bloglington

Let's go!

Last night in New York, the Rush Arts Gallery in Chelsea played host to the finals in the Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series, a nationwide search for the next great talents in multi-media art and photography. Before announcing the winners, hip hop legend Russell Simmons and his artist brother, Danny Simmons, accepted a donation from Bombay Sapphire to their Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation.
In only its first year, the Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series received nearly 2,000 entries from around the country. After careful consideration, New York-based artists Ian Reid and Jonathan Bramley-Fenton were selected as the regional winners. They will travel to Miami in early December to compete for the top artisan title at the competition’s finale event during Art Basel.

An old friend doin' his thing. Congrats Ian.

So believe it or not, this guy used to be a graffiti artist in the early 90's who took me to paint the Freedom Tunnels for the first time, and he used to go by TEDones DF, HR. from the upper West Side of Manhattan. This guy was an incredible artist who went to school with Sub, Kaws, Fact and a few others at the time, who along with Sub had influenced me after High School to continue onto Art School and develop my animation background ( which helps me today to draw fast on the fly). These guys at the time where knee deep in the MTV explosion that was Liquid Television, and Nickelodeon. So naturally they thought "go for it!" An unfortunate situation on my behalf, upon my 2000 graduation with a BFA in Traditional Animation, then followed by the incident on Sept. 11th, a result that the NYC animation scene was pretty much dead in the water. So as fate would have it I went into different areas of art.

In any event, it's great to see my long time friend Ed Minoff still following his dream and maturing into an incredible artist, it's bugged for me of course to see someone who came from such a gritty graffiti background, now fast forward 15 or so years to today and him becoming this incredible Oil Painter. It's humbling if you allow yourself to understand the desire to grow as an artist. The sky is the limit, if you don't let yourself be anchored down by our inner demons we all have, myself included.

And if you're not familiar with "Ted's" older work, here's a few things from back in the day. I wish I had more pics of things painted, he was nice with a can as well that I unfortunately can't show.

There's a Ted character on the left of this SCM piece done by the founder of  10DEEP clothing.

Ted is also the guy we went to the now infamous "Patterson Jam" in 94' with.  That's me takin' notes in the foreground, Sub, Gaze and maybe Air or Greed on right with the denim shorts.

Ted actually painted up at the top level on the left with Louie 167 HR.  And lastly it's noteworthy to say, Ed is also a lefty, which reserves his placement amongst an exclusive club that we don't talk about much in public  , oops...

Check out his site www.edwardminoff.com

Livin' lavvish in L.A.

xSTatic festival 2010 from STUDIO BARANDA on Vimeo.

The "Palm Cockatoo" for Jeff.

The Videograf 11 Dvd Pack. On Sale Now! --->Graffitivideos.com from Carl Weston on Vimeo.

Cope2 in Paris

The one and only HEX TGO. A unique individual who was about 15 years ahead of the curve. An inspiration to me, and I'm sure many others. If you don't already know about this man and his legacy from the late 80's and early 90's for the city of Los Angeles, then you need to get off my blog and throw out all your fancy Euro paint. Everything this guy did was with Krylon, and he is widely recognized as the one who invented what we referred to in the 90's as the "Lightening Cap" or "Stencil Cap", Ive heard of it called other things, but it basically was the center of an older Krylon Cap cut out, with a pin hole melted through the front, so when the can was sprayed at the hole only a small amount of actual paint would make it through and you could get these pin sized lines, for highlights, glows, electricity, whatever.... Now days they sell these caps, and in my honest opinion, this man, wherever he is, should be catchin' a royalty check for each one sold...

Here's one that I found online, that is called a "Stencil Cap" - why?? I have no idea, you don't paint stencils with it.. idiots.

This is how I was taught in I would say around '94?

We'd always use a Krylon cap cuz' the plastic was bendy, apposed to Rusto that was a harder plastic and would crack if pressed on.

We would follow the smaller circle because that traced the smaller cone shape inside the cap.

step one done.

we would trace a finger's shape, and leave a bit of the bottom of the cap as support , to also help "snap" back into place onto the can top later.

You see what's goin on here?

at this point you'd look to where the spray line would line up, spin the cap around forward, and equate a lil' lower due to the pressed down cap, and make a mark with a sharpie.  then either using a razor blade or a heated up coat hanger you's poke your hole on the front. I've seen some fancy shmancy designs over the years, Stars, X's, 3 dots....

as you can see, the hole is a little lower then the relaxed cap face.

end result is a small line. Saturday Nov. 13th/

And it should be pretty obvious that the paint that doesn't make it through the hole builds up inside the cap, so you have to do a few lines, then dump the build up before it leaks all over your hand.   And there you have what I would prefer to call a HEX CAP. But make no confusion, if you're a toy, this tool won't make you fresh, a complete understanding of how this can be utilized to create things you envision but don't want to spend all day making cut backs to create, this can save you time, and paint if used correctly.  I know till this day there are some writers who's whole style is based on using these caps to fool their audience into thinking they have this can control and don't realize a real writer can use anything (car paint and stock caps)  and still come off fresh.  Don't be one of those one trick pony writers who spends their whole career using a crutch to get by. But at the same time, don't be ignorant to the tools that are out there, just use them in moderation. Everything should be done with moderation.  Or it becomes your crutch that you can't get by without.  And for me, if I'm battling you, those are the things I'm going to pick apart.

Respect to HEX TGO, my inspiration on this Saturday Nov. 13th. 2010.

You're way to cool to be hanging around my website, guy..... with your diamond shapes and skulls.....and your one of a kind rare Nikes from Pluto with the Smurf fur tongues..