VaKay2N.O.

In keeping with the best of 2009 category, here are two of my favorite pictures of friends who came to visit me this last year (NOTE: anyone reading this is welcome to come test my hospitality with a visit to New Orleans in 2010. All I ask is that you let me snap your picture when the moment is right)The best part of having peeps come thru is their desire to go out and see as much as possible. Sometimes that makes me a tour guide and sometimes that means I just tag along and try to keep up. The Other Tempest herself blew thru from Chi Town for mardi gras this year and showed me around Mid City long before I ever thought to settle down there. Here she is going under an end-to-end by GAMBLE and the bridges that divide the two parts of City Park. Beyond this lies the feral overgrown side of the park, much more wild than the side where the guests of VooDooFest revel. Next we have Sam, a man of most prodigious talents. By good fortune alone I ran into my friend again this year when he saw called me out along a busy street corner in Chelsea (he had recognized the YeeHaw label on the back of my shirt, giving me away as a 10ACN amongst NewYorkers.) Before my trip was over I was able to drop in on Sam at his apartment in the County of Kings where he revealed to me three rare zines of utmost mystery and choice typography (published in New Orleans in fact). Sam recently came down to Louisiana (right before I myself left) and made a quick and prolific investigation of some of the best spots around town. (The locale here is Gentilly) That's a camera bag slung over his shoulder because he likes photographing walls as well. (Although Sam seems to prefer when the paint is peeling off of them) That's not to say he doesn't have an eye for good works and the Good Word that is graff. I like his opinion so I asked him what he thought of this guy right before we left. He surprised me with a shrug and said: "Eh..I like it just so-so." Oh? The camera went SNAP, the guy's name is TASK.

Leer Los Libros!

Here are the 2 most memorable books I read in 2009. A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN in keeping with my city-crush with King's County, NY. This copy I spray painted and embellished with some sharpie to give as a gift to my first girlfriend. The main character reminded me of her (and every other cool girl I know). The OldGirl also turned me onto Love in the Time of Cholera back in the day which is reminiscent of ATGNBrooklyn in terms of the plot's epic span across the course of the main characters lives and the touching, dreamy portrayal of those events as they unfold. I really like this book. I told some of my friends after I finished it that its the best book I've read. Superlatives like that don't usually last long but I was being truthful when I said it.DISHWASHER: one man's quest to wash dishes in all 50 states. As recommended to me by the cool staff of Quimby's bookstore in Chicago, the byline pretty much tells you all you need to know about this one. A self-professed slacker, Pete Jordan left the school system looking for work with the least amount of responsibility. He found cleaning plates as the lowlest man in the restaurant totem pole to be straightforward enough for him and fulfilling, for just as long as he needed it be. The moment a manager or an uppity coworker or customer tried to give him any kind of shit, he would say 'fuck you' and split leaving with money in his pockets to hit the road and a sink full of dishes behind him for somebody else to fuss with. Such is the freedom of working a job that is available most everywhere. 'Don't piss off the little man because he's making it run' is one of the messages that comes across in this book. Another is the freedom in not being tied down to a career. With no qualms for getting his hands wet he manages to travel from Alaska to New Orleans to New York and a hundred places in between. This book actually started as a little zine when Pete began writing down his different experiences busting suds across the country. It grew more and more popular over time to the point that he was printing several thousand copies, getting invited to come work by his readers, and even appear on the David Letterman Show (he had his friend take his place secretly). Pretty cool for a guy with no ambition working a seemingly shitty job. Just goes to show you its all about attitude. I highly recommend this for all people graduating school, filled with fear about how to get by in the "real work world". Pete Jordan blazes a bright path for slackers everywhere.

Let 'em Roll

Natural Instincts

Where I live

Its interesting to note that if we were to turn around and walk the dog in the other direction we could follow this creek all the way back to New Orleans. No Joke - Real talk - How cool.

