Friday, July 30th - 6-10pm
Free and Open to the Public
3410 Penn Ave 2nd Floor
(entrance and bike parking around back via Spring Way)
EVENT DETAILS:
Justseeds Artists' Cooperative is launching our newest collective portfolio project, RESOURCED, at our new space in Lawrenceville (Pittsburgh) on Friday, July 30. Prints from the portfolio will be on display and portfolios will be for sale. Artwork by Justseeds artists will also be available for sale, as well as books, zines, and Celebrate People's History posters. The event is free and open to the public from 6 to 10pm.
Judging Books by Their Covers: 16
Posted July 26, 2010 by jmacphee in Books & Zines | Comments (2)
In the decade from 1931 to 1940, B. Traven published a series of six books known as his Jungle Novels: Government (1931), The Carreta (aka The Cart) (1931), March to the Monteria (aka March To Caobaland) (1933), Trozas (1936), The Rebellion of the Hanged (1936), and A General from the Jungle (1940). The Jungle novels are a series of interconnected stories about the struggles of the Indigenous in Chiapas at the end of the 19th Century, and how their rebellion starts the Mexican Revolution. This week let's take a look at the first three novels:
Firebrands Book Release Party: Friday in Brooklyn!
Posted July 22, 2010 by molly_fair in Events | Comments (0)
We're having a book release for our new book Firebrands: Portraits from the Americas!
Come hang out, enjoy some refreshments, and see illustrations from the book on display!
Friday, July 23
7:30-10:00 PM
BOOK THUG NATION, Used Bookstore/Community Space
100 N3rd St Between Berry St and Wythe Ave Williamsbug, Brooklyn.
Brooklyn, NY
Curated by the Justseeds Artists' Collective, Firebrands is full of peoples' history, and dangerous information. These beautifully illustrated mini-poster pages showcase radicals, dissidents, folk singers, and rabble-rousers, from Emma Goldman to Tupac, Pablo Neruda to Fred Hampton. As say editors Shaun Slifer and Bec Young in the introduction, the book "is especially made for anyone who has sat, trembling with frustration and disappointment in history class, or reading a text book heavily edited of anything interesting or useful. It's for all our ancestors, especially for the ones left out of or misrepresented in said textbook, because they were too brown, too female, too poor, too queer, too uneducated, too disabled, or because they felt or thought too much." This is a real people's history, a book packed with dynamite, desire, and, above all, courage.
collage of the week (41)
Posted July 22, 2010 by nicolas_lampert in Justseeds & Member Projects | Comments (0)
Joe Lurato New Work
Posted July 22, 2010 by jmacphee in Street Art & Graffiti | Comments (0)
Awhile back I got an email from Joe Lurato (aka :01), who started stenciling a couple years back, and has really been honing his craft and trying to figure out how to use artwork for social good. He just finished a couple prints with the Abztract Collective that are quite nice. Often his work is a little too photo-realist for my personal taste, but I like his stencil style here, very Euro with lots of bridges, but distinct as well. More info HERE.
Mathew Curran in Spain
Posted July 21, 2010 by jmacphee in Street Art & Graffiti | Comments (0)
My friend Mathew Curran just got back from a productive visit to Madrid, he's got a short video of the process of cutting a huge stencil, painting it, and pasting it up. Pretty cool:
Drawing All the Time: Week 33
Posted July 21, 2010 by colin_matthes in Inspiration | Comments (0)
I am making a bunch of drawings and sculptures of "plausible inventions." Here is one of them.
A Brief History of Charles H. Kerr
Posted July 20, 2010 by jmacphee in Books & Zines | Comments (0)
For the book lovers out there, check out John Duda and Kate Khatib's great history of Charles H. Kerr, the oldest left publisher in the US! It's published by AREA Chicago HERE.
LA Massive Sticker Show - Peel Here
Posted July 20, 2010 by Favianna_Rodriguez in Art exhibits/shows | Comments (0)
The much anticipated sticker exhibit PEEL HERE just opened this weekend, July 17th, in Los Angeles and will be up for two weeks. The show is organized by Sticky Rick, one of LA's go-to-guys for sticker printing - this show is bound to be a success. I have a piece in the show and am happy to be in the company of some all star artists! Including Man One, Ernesto Yerena, Vyal One, Robbie Conal, Lalo Alcaraz, & the London Police. You can expect to find a massive sticker slap walls!!!
