A Grafitti Park grows in Stockwell

Neither Stockwell nor Brixton have historically been viewed by mainstream observers as the fountains of aesthetics.

You do not learn about Brixton at the Academy. however, those of us interested in contemporary art or modern urban history are likely to find ourselves in stranger places. London, to world travelers, may seem tame in its roughest edges. Art, however, is not tame here. Projects are being developed. One which grabbed my eye way the Signal Project.

While Stockwell and Brixton have always been contemporary and artistic in the heaps on aesthetics they shed upon the modern cosmopolitan mind of London, I am not a scholar of English urban history. What I do is blog, blogging, and walking or some combination in between. And when I have time to pause, I pick up the local free papers, the local art papers, or a wifi/internet signal and research what I can turn up.

This blog turned up from the Thursday edition of the Evening Standard on graffiti gardening.

It is a terrific story (which you can link to above). Public art, 'spray can art' or outsider neo-art is what some of us think of as a new revolutionary spirit. It is embraced, disgraceful, misunderstood. It is highly debatable. It is a challenge to get a hold on whether you have read Banksy or prefer to simpy accept mottos. Solo's motto is often painted on the walls of the ball courts of stockwell and Brixton, "Say Something Beautiful or Be Quiet." I have said something similar in my revious blogs on the subject. Graffit can be damaging and offensive without purpose, or without even meaning to not have purpose. It can be venally vain.

It can also be a powerful movement for uplifting rises of power in marginalized communities. It sometimes can say what we have thought but not heard. It can replace and undermine the worlds of consumerism, advertising, and corporations. It is powerful. It cannot be turned off.

Like the arts and sciences this public art incorporates, is incorporated, shares and crosses boundaries with what it means to be human, social, cultural, individual. It can be as simple as the biases we already have, graffiti belongs with rap, breakdance, basketball, being black. It can be as ritzy and accepted by art forums as Banksy's wonderful book Wall and Piece.

London is not so shallow. It is multi-cultural (probably the multicultural capital of Europe).

Solo-one, the hero of our insider article, sees graffiti as feeding young people with positive ideas. "You have to have the heart to do it..." he says, tagging as opposed to art can, bring neighborhoods to the brink of "descending into madness." Art and the ability to pursue the skills of being an artist and perfecting the artistic craft is an agreed upon ethic that crosses generations of street artists whether they are well known or invisible. "If it is good, the walls are better off plain." Solo-One says, "Sacrifice is important. If a piece has only taken 20 minutes I know the artist's heart wasn't in it."

What is the difference really between the honing of artistic craft today and the construction of great murals, mosaics, and other public art pieces of the past?

In today's London, some of the best, most loved contemporary art can be found in the outdoors. Galleries are tucked between forgotten streets and along abandoned industry and rail yards. There are galleries tucked into the vacant spaces (read: parks) in Stockwell Park Estates. This is the domain of Solo-One and his kindred spirits. "This is a safe-place for kids to learn how to paint," he says, and to understand the commitment it takes to be a good writer."

Today we are off to the Meeting of Styles, it is an important part of our trip to London. We will try and guide ourselves to finding a Banksy tour beginning Waterloo underneath the railway arches... that is all we have right now to work with. Art it seems is never far nor hard to find.

Read more...

Throw "Away" Rugs - Abstract or Intentional?

Rugs have been a tool of trade, savings, and artisan folklore for many many generations in Morocco. They are useful pieces of heritage arts.

The rugs are ubiquitous in 'souks' - markets of Marrakesh. There are many different styles, weaves, techniques for rugs, each with a sales pitch equally, unique to match each characteristic.

We are lucky to have spent a nice period of time in Marrakesh, feeling the pace of life here, walking the Derbs (streets)... learning about rugs. We have been staying with our friend who has worked and lived a life in Moroccan rugs for almost 50 years. Being this close to a lifestyle of Moroccan trading guilds makes it more real. It also means we get the inside scoop on rug sales and history.

The rug market is volatile. Prices tick up and down based on international trends. In person, prices can also rise and fall immensely depending on your understanding, interest, or good manners. The general rule is to pretend less interest in the rug you really like and bargain for it last.