Also noteworthy is the stone trestle in the background which used to support the old tracks. On this day 5 months & 91 years ago the no. 1 train from Memphis and the no. 4 train from Nashville collided along that bridge killing 101 people. It remains the deadliest train wreck in American history. (Don't tell me you didn't know! It was the subject of my very first book!)

Yanners Batman! More twisted scrawl!

From the previously pictured Morton Salt Man comes another piece for deciphering. Here we have the same four letters again but still no helpful tag-on-the-side to give any clues. 42 is obviously the meaning of life but I can't tell you about the signifigance of that other word. Its a secret and (even after googling!) I have no idea. This one really should only be harder to figure out than the last one so bravo if you can actually read it this time. If not that's ok too because in this piece the writer has curled his letter with so many extra wisps and serifs that they've begun to grow into each other and reconnect in the most confusing ways. The S looks more like a double headed snowman to me the way it's been allowed to fuse together. I hate when an S closes back in on itself like that. It looks sloppy and scrunched to me if its a tag like below or here on the cover of Bomb the Suburbs but it was obviously deliberate in this piece. Despite it being totally tangled, the painting is still remarkably clean cut and precise at the same time. I admire it for that especially.
Here's another example of a different writer blurring the boundaries and letting his letters incestuously mutate into themselves. As fate would have it, this piece contains the exact same four letters as the one above it plus an E, which looks like a backward 3 closed in on itself to create a flipped B. That should be a little helpful. Plus they both also make use of the ever popular spade-shaped heart-curl to form their O. Enjoy!

1996-OYeah!

Found this packaging in the groceries today. Pop lore has it that this was the word that Beck originally intended to title his third album. But it was misheard by an engineer and turned into 'Odelay' instead.
Fortunatley for me, back in 96 my bigger, hipper, CD-purchasing sister bought this one and kept it in steady rotation in Mom's minivan. I haven't been the same since.

Thank you Beck, thank you KT.

SWANK /swæŋk/ [swangk] noun, adjective, -er, -est, verb
–noun
1. dashing smartness, as in dress or appearance; style.
2. a swagger.
–adjective
3. stylish or elegant.
4. pretentiously stylish.
Usage in a video, See: New Pollution

Sketch comedy

The wacky adventures of Sketchy the Skeleton

Featured stencil #3

Inspiration came after visiting my younger cuzins and I found out that my oldest younger cuz is starting to cut and spray for himself. He's a junior in high school and likes to cut out big long quotations from ye olde Trancendantalists and spray them on his bedroom walls with all sorts of nasty drips and overspray. Seeing that jogged my memory and fanned the flames. Once home I proceeded to my work bench and cut this out. Tasty (about twice the real size when clicked on)
To anybody reading this in range: I posted on facebook that I'd send a stencilled postcard/letter to anybody who provides me with an address. It seems I have a tons of motivation to put together kick ass letters but can't muster the energy to follow thru with many other artistic endeavors. Go figure, but I'm trying to change...

Unusual Ungulates

Hooves, horns, wings and fins. Read as much into them as you want

Graffiti is Trashy

1994: Grungy Pron Trolls

Pretty funky day with spitty rain and grey skies from the morning on. Left me feeling sort of bummed and sleepy at work. But hooray for the used book stores and record shops of America that are still in existence and God Bless Nashville's own, the Great Escape. This purchase sort of made my day...("NYPD Nude" [ Insert stuttery Beavis & ButtHead laugh here] "Huh-Huh...Yeah")
I bought it for the price but I totally just read it for the articles. Check it out though for real: Interesting obit & crit of Kurt Cobain and the "GenX" label.

Totally worth the 99cents. I did not remember the internet being in effect in 1994, much less the now-common usuage of the word "troll".

2 shots from the Book Fair

Hungover and hungry, these guys were right where I needed them to be: right here.

Allegory for Bud's life

Shots of the hometown

Nashville built a shiny glass ziggurat!

More fun with letters

Diggin these two. But they are hard to read if you aren't already familiar with their styles, so here are some hints.The G is weak here but the letters spell out what the S illustrates.

