Interview with new Jacksonville street art crew: Urbismus
01/28/08 • Posted in: Art, Downtown Jacksonville, Street Art by Joey Marchy 21 Comments »
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
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