For the love of our people
Posted July 20, 2010 by Favianna_Rodriguez in Art & Politics | Comments (1)
I just released my new art print about Malcolm X, the revolutionary who has most influenced my political framework. His most powerful lesson for me was around self-determination, that is, the belief that we as people of color should be in control of our own destiny. Check it out by clicking here.
Rad Teen Print of the Week: HAWK!
Posted July 20, 2010 by mary_tremonte in Inspirations | Comments (0)
After a long hiatus, Rad Teen Print of the Week is back!
This print is from Sabrina, one of our new students at this Summer's RUST (Radical Urban Silkscreen Team), a project of The Andy Warhol Museum in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Hazelwood. This project was for Bridging the Gap, a health initiative of the YMCA. Students picked randomly from a list of inspiring quotes and came up with an image to go with the text. This was a first silkscreen printing project for all of them.
At the conclusion of RUST in August, the silkscreen equipment will stay in Hazelwood at Center of Life, an awesome youth programming center run out of an old church and parish house. Most of their focus is on jazz and hip hop performance, and we are all excited to see how silkscreen printing can expand what they are already doing.
More to come!
Judging Books by Their Covers: 15
Posted July 19, 2010 by jmacphee in Books & Zines | Comments (3)
Next up in the B. Traven book cover-athon is The Death Ship. My favorite Traven novel (well, maybe a tie with The Rebellion of the Hanged), The Death Ship is a great story of a sailor on a ship write after WWI, just as the borders of the modern nation states across the world are being fully codified, leaving him and the rest of the crew a ship without a country, and thus invisible and impossible to the modern world. This book had had some great covers. I was only able to track down eleven, but I've seen some others I hope to still find and put up here sometime in the future. The cover to the left is one of the best, carrying an illustration by Seymour Chwast.
(i can) read the writing on the wall-10
Posted July 19, 2010 by k_c_ in Street Art & Graffiti | Comments (0)
Swooph
Paris, 2007
Sailing the Barbarous Coast Exhibition Photos
Posted July 16, 2010 by colin_matthes in Inspiration | Comments (0)
Tomorrow (Saturday) is the last day to see this show in person:
Sailing the Barbarous Coast: work by Colin Matthes and Anthony Smith
At
Walker's Point Center for the Arts, Milwaukee, WI
Here are a few install photos:
Sculptural work by Colin Matthes
Go Forth (and Step In It): Levi's and All Those Frontiers The Rest of Us Can't See
Posted July 16, 2010 by shaun in Housing, Land & Development | Comments (15)
"We were taught how the pioneers went into the West. They opened their eyes, and made up what things could be."
On the minds and tongues of several of my friends and cohorts lately has been Levi's unveiling of their new ad campaign focusing on the near-to-Pittsburgh borough of Braddock, PA. Rumors that Levi's was throwing cash at Braddock-based projects and hiring local models turned out to be true, yet somehow the end product of their presence in the city has left most of us feeling a little more ill than we had anticipated.
Much has been written about Braddock in national news, touting the decimated city as a destination for young artists/entrepenuers and an example of innovative local government striving to build anew in the (very real) rubble of the old. For many, Braddock is iconic in it's present stature, and the historical injuries wrought upon the borough by profit-motivated power mongers continued most recently as UPMC withdrew it's Braddock hospital facility this January - managing also to remove the only ATM and cafeteria from the city.
Broken Social Scene-Meet me in the basement fan video
Posted July 16, 2010 by k_c_ in Art & Politics | Comments (1)
A video to take you into the weekend:
"This video was made as a response to the G20 Summit in Toronto June, 2010."
Broken Social Scene-Meet me in the basement (from their latest album, Forgiveness Rock Record)
The rest speaks for itself. It was sent to us by a lover of our music who wants to remain anonymous. We are very proud to share this mash-up with you.- Broken Social Scene
A sped up version of the news cycle, not exactly sure what media like this is supposed to provoke. How does condensing this material repurpose it from news to social commentary?
I've always got so many questions, and looking for folks with answers!
Taller Tupac Amaru is recognized in BEST OF THE BAY 2010!
Posted July 16, 2010 by Favianna_Rodriguez in Art & Politics | Comments (2)
The East Bay Express each year recognizes the baddest, raddest and dopest talent in the San Francisco Bay Area. This year, our collective, the Taller Tupac Amaru was named the Best Political Art Collective in the BEST OF THE BAY 2010 Awards. Together with Jesus Barraza, I, Favianna, co-founded the Taller Tupac Amaru back in 2003. Later we would be joined by the uber talented Melanie Cervantes. The three of us would later join Justseeds and Melanie and Jesus would later form Dignidad Rebelde. Yes, lots of collective art-making going on here. You can hear an in-depth interview by our fellow JS collective member, Dylan Miner, by clicking here.