The Girber girl's umbrella is the O in this one and the other letters are repeated in blue.

Why Go?

Because one day you wake up and things are just not right. Here's when you know its time to get out of town for a while.

Books!

Hooray 4 the BOOKFAIR today!

8th Annual!

3rd one attended!

Always worthwhile!

Here's a round up of the books I now have!!!



2 hard covers about Dutch Artists for 50 cents a piece. The life of Rembrandt and Lust for Life about VanGogh


These zines: Cometbus the wildly prolific, self-documenting, hand-written punk zine master was first introduced to me by the awesome staff at Quimby's in Chicago. And my friends at Books4Prisoners let me take away this slick CrimethInc. book for only two dollars which goes to fund their postage costs in sending books to prisoners.


These nicely bound how to books from the anarchists at the IronRail Bookstore (where I just recently picked up even more fabulous reading supplies earlier in the week from their local zine author's table. How cool is that???) These three were respectively $5, $2, and $10. Spending the big bucks today! Pulling out the stops before I skip town!!
Only thing I know about this one was that it was free! Hee hee! Into the book basket it goes!
This one. Oh yes. YES! The first purchase of the day for 5 dollars to start the day off right. I just recommended this book to a friend after I learned she was going to King Con in Brooklyn. Generally I don't/ can't read the same book twice no matter how good it is. But I had recently been thinking about The Fortress of Solitude again and I'm now ready to break that policy.

When I began getting interested in graffiti back in high school and felt totally vexed by my lack of peers who felt the same way I did about vandalism I had two things to comfort me. One were the books I found in the libraries around town that fanned the flames of inspiration and provided me with the insight I hoped to someday receive personally by meeting other writers. BOmb the Suburbs by Upski, Getting Up by Craig Castleman, Subway Art by Chalfant and Cooper, and The ARt of GetTing OveR by EspO are all unbelievably important in the cannon of my self-education on vandalism.

The second thing was writing on the walls when I got bored with the status quo as it appeared to me and my irrefutable teenage opinion. This behavior coupled with a mega-Gaf mentalitly about staying anonymous landed me in the offices of not just a few of the high administrators. It is a testament to how cool the school was that I attended that they never did follow thru with their threats of expulsion.

In fact the whole incident just provided me with multiple opportunities to discuss my budding thoughts about graffiti with the most respected men in the administration. They were more than curious to try and understand what the hell I was thinking and I was eager as hell for an audience to pay attention to me. The head of the school recounted a story of another former student/graf-head he'd encountered addicted to the text from Philadelphia. Philly being the true birthplace of street scrawl and the home to multiple distinct local styles and types, I found this fascinating and encouraging (not what he had intended I get from the story). The vice-principal was even more outright in not discouraging me and told me stories straight out of the pages of Fortress of Solitude. That was cool. I didn't even realize how cool until a couple years later after graduation when I read it for the first time.

This is a great book about graffiti, growing up, comics, and Brooklyn. And once again things come full circle leading back to my new favorite writer & blogger, this guy

some funky colors in a black and red print

Since when did Yellow and Purple begin combining to form the color Red?

(Printed in Knoxville)

Perhaps I've given you one of these...

Tips for Greater Literacy

Get Up, Read Up:



Graffiti is much more appealling if you can decipher the letters in the first place. Reading tags around town and then being able to match them up to the bigger brighter pieces is one of the greater joys of the art form. The secret to figuring out the letter styles is actually in the tags (and when I say 'tags' I mean the little, monochromatic signatures that are rarely no larger than a writers own wingspan. Any bigger than that and you're qualifying for throw-up status. Larger and more intricate than that is the piece, short for masterpiece.Uhh...how lame do I sound breaking this down...)