Recently, there has been a flurry of articles about newly popular scrap rug art collectors in Marrakesh and Fes, Morocco. This has caused interest from our rug dealing friends and prices rise. Were we not in the heart of rug markets and Morocco would likely have had no idea that 'scrap' rugs were so en vogue: We have been surrounded by them. These rugs are everywhere covering the hand carved mosaic floors in the Riad where we are staying. They were an afterthought.

In realizing the recognized artistic quality of these rugs all around us, we venerate more the trader's eye and skillful selection of what makes the place so special. These rugs are a lovely art form. They are abstract, original, and very intentional in their artistry. Certainly, due to popularity, various rugs come in and out of production. News articles in far away lands cause looms to go to work in small villages here.

What could have caused such art movements in 'scrap' both 25 years ago and today? Are there intrinsic post-modern ingredients forming art? How are the ways which art movements are formally or informally being created connected to ways our popularity of world art trends are formed today?

It is wonderful to discover a 'sameness' in craft and art very far removed from where we think it belongs. Our friend here in Marrakesh is an expert in Moroccan art and textiles and has an incredible aesthetic eye. His shop, called Imports from Marrakech, in Manhattan's Chelsea Market specializes in Moroccan decorative art and design, with items available for event rental as well.

Read more...

Reflecting on Estepona - Summer side hamlet with a view of Africa

There is a sculpture here in a park that says a lot about this ‘fishing village.’ It is an image on a hand. The wave seems to be landing - upside down! It is like an upside down ‘la vague’ with a child (baby Jesus) being swaddled on the end of an inverted waterfall. The sculpture is new but parts of the baby‘s finger digits are broken off. There is no genitalia to the infant.

This park wants to be useful and pretty. It has the sweep of wisteria covered arbors, lots of benches and a block fountain wall that seems to have an infinite pool perched on the edge above it. The fountain pours silently, rain over glass, onto a painted blue bottom pool. It is calming.

There is a sense in the park of a modern planning. It is recent construction. The good use of taxes. There are two paths that lead out of a fountain. They lead up rose covered walks to a sloping hills of manicured green, more arbors, more benches.

The benches are empty. They are waiting for people. The benches and the park are waiting for the town of old folks to adopt them and migrate in on afternoons. To be in the park away from dusty cafes, the tapa joints. The characteristic silent park is waiting for the English tourists and permanently disgruntled residents to take their pugs, bulldogs, and shelties here…once dogs and skates are allowed.

In Estepona, there is a park with an awkward sculpture hidden to the side of the entrance.

Read more...

New Ideas and Debate on Public Art: Reflections on Legal & Illegal Art Europe

I did not know it, that Europe would be the most graffitied place I had ever been. It is too much!

It is everywhere. Sometimes it is a masterpiece of enormous proportions; or, maybe it is a tiny image, politically understated yet provocative, hidden among graffiti tags on a slender alley's wall. Other times, it is debatable whether there is anything 'artistic' at all; if what you are seeing is plain ignorance; a teenage angst brought to life; or, the worst we have seen, desiccation of another, much more historically important or beautiful piece of art.

We have seen thousand year old ruins and statues spray painted. We have seen beautiful modern art sculptures covered with globs of paint or wax or worse.

So we continue a debate - what is Public Art: What is damage?; What is political?; What is juvenile?

In the Balkans, in Italy, and in France the lines of officialdom begin to blur.

Art is so useful here, so expressive, so 'cutting edge' and/or deconstructive. But, one has to ask - where would a modern open-minded society dare to put restraints on production, placement, or culpability of displaying public art?

Reticently, we have had a debate about how to use better, more temporary public art displays as environmental art. Our debate centers both in the sense of art display and in terms of its social and environmental impacts.

We are seeing some types of art, especially grafitti, causingdamage, social stress, and reinforcement of negative values. How can this negative become a positive, we ask ourselves? After seeing so much damage and vandalism to property by 'artists' we were happy to find that some artists were looking for compromise and solutions. One art exhibit in particular really seemed very well thought out in Marseilles.

In this exhibit, a photography group has produced large paper prints of two separate expositions. The first group of photographs takes up the concepts of spirituality and public spiritual displays in India. This was a terrific exhibit which stretched over several blocks in the historic foothills surrounding the Vieux Port area.

