I think one of the best things I like about my iPhone (well, and my old crappy Blackberry) is snapping a pic and then setting it as the background image (screen saver, wallpaper, etc.). With the iPhone camera, which is good for a phone camera, I have started to take more than just stencil photos (I usually use my camera camera for nature shots). I took the recently-posted empty F train car photo specifically to use as wallpaper on the iPhone.
Here are three more photos I took specifically to frame in a smart phone. They are all vertical. I do take horizontal shots of some things to use on my laptop for a desktop image. Please feel free to grab these images and use for backgrounds on your phone. Just drag/drop and put in your phone’s camera roll to tap/select as wallpaper. Remember that they are all protected by the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike agreement. You can use them but not make $$ off of them!
I need to get back to Cypress and snap more picx of Xavi's mural.
Artist Dylan Hosey's newest works were beautiful when framed.
Random nook in Cypress Alley framed for great wallpaper image.
Plum blossoms in the garden. This tree will have some juicy fruit soon!
A trillium flower. They were blooming all around
Al found this on a trail near the lower pond
Wandered up to Mendocino last month and snapped some pics between rainstorms. The fairy slippers were a nice treat. Got to use my Mucks for the first time. They came in real handy when I had to dig a hole down to some busted pvc piping. And they were also great when the woofer and I dug some tree trunks out of the garden. The blisters on my hands have finally healed. (more…)
My storage space spent the past month under plastic sheets to keep construction debris and dust out. After the workers (flipping an apartment above the storage space…. $2000 / mo. 1 bedroom) vacuumed the space, I took some time to purge some stuff. One item was an old Firewire 400 hard drive that I built about eight years ago. I got it working, so I pulled items off and then erased the disc to possibly give to a thrift store.
Three finds on the old hard drive, named Oblio, were these files of scanned slides from my trip to Israel in 1999. I actually tried to photograph people on this trip which is a rarity for me. The man smoking the water pipe was suspicious of my camera, so this shot was from the hip. The camel ended up being on the World Remix flyer for Yair Dalal’s 2001 concert at CELL. Sometimes I miss using my film camera.
During my 2008/9 Stencil Nation book tour, I set up an event with Matteo Grieder at his art space Zeitvertrieb in Vienna, Austria. Matteo was nervous about the turnout (a common anxiety during my European tour), but I had Pod and Austrian artist Dieter Puntigam backing me up with live VJ and DJing. A nice crowd came for my presentation, bought books, ate and drank, and made a great scene for the event. Matteo was surprised and happy with the results.
A month ago, Matteo approached me with a request for photo submissions to his fun art zine “Artyfucked”. It is mostly a sketch zine, but he also features street art from cities around the world. Issue #8 features my stencil photos (the cream of the crop) from SF. They mostly cover 2011’s greatest hits. He also put them all in an online album.
Support a great project and buy a copy of “Artyfucked” today!
For well over 10 years now, I have been documenting stencils on Bruce Tomb’s wall on Valencia Street (If you search the Archives for "DAP" they will appear). I have also put art up there and enjoyed all the other art that I do not document. Tomb may not confess to actually owning this wall, because over the years it has become a wall of Free Speech for many artists, neighbors, and organizations. Some call it the Democracy Wall, but Tomb named it the (de)Appropriation Wall, especially since he resides in a former SF Police Department building. The building had a literally tortured past (Chicanos and Latinos were treated poorly by the mostly Irish police in the last century), and a bomb was placed at its back door during the violent era of radical factions in the Bay Area. Tomb decided to use the facade of this building as a force of freedom, more specifically of speech.
Tomb had a brief tussle with the City authorities over his free access to whomever wants to get up on this wall. When the City realized that it could potentially be a Constitutional matter, they backed down. The DAP wall shows up in my book "Stencil Nation" about half a dozen times. He has written about it in the book "Mission Muralismo," where it was featured. Before the book came out, some of the contributors had a show at ATA. I showed a slide presentation of Mission District stencils. Tomb showed the following video of the photographs he has taken over the years. I believe he stands in the same exact place about once a week and snaps a photo of the wall. Being a historian and documentor, I asked him to post this video for others to enjoy and analyze. For a reference of time, notice how the tree grows in front of the wall!
The (de)Appropriation Project Archive will be participating in the Theoretical Archaeology Group Meeting held at the University of California Berkeley from May 6-8, 2011.
Resident archaeologist on the project, Phoebe France will present a paper for session 15: Graffiti and the Archaeology of the Contemporary.
