More specifically Springfield is street art famous. When your photo shows up on the Obey Giant website, you know you’ve made it. I took this picture of The Pearl Friday and three days later it shows up on the homepage of one of the most influential street artists of our time. Bam!
I will sleep soundly tonight. I love you Internet!
Poster designed by Half Tone Def Studios
This is Joey, I am invading Adrienne’s post to tell you last night I interviewed Levi from Urban Art Warfare about the movie premier he is hosting for Bomb It. Check out the interview below. Then read Adrienne’s post for more details.
Podcast Episode #14: UAW Presents Bomb It the Movie! (30:53)
Subscribe to the Urban Jacksonville podcast
Our pals at Urban Art Warfare are making life better and better with two screenings of Bomb It An Explosive New Graffiti Documentary at the San Marco Theatre May 9th and 10th at 11:55 p.m.
The documentary explores graffiti on different continents and across languages while exposing the opposition to it and also the ideals and opinions of the artists. This comes at a pretty appropriate time for Jacksonville considering the recent conversations on graffiti downtown and in its neighboring areas.
Come out and see how law enforcement deals with graffiti and how graffiti artists deal with everyone else. It’s going to be an awesome documentary and a usual good time at the theatre. And most definitely, don’t forget UAW’s DISCLAIMER NOTICE:
We wanted to remind you to be respectful of the San Marco theatre and to not go tagging shit up after the film is over. Granted you will be totally hyped to do so…but given the nature of the film, we had a very hard time finding a theatre that would show this film so be cool, ya heard. We don’t want to have to start bustin knee caps.
See you guys out!
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The state of street art in Jacksonville goes beyond Urbismus. Here what some others are getting up to. This is by no means comprehensive, just what I could cover in a few hours on last weekend. Complete Street Art Update photoset.
Brooklyn
Five Points
Downtown
San Marco
Jaxscene has posted issues 1-3 of The Hum zine on their Flickr account. There aren’t any dates on the covers or or pages, but looking through them I’d have to guess they are at least 4-5 years old. The pages of The Hum are a great window into the Jacksonville street art scene from that time. I saw a lot of familiar faces and some who don’t get up any more, at least not around here.
A few years ago a friend of mine gave me Issue #3. Looking back on it now I see a lot of similarities between when I am doing now with Urban Jacksonville and what The Hum was doing back then. It appears to have been a huge inspiration to me, even if it was subconcious.
The Hum Issue 1
The Hum Issue 2
The Hum Issue 3
For people who don’t know what is Urbismus? Are you a crew/collective? Is this your first street art project in Jacksonville?
Urbismus (lat. city mice/urban rats) is mainly a collaborative of 2 artists, but we use help and input from a number of others. This is our first street art project in Jacksonville. We consider it an installation specifically designed to bring awareness to certain troubling issues concerning DT (Downtown) Jax: the vast number of empty, unused buildings.
To me, the style of your current work seems heavily influenced by another prominent international street artist Swoon. Was her style a big influence or does it come from somewhere else?
Swoon’s work is definitely a big influence (along with Judith Supine’s), but most people draw parallels with Banksy which although extremely flattering, doesn’t compare in our opinion. We purposely didn’t want to make a strong political or controversial statement (not yet) for this particular installation. We noticed that although starved of street life, downtown is being closely watched. While many buildings are boarded up and slowly crumbling, graffiti, stickers and posters are removed quickly, so we’re curious to see what the reaction will be to our noncontroversial, colorful, almost pretty figures.
Describe your technique. I think a lot of people would like to know how you get from the idea to getting it up on the wall.
The figures are digital photo renderings, separated in 3 colors, then silkscreened on newsprint. They are glued to the walls using homemade wheatpaste, a cooked mixture of wheat flour, white flour and water. Unlike spray paint, wheatpasting is not permanent (although when dried thoroughly, it can last a long time). We feel that the beauty of street pasteup is its’ changing life cycle. Affected by the weather and the elements it can slowly morph into unexpected, wonderful imagery.
What do you think about the current state of street art in Jacksonville?
As for the general art scene, there seems to be a pretty large artist community but just like the city itself, it’s spread out and lacking a centralized location wordy of a scene. We find street art practically nonexistent.
Do you have any words of wisdom for the masses?
We want to encourage more artists to consider wheatpasting or any form of street art. This sterile city is in a desperate need of any sign of human life on it’s streets.
Note: if you are an artist and I ever feature pictures of your work, hit me up if you are interested in doing an interview. Also Urbismus is featured on the cover of this week’s EU Jacksonvillle weekly
17 Comments »Street art in Jacksonville seems to be on the rise again. In the past few weeks there have been an explosion of posters, stickers, throw-ups and murals. For about 6 months now things have been really slow on the street art front. A poster here, a tag there. Maybe it was the weather. Maybe kids are tired of getting arrested.
Here are some of the highlights. See all the street art flicks from the last week.
Brooklyn This style of poster has been pooping up all over Springfield, Downtown and Riverside. This person has been putting in some work.
Springfield A steady presence, throw-ups and a mural that just won’t stay the same.
Tallyrand Yes, Tallyrand.
Downtown
See all the street art flicks from the last week.
21 Comments »Wilco at the Florida Theater August 6th at 8:00pm. Buy Tickets Online