The article reads:The three can be found making screen-printed political posters in Rodriguez's small backyard studio in Oakland. Their provocative and lively prints are also distributed to nonprofits and grassroots organizations, with themes such as anti-war, police brutality, and immigration.
Lincoln Cushing at the Asian Art Museum, SF
Posted July 16, 2010 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints | Comments (0)
Poster archivist and expert Lincoln Cushing will be presenting on the posters of the Chinese Cultural Revolution at the end of the month. I'm sure it will be well worth checking out if you are in SF:
Art or propaganda? An unconventional look at the posters of the Chinese Cultural Revolution
A slideshow talk by Lincoln Cushing and Ann Tompkins
Saturday, July 31, 2-4 PM
Asian Art Museum
200 Larkin Ave., S.F.
$15 Society for Asian Art members, $25 nonmembers
http://www.societyforasianart.org:80/newsletter.html
La Commune screeening in NYC
Posted July 15, 2010 by jmacphee in Film & Video | Comments (0)
Peter Watkins is one of the more interesting antiauthoritarian political filmmakers of the last 40 years, and his most recent film, La Commune, is screening this Saturday at 16Beaver in NYC. This is a rare opportunity to watch this film as intended: all at once (it's long!) and with a group, with discussion to during and after, and over a meal! Here's the details:
What: Screening, Discussion, and Dinner
Where: 16Beaver Street, 4th Floor
When: Saturday 07.17.10 at 11:30 am
Who: Free and open to all
2 JustSeeders @ COPY JAM! - Coming to Chicago on July 30th!
Posted July 15, 2010 by Favianna_Rodriguez in Art exhibits/shows | Comments (0)
If you are in the Chicago area, you can find art pieces by two Just Seeders - Erik Ruin and myself, Favianna - at the COPY JAM coming on July 30th to Chicago! Its being organized by the awesome blog, PRINTERESTING. This is one of more cooler art show concepts I have run into recently. I love the idea of using an old copy machine to reproduce work. It's great to see how folks can interact with the artwork by taking copies of it.
Check out this video:
Art In The Age & Printeresting Present...COPY JAM! from Art In The Age on Vimeo.
COPY JAM! 2: TEXT EDITION
A Printeresting Curatorial Project
at The Printers' Ball
The Luddington Building
1104 S. Wabash Ave
Chicago, IL
One Night Only!
FREE ADMISSION
collage of the week (40)
Posted July 15, 2010 by nicolas_lampert in Justseeds & Member Projects | Comments (0)
RIP Harvey Pekar and Tuli Kupferberg
Posted July 14, 2010 by molly_fair in Inspirations | Comments (0)
Pour one out for Harvey Pekar and Tuli Kupferberg. Pekar was known for his comic American Splendor, which he wrote and enlisted artists to illustrate including R. Crumb. He also wrote "Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History”, and “Studs Terkel’s Working: A Graphic Adaptation” ( which Justseeds artist Dylan Miner contributed to). Kupferberg was a New York artist and musician in the Fugs, a bohemian and activist who's antiwar songs became anthems of the Left.
Drawing All the Time: Week 32
Posted July 14, 2010 by colin_matthes in Inspiration | Comments (0)
I am making a bunch of drawings and sculptures of "plausible inventions." Here is one of them.
You Are Made of Food - A new poster about Eating Right
Posted July 13, 2010 by Favianna_Rodriguez in Art & Politics | Comments (0)
Just released a new piece on Justseeds. click here to view piece
My interest in food justice and food politics began in 2003 when I read the groundbreaking book by Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation. Understanding the fight against large food corporations, agribusiness, and seed monopolies strongly shaped my interest in being a more conscious eater. By choosing local, organic, clear, and fairly-produced foods in my daily diet, I am able to make a choice about who I am and the world I wish to help create.
The choices we make around food can lead to social change in many areas, including workers' rights, animal rights, environmental protection, biodiversity, independence from oil, seed freedom, and the empowerment of farmers. By eating local and eating clean, we take power and profits away from global agribusiness and strengthen our local food community. Local food economies are Sustainable food economies.