The second exhibit was apparently produced by either the same photography exhibition group or very kindredly inspired artistic spirits. This exhibit collects recent and historic photographs from the neighborhood where it is exhibited.

What impressed us and drew te fire together for our debate on producing meaningful, and harmless art in the form of intentionally temporary exhibits.

What are some of the benefits of producing temporary public art exhibits?

Our debate about basic questions concerning placement, quality, temporality, and nature of Public Art is one that we give more thought to now than before we reached Europe. The Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How - of whether art and its display in public space should continue to exist is, to us, now unquestionable. That more art on public display produces more thought, insight, debate, camaraderie, and a more sociable urban aesthetic is, to us, obvious.


But... are there ways for all 'public' art artists to improve their art. Can it be made more green? Can we put moral or critical restraints on ourselves in order to not offend or to reach different audiences? Are some lines too important not to be crossed? How do we distinguish between art and vandalism? How can art collectives strengthen social fabric and explanation of art?

In temporary photography exhibits we see in Europe (and those described above in France) there is specificity.

Here, we found in two exhibitions a melding of Marseillaise social history, of green arts technologies and recycling, of bridge-building, of mosaic collage, of spirituality, of international ambassadorship, of much to make neighborhoods and cities humane. These were progressive, thoughtful, for everyone.

Art can be fun. It can be interactive. It is something which we can identify with, be critical of, and be proud of (sometimes, all of these we can find at one and the same time)...

Public art is a tradition as old as humanity. Let's support it!

Read more...

Visiting a Mosaic School outside Venice

Our energies and aspirations to ‘know’ a portion of Italy in too short a window of time was luckily informed and bolstered by our experiences in the region of small hamlets north of Venice.Thanks to our wonderful host and the lovely countryside surrounding Pordenone.



The region is a historic wonderland. It is a place to see villages almost entirely intact dating back a thousand years. There are towns filled with frescoes covering insides of churches and outsides of normal buildings. These are public art murals dating back 400-600 years!! People will be warm to your visit. In many places, they only get some regional tourists, maybe an Austrian bus tour or two, but not very much in terms of distant travelers (these people rarely leave Venice).



Our best find was one of the only two Mosaic schools in Italy. At the School Mosaicisti del Friuli, Spilimbergo, Italy, Students come from around the world to spend three years studying the Mosaic arts. The school itself is basically a museum of sculpture and mosaic arts right down to floors and walls which were created, designed, installed by students and staff. Types of Mosaics on display range from historic reconstruction, to portraiture, to abstract and contemporary arts. A visit to this venerable institution will likely broaden your appreciation for craft arts and sculpture, for trades and guilds, for public art, and for a general respect which the arts are given in Europe.

Try and visit while classes are in session to meet some of the students. Their dedication, craft, and work ethic will amaze you. It is a place of living history supporting the crafting of art - modern, contemporary, restorative, public.

Read more...

Learning by Design

In Sofia Bulgaria we had the good fortune to stumble upon a 2nd annual week of artistic celebration entitled, “More or Less: Sofia Design Week.” Happening across Sofia, Bulgaria the international event organized by “One Magazine,” an Independent Bulgarian Bilingual Publication, gathers some of the most avant-garde names in contemporary product, communication, interactive, and graphic design. The 2010 themes reflected much of our own recent thinking and themes which have emerged from our blog.

As organizers wrote in exhibit introductions this year, “More or Less? That is the question this year. But what is the answer if we ask this question in terms of design? Under inevitable influence of long, difficult words such as ‘financial crisis’ and ‘global changes’,” in the second edition of Sofia Design week organizers aimed to ponder that broad question with the following list of short but not very easy questions:

More or Less?
Low-cost or long-lasting?
Practical or beautiful?
Simple or elaborate?
Less or more?

“Of course,” they concluded, “the more we argue, the less likely we are to find a real answer. But still, what about getting together?”

Before viewing or studying the background of their work, the organizers and participating designers were onto something significant. What does the simple question ’More or Less?’ mean in today’s world; in conditions of emerging or real international concern We found the whole project a success.

Several exhibits we saw deserve mention per relations to themes already discussed in our blog. The ideas grabbed our attention We spent time inspecting and discussing workshops vs. their provocative outcomes.