Whatever. This truck that I saw in Manhattan iss a true wonder of the craft and obviously executed by some serious masters. I want you all who read this blog to be to be able to read this piece and really look into it. The way I was able to unlockout these names in the first place was by first finding the tag next tothe pieces. "The tags next to the pieces: A signature of a signature" There's usually always one there like the legend on a map.

Once you've found the tag and read the name, the letters in the piece begin to reveal themselves. If you can see the original letterforms you can begin to appreciate the permutations of the artist's own style. This piece by KEO on the back of this truck is full of extra bits and serifs and vroom-vrooms that make the letters go zoom-zoom. With all that there it can be hard to cut through all the adornments and see the letters. So here I've redrawn KEO's piece for easier legibility in hopes of allowing greater appreciation for what he did.



Its commonplace for two letters side-by-side to share a leg or a stem but this is the first time that I can recall ever seeing three letters all come together on one common point. The white triangle in the middle of my drawing is for KEO a nexus for the leg of K, the bottom rung of the E, and the base of the O. Whoa. Word. And the alligator character poking out of the manhole cover to boot!

Also: Having just gotten that BK book back today, I'm giddily flipping thru the pages and admiring all the signatures I amassed on my campaign northerly. No less than 7! And not one of them some scribbled crap I can't boast about. In fact, the morning I ran into that all-woman production on the corner of Bedford Ave and S. 5th St., this guy showed up to watch: TATU the founder and president of the XMEN crew, the same crew KEO reps on the truck. I asked him to write in my book and this is what he gave me back

Read his story here and check out KEO's blog too while you're at it.

Jungle Boogie

Don't let the geodesic dome fool you: This is NOT in Knoxville TN. Its in a little town called Treme, just south of the sea level in Louisiana, 7th Ward y'hearD? I snuck this photo when I bought that Saints shirt on Friday. The photo doesn't do it justice but you can see a little something, sumthin from this here.


*Yes. That is a super secret escape hatch from the top floor to the bottom. It emptied into a homemade pool/pond the night I first laid eyes on this structure.
*You can also make out the monkey rope hammock hallway swing that connects the main building to the hackberry annex on the left.
*The short, young architect also informed me himself about the super awesome security system he designed that "automatically bashes in the brains of anybody he doesn't like who tries to enter in the clubhouse, like those jerks Bob and Terry."(Fortunately that was turned off the night of the party.
*Obviously this is one of the coolest treehouses around (up there with that multi-tiered mansion that bank robber built for himself in the forests of the Cascade mountains. See "The Treehouse Book" by Peter and Judy Nelson for more on that)

Not sure if OSHA ever signed off on the project though...Enter if you dare.

Front page

Back to what I was saying about the Picayune being a great paper...

This really falls more into the ADD*Sportsmen's realm but he's fallen off with unfolding tragedy that is the Titans 2009 season (They started out 0-1 before the season started with the loss of Air McNair).

God bless the Saints and god bless their winning streak. Its got a lot of us hyped. Every win becomes front page news on Monday (as seen here)

But wait...what's wrong with this picture?

SABOR!

Oh Yeah! O Yes!! I got my lost summer sketchbook mailed back from Brooklyn today! Here's a quick one I did while waiting for my escort to Coney Island to show up.

From Austin's Book

Here's a page from a collaborative sketchbook I'm working on to send to a friend. He wants to learn more about letters.

Jumping on the bandwagon

I biked down Esplanade and stopped in at the Art House on the Corner of Claiborne. Though I must have passed that place two-thousand times this summer, I only recently stopped in there for the first time last month when they threw a big party.

You can't tell from the facade but they have the coolest 4 story treehouse in the backyard that looks like ...well nothing I've ever seen before in my life. Its the coolest treehouse unimaginable. I'd like to go back and draw it sometime to post.

But today they had the gates open and a mannequin posing some freshly printed shirts on the sidewalk. I moseyed in and got to peek at the operation and left with this one here. Only ten bucks!

New Blasts from the same old Ink cloud

A favorite stencil of mine (next to THHBBT!! )
Sans Glare

Closer

and closer