This black and white wheatpaste by Turnip gives the artist’s signature image a clean, minimalist feel. Who knew a root/vegetable could look so sharp. Turnip turns up in different sizes and colors, but the monochromatic rendering draws attention to the elegance of the design.
Boarded up and abandoned, this house in West Oakland has a rather sad appearance. It’s horrible how many houses are foreclosed and how many people are evicted from their homes in the East Bay, so the work of art pasted to the house’s facade makes an especially powerful statement. The beached whale in this wheatpaste sheds tears of desperation; it’s lost, removed from its natural surroundings. A glimmer of beauty amid the bleakness, the artwork draws attention to similarly displaced people who, too, have lost their homes.
M4M’s work has been cropping up here and there around the East Bay; the hasty style the naked figures are painted in is reminiscent of David Choe or the Australian graffiti artist Lister. M4M’s work that I’ve seen is usually executed with monochromatic, dripping paint. The writhing, twisted limbs of the figures have a similar spontaneous effect, as if they’re tumbling in perpetual motion. The geometric style of SANRI’s futuristic pharaoh bird in between the two naked dudes makes for an interesting contrast on the wall.
The weather has been very sunny lately, which means good lighting for most of the day on one hand, and unsightly shadows on the other. But that’s beside the point. This wheatpaste by OIM combines a variety of images in a single shape, prompting the viewers to try to guess exactly what it is they’re looking at. The form seems to be something in between a film reel and a machine gun—perhaps a pun on “shooting” both objects.
Covered in colorful murals by a variety of artists, this house in Oakland features the work of Doodles. Doodles’s work interweaves elements of folklore, magic and spirituality, enchanting the viewer with his shaman-like characters and hypnotizing details.
This series of INVADE wheatpastes stack up the pillar like faces in a totem pole. The symmetrical design and mask-like characters have a sort of ritualistic aspect about them; the repetition gives the work a meditative quality, like a repeated mantra or prayer.
A mask within a mask, this intricately illustrated sticker combines the humorous and the grotesque. The pen-and-ink technique creates a variety of textures, exposing several layers of decay.
Advertisements constantly bombard our visual field, whether on the street or online. While most people mentally block them out without giving it much thought, some artists like Lost Hawaiian prefer to take matters into their own hands. Tags made over billboards take back the public space—after all, the advertisers didn’t ask our permission to put their names up either.
While this wall was marked by both Dead Eyes and Jeans, two of the most prolific artists on the Bay Area streets, the piece on the right catches the eye because of its child-like application of color. It looks as though an artist created the poster and asked a child to fill it in with crayons and color pencils—a surprising find, to be sure.
Image credit: Endless Canvas
What better way to spend a sunny Oakland afternoon than hanging out in Mosswood Park with some talented local printmakers? Today I’ll be heading down to Printmakers’ Picnic, prepared with some hand printed flyers for the upcoming group show bARTering–which brings me to some exciting news. I’m pleased to announce that I am putting together a bartering-based art show featuring some incredible street and fine artists. More info on bARTering can be found under the new “Art shows” tab of this blog.