First off, there was an interactive workshop which we had missed; but, which we were able to enjoy the results of, entitled: “Do More with a Plastic Bag.” This workshop formulated by an outrageous ad agency KesselsKramer was based on their “do” initiative. It was created to be a reaction against passive consumerism. KesselsKramer asks in the workshop that each “do” product asks for greater involvement from its maker. So the “Do More with a Plastic Bag” asked all its participants for greater involvement by way of sticking, painting, cutting, weaving etc.

Do More with a Plastic Bag - Design Workshop

The work had taken place. We saw was the display of the workshop’s results. We saw products of different people’s interpretation of this “do” initiative. “Do More with a Plastic Bag.” workshop had already produced plastic bag clothes, costumes, reusable shopping bags, cups and plates, vases, shoes, and sculptural items of every different possible consideration. One of the designers of the workshop from KesselsKramer, Jennifer Skupin, developed a knitting kit which encourages making new, more durable plastic bags from your old ones. In most of our ’developed’ countries use of plastic bags is not even an afterthought to our consumption. Plastic bags accumulate under sinks and in cupboards. Do more: Reuse.

A different designer, Thomas Mailaender from France, took on the subject of tourism. His exhibit consisted of staging every possible tourist pose in front of an erupting volcano. His design project asked questions both about what we seek as tourists and what we do our tourism for. While his pictures were humorous, they showed lengths which people will go to with no clear goal of what is likely to be achieved.

Thomas Mailaender: Extreme Tourism

The exhibit gathered together various design specialties from professionals at varying levels of experience or notoriety in their craft. It appeared a very democratic and inclusive event. If you are going to be in Sofia late spring 2011 or beyond look for this interesting and far-thinking event. To see examples or read about this year’s event visit their website.

Read more...

Useful Public Art in the Mediterranean: Murals, Spray Can Art, Mosaics

Murals, spray can art (and illegal graffiti), signage, and public art all play such important roles in defining cities, towns, and urban cultures. Public art viewed from the point of view of the traveler can become windows into the cultural world around us. Art in all its forms enlivens places we visit. For protest, aesthetic, and celebration, they are windows into a new world. Intentional art given for public purpose seems to do most good.

Public art provides a structural usefulness for people who live in the places we visit. It creates a ‘sense of place.’ Murals break up the monotony of hard flat surfaces. They tell stories and pass history between generations. Mosaics are like painting and plastic arts mixed. They seem particularly appropriate and historically resonant in the Middle East and Mediterranean

In Egypt, public art is often filled with ancient symbolism. It is a way to reach back into dim history while bringing forward contemporary aesthetic values. In Alexandria and Cairo, public art is everywhere. Aesthetics are not only on walls and in statues and sculpture put up in prominent locations, but on the painted market carts that rumble gently through the street delivering goods and selling merchandise.

Here in Cyprus, public art and architecture has been a part of public life for literally thousands of years. Villages are built on ruins of older villages containing theaters, frescoes, and mosaics several thousand years ago. But, today, art is increasingly important to meld modern sentiments, expressions, and politics with stories and history of by-gone eras. One particularly smart combination of public art in modern city expression we saw recently in Cyprus was the use of spray can collaborative muraling to surround ancient historic sites under reconstruction Spray Can Artists (graffiti artists who have gotten permission for the placement of their art) compete on tin panels securing restoration sork in the historic center. The contrast of the ancient and the contemporary provide a nice springboard for visitors and locals alike to see themes emerging without vandalism or public conflicts. However, the madcap artistry and tensions expressed by these youthful artists has a temporary functional utility which is sunsetting as the project of restoration moves to completion. Temporary Spray Can Art Installation outside Historic Site - Cyprus

Unlike murals, spray can art, public sculpture or mosaics (where agreements are fixed in advance with private or public property owners for permission to display art)): Graffiti is thought of as having positive and negative effects. But, by definition, graffiti is a nuisance. While it may be beautiful, it creates unbalance as someone has been hurt financially or otherwise. We have seen Roman historic sites 2000 years old spray painted with the usual swear words or propositions of love common n juvenile art. These ugly and selfish displays, which exist everywhere thoughtlessly and without any merit, take away from the artistry of others. Some solutions which we have seen are to provide temporary graffiti boards, to create competitions of juried spray-can art exhibitions, and for owners to turn ver more private and public spaces for display of public arts.