This is an exciting chance to present the project in a new context, and to get feedback on the most recent iterations of the web resources and tools. Please join us! http://arf.berkeley.edu/TAG2011/
Ah… FaceBook sucks all my creative energy. Thus tolls the blog bell. Haven’t posted pics on here lately because of the ease on FB. Share TO the world rather than have them come find it. Spending more time up in Mendocino county on some land that the Noyo River runs through. Rained five inches when I was there a few weeks ago! The land is so alive; the river fast and furious. A bear visits sometimes. Salmon are said to like the Noyo. No industry along this river which cracks out of the hills and heads to the Pacific.
Here are four photos I took this past visit. Morel mushrooms! Yum. Lichen loving a rotting log. A rusting piece of farm equipment in a field in front of second growth redwoods. And the flooded banks of the Noyo.
Tiffany had a great idea: wander over to Twin Falls, SC. Thing was, she didn't really know where they were! No worries, we got directions and had a great visit at a sweet nature spot.
Stencil hunting by the Asheville train tracks means getting eaten alive by mosquitos... esp. when Kathleen and I get stuck waiting for a train to pass.
Stencil guru Jef Aerosol wandered through SF on a family holiday and stopped by to finally get a hug from your humble narrator. He also got up on CELLspace while briefly saying howdy.
While Southeast, I happened to come across a strange gathering of alien lifeforms known as Phish heads. Some SC folks got 3rd row seats the day of the show! I got stubbed down and shot pics of the boys (Mike Gordon in this'n).
Steven, Jessica, and Russell take a lunch break across from our theater (that's the LA Disney Hall behind us... the REDCAT is in the basement of that UFO).
Christine Marie poses in front of a large pair of stereoscopic glasses, which she drove by and had to check out (LA, CA)
Borrowed Rachel's amazing bike in Chicago, IL to scoot down to the site of the Haymarket Square Riot. Was stencil hunting too of course!
420 meets the Blue Ridge in this high-larious graff cartoon (Asheville, NC :: while stencil hunting)
This pic is pure Coney Island: red, white, blue, and rot. We went on a closed day, so only got a few carny teases: Brian had his palm read, we played pinball, ate hot dogs, and enjoyed the decay.
SF's Kal Spelletich had a closing-night event at an exhibit in TriBeCa while I was in NYC. Just before I went in to have a beer, the FDNY showed up! The only thing plugged in to gas was a (funky piece-of-wood) grill. This movable tree limb (turn on a timer to make it move) was the main piece. Brian actually knew most of the trees in Kal's pics!
After I couldn't figure out how to get this shot of Geo. W. on Wall St., Brian put me in the frame and actually pulled off a forced perspective gem.
Brian Livingston knows the family that owns John's Pizza (no slices) in The Village, so we went there a few times. Enjoyed the well-loved wooden booths.
High Line Park, Chelsea, NYC :: Turning an old train line into a park, what a great idea!
The REDCAT NOW Festival made the Sunday, Aug. 8 “Scene & Heard” column. Christine Marie had a great quote pulled stating “she began experimenting with the technique long before ‘Avatar.’ ‘I’m way ahead of James Cameron,’ she said with a laugh.”
I am proud to announce a new mural on the Bryant St. facade of CELLspace. Dia del Toro graces the entrance to the ACT prop shop at 2060 Bryant St. and was painted by Dia and Toro.
For years, fading graffiti filled this panel as a a ficus tree grew huge and blocked the street view of this part of the facade. While I facilitated the half panel piece that Dia did for CELLspace earlier this year, I shot the idea to him about taking that panel too. He initially had the idea of painting a sailing ship getting pulled down into a stormy sea, but he used that concept for a gallery piece. Once Dia found time to work with CELL’s miniscule budget and paint the panel for free, he had met Toro and decided to paint a defeated bull as it took its last breaths.
In the first phase of making the panel, Dia and Toro worked on the overall layout. Toro then painted “DIA TORO” in graff letters for placement. Dia then sprayed a white outline of the bull and then painted the details with brushes and black paint. He sprayed a few other details. Finally, Toro came back and did the final graff lettering and details. Blood on the sword punctures and in the mouth of the bull were the final details added to the animal image.
Dia del Toro was the final panel on the Bryant St. facade, following Stencilada and the halved panel by 2048 Bryant. Now that this is done, energy will be focused on the Florida St. Mural project. Currently with no funds to budget the artwork, things move slowly back there. I’m currently working on the RIDE TOO! benefit for next Friday, of which some profits will go towards the Florida St. murals. The Bike Kitchen is still moving forward with their panel back there and will be at the benefit.
Enjoy the photos of the Dia del Toro mural that I took over the course of its completion.
Toro's placement text and Dia's sprayed bull outline
Dia painting the bull's skin wrinkles with a brush
The mural awaits Toro's final lettering and bull's blood
The final mural with new lettering and bull's blood
