A Graffiti Artists Dream Sketchpad

I spotted this little beauty on Recraft, a great website full of quirky products. The Walls Notebook available on amazon features 80 pages of blank New York City walls, just ready to be covered in graffiti.

I love this idea and although I am not a graffiti artist myself the chance to play at being the next Banksy would be brilliant. With the scale and complexity of modern graffiti art I can imagine that a huge amount of planning goes in to their production, making this notebook ideal. Purists on the other hand may hate this element of planning, seeing graffiti as spontaneous and random. Personally I love it and as the notebook is only $11.39 it made it on to my mental shopping wishlist instantly!

Preston Graffiti 2

Walking in to university today (well to the pub to be more precise) I noticed that the graffiti on the side of the Ship Inn had changed once again.

The geometric patterns in this piece show a big change in style compared to the previous graffiti work I showed you last month. I wonder if the piece is by the same artist. UCLAN has a great creative community, I would love to know more about this particular artist!

Preston PARLE Graffiti

The side of the Ship Inn Preston has, so I am told, for years been covered in Graffiti. I am new to the city and also to the new look Ship Inn and so have only witnessed a couple of the great pieces of work, each produced by the mysterious PARLE.

I haven’t been able to find any information about the artist or any other works so please comment if you know more!

Below is the current graffiti that appeared earlier this week.

Berlin–Split Personality Streetscapes

I went to Berlin over a month ago and I am still finding ways to incorporate my findings into my MA research. I took a lot of images of interesting features on the streets of the city. This mirrored and a similar exercise I did in Manchester and I have to say the results were rather different.

The above images show some of the more run down elements on the street. Although they have become rather neglected and could do with being cleaned up I still feel they have a huge amount of value. The design of the objects is  interesting, bright and colourful, appropriate to the current trends at the time of their inception, with I slight tweek I can see theses pieces being equally as relevant today. The seating is clever in their separation along a solid base and the angular bike racks are great, if looking a bit dull at the moment.

These benches show the more modern side of the city. The pieces really reflect the space that they are in. Materiality, form and construction have all been considered to fit their context and create something, beautiful and long lasting. Hopefully these pieces will date as well as their older neighbours above.

It isn’t just street furniture that has opposing styles throughout the city. From graffiti and posters to something as simple as the materials that cover the ground, within a small space in the city, there can be a number of different urban personalities and clashing styles. This makes the city exciting, you never know what you are going to come across next.

I loved my time in Berlin, I would go back immediately if I could!

Grounded Illusions

Creating deceptive art works is nothing new to the graffiti and street artists of the world so when I spotted this rug by Mauricio and Sebastian Lara (Collectively known as Eos Mexico) I wondered if that was where their inspiration had come from.

The rug titled ‘Sima Pashtun’ brings together both contemporary and ancient design influences. The rug was produced using 3000 year old techniques and yet its design was clearly technologically enabled.

Street artists don’t have the luxury of photoshop when they create their works, just skill, time and effort. So my praise goes out to the geurilla. Below I have featured a few of the best graffiti artworks that use the same deceptive technique. (Images courtesy of Street Art Utopia)

Graffiti Cosmonaut

In the Kreuzberg area of Berlin we spotted this graffiti spaceman on the side of a building. Like much of the graffiti in Berlin the piece is spectacular. The scale is enormous and the piece has been extremely well executed, as if a giant had come along with a stencil and a spray can. It was only upon my return to the UK that I discovered that the piece entitled Cosmonaut was actually by the famous street artist Victor Ash.

I found a great quote about the piece on the AnArchitecture blog.

“There is something lonely and helpless about this Kreuzberg astronaut; attached to nothing, without purpose and without context. He looks like he is about to float off the wall and into space – the eternal unknown that humans have not yet managed to conquer after all.” (Miriam Nielsen)

Stop Motion At Its Best

I came across this little gem when researching an essay on urban art. It is the best stop motion video I have seen in a while and I can’t even begin to imagine the preparation and hours of work it took to produce. So hats off to Dee Pee Studios for this award winning music video!