Read more...

Public art in Mumbai

written by nathan 

Lively, vivacious Bombay - the heartbeat of India.

Public art and public-ness are everywhere in Mumbai (Bombay). Mumbai is a city which mirrors our modern times. Even its name is a willingness for change. Mumbai is Bombay.

In Mumbai, we stumbled upon the School of Art near V.T. station in downtown. Here they have mural art and spray can (graffiti art) covering the public walls. These canvasses are painted by some great students.

One of the pieces I really love is a graffiti collage of murals in which a character from one mural gently reaches around the corner and pinches a car in an adjoining mural. It symbolized for me an often playful and communal character at work in public art.

Our friends Jenny and Hank Sultan of San Francisco would love the murals of Bombay. They are longtime supporters of public art. Jenny and Hank are some of our favorite friends to think of when we stumble

upon great public art. Hank has been a long time supporter of Precita Eyes, in the Mission District of San Francisco whose mission it is to produce and preserve mural arts. Jenny and Hank would love the murals

surrounding the large campus courtyard at the Arts University in Mumbai. Even more than this, they would love the kilometers of murals painted on the walls running beside train tracks around Mumbai.

What can we each do to preserve and promote more public arts in our community?

Read more...

'Step-by-Step' the story of a giving tree

This is the story of a Giving Tree. It lives on a beach and everyday at high tide the tides come up and give it a bath. When the tide is high, its low trunk is a step to keep you dry. When the tides are low but the high sun burns the skin and the hot sand burn feet on the sand the tree provides shade and keeps you cool. Birds sit in the tree in the cool evening breezes and sing to lovers who watch sunsets beneath the branches. The tree has held many swings. Tire swings. Swings made of drift wood and washed up rope.

One day the tree was surrounded by trash that swept up onto the beach in a storm. There were many nets which had stuck together in the terrible surf. There were also toothbrushes, empty bags, and plenty of empty cans of soda (lots of straws too which lost their bottles in the surf). Most of all there were shoes. Lots of shoes. Mostly flip-flops and sandals people may have lost on the beach in the waves. There were also fishing lures, Styrofoam, and fishing floats which must have come a long, long way because they said 'Made in Japan' on their sides.

One day a nice couple arrived from the other side of the world. They had been best friends in high school. When they grew older they they married and separated. Sadly, they had recently lost the husband and wife. Luckily they met again, fell in love, and decided to get married. They were very happy people and treated each other like each day was their honeymoon. They had come to the island before the trash came back and spent every evening watching sunsets beneath this giving tree.

They picked up shoes for two days and other trash. They kept the shoes in one pile and the interesting trash they thought people could reuse in another. With empty bags collected off the beach they separated all the bottles and cans to be recycled. They put the other trash in all the left over bags.

That night, as the sunset, they counted the number of shoes they had found between Monkee and Big Easy beach. They had collected over 250 and not one matched. What would they possibly do with all these shoes without their pairs?

The next day they made jokes with the people who passed as they separated the best shoes from the most broken and torn up shoes. "Are you missing a shoe?" they asked.

But they remembered an old man they had met on an Island near Iryan Jaya, too far from anywhere in between Australia and Indonesia in the far, far Pacific. The old man collected trash and hung it on the beach as art. They had been very moved to see such amazing uses of washed up trash. The old man had told them he hung bottles and shoes in tree to keep away bad spirits and carry his message of the need to clean the oceans all over the world. He told the happy couple that the shoes had found them and brought them to his island to learn what they could do to save the oceans. They could not be here, he said, if they were not wanting to work on his special mission, because the bottles in the trees would keep any bad spirits away.

When this couple remembered the old man, they knew what they could do with their collections of trash. Over the next two days they spent half their time collecting more shoes and the rest of their time using the piles of fishing lines and pieces of of net to tie their shoes to the trunk of their giving tree.

The next day they returned and found that the waves of high tide had undone much of their work and a string of maybe 80 shoes was drifting off from the tree back into the sea. Quickly they regathered the the shoes and tied them more firmly to the tree. The tied up floats to test how high the tides came up. When the water came up the next morning the floats got seaweed on them and they were able to test where the needed to tie the shoes with more knots.

People stopped by as the couple worked on their tree. In the evening, the trunk and the main branches were completely covered in sandals and flip-flops. There were floats attached that bobbed like mobiles in the wind. They looked up and down the beach, Not a piece of trash could be seen in either direction.

"Step-by-Step", the woman said to her loving partner who held her as they watched the sunset under their giving tree, "Step-by step, together we can clean all the oceans in the world and make the beaches all beautiful again!"

"That's it." Her husband responded. They had a name for their giving tree.

The next day they found a piece of driftwood that must have washed up years before in the mangroves behind the giving tree. The wrote "Step-by-Step" on it and tied it with some rope and hung it on the giving tree.

This is a picture of the happy couple who traveled around the world to sit under a tree they loved and watch beautiful sunsets. But they found a storm had thrown trash on there beach including lots of shoes, especially sandals and flip-flops.

Read more...

Thailand is Booming with Tourism

I can say with certainty that I already love Thailand. Calm, friendly, honest people. A land of Buddhism that entices you quickly with its sweet flavors, fragrance of flowers, polite and gentle landscapes. It is entirely nonabrasive (we have stuck mostly away from the tourist path - 'walking streets,' the seedy brothel lore, the tired 'Cancun' and Disneyesque resort beaches to the south). Anyone with imagination or a taste for its rich history can easily see a charmed past and feel in its recent history, echoes. This is not a blog about that Thailand. This is what I wrote spontaneously on a slow diesel trawler as we crawled along the coast back to the furthest edge we could find away from Thai 'civilization.' After nearly two weeks on islands and in serene mangrove estuarine enclaves along the Thai Cambodian border here it is what I wrote. If it is for anyone, it is for the thoughtful and compassioned traveler. And, it is for the governments of Thailand, her neighbors, and the world community that flocks here. It is not meant as unfriendly. It is meant as a reminder to all of us who can ignore what role we play in the way the world develops.

It goes like this...


What would fix our world: By example from Thailand

Life has only ever taken me to moments.
In clarity in Evolutions.
I would see in a place all I loved and all at once.
Nothing like this ever came to me in Thailand.
Here, a debate with self, of new purpose, new pursuits.
China, India, Louisiana, ancestry vastly more polluted
These all ring with Life for me. Poor Thailand.
I am understanding very little here.
It sticks to my soul like a skin's lesion.

Thus, I reflect on other places, other times.
A first epiphany in Omaha, Nebraska. I am 17.
A urchin's port in Panama's Casco Viejo. I am 29.
Acrid sulfurs of country roads back home.
Distances of time. Memories held still.
Photographic emotional stillness.
Friends and acquaintances long gone.
Distances grown to revolutions.

Thailand, as ill as the planet we are healing.
Now, but now, but NOW, must remain sick, bedridden.
Venezuela, USA, The Indian Res
And all the old Colonies hovering below remark for it.
Darkness, falsely lit, in phantom shallows. A putritude.
Holding good which was evil disguised as good without evil.

A lost time. Dead monks littering roads between Buddhist countries.
Greeds, Pollutions, Degraded, Degrading.
Falsity, lacklusterness, undefined ruination with no common purpose.
Results of organized religion - Capital wealth.
King's of Ancient Nations trading arms and lands and death.
Kunckledusters who let ruin the golden gates.
What would fix our world? By example from Thailand...
"Kill the Buddha!"

....

To our lovely friends and all her kind people, forgive a wit in wrath.

This blog is going to be followed by a short series of positive inspirations about eco tourism, public environmental art, service projects that are self-starters (and work), green development lessons, new friendships and the like. But, I have to get this out there to get started on the rest.

We have two days until Calcutta, India. What can await us there?

Wrapping up Thailand, we have been enjoying the long New Year's celebrations, visiting craft, music, and food bazaars and festivals and wishing we had many of our good friends and family along to enjoy this place and make sense of what is happening here so that we should all become better stewards of the world our children's children and their children's children might one day inherit.

Thailand is Booming with Tourism. What can we learn from their losses and their fate? (A sad and deadly sickness of selfishness and mad advantages)

Read more...