Our buddy Mike Aho is getting down with some rad video projects as of late.
His most recent was done for the collab between Volcom and the children's show YO GABBA GABBA! Mike wrote the little jungle and had the amazing opportunity to fly to NY and record it with Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips and Mother F-ing Biz Markie. They recorded at David Friedman's legendary studio. Then they set up a green screen and shot those two animals, Jack Black, Mark Mothersbaugh and Neploeon Dynamite! Mike Aho shot and directed the whole jam. Great job, Mike.
Got an email from Tim Bierbaum who wanted to let us know about his fantastic new multimedia web series Real Artists he created. It's great, and he wrote and directed this pilot episode. He also photographed, illustrated, animated, and recorded a voice. We love it. Think you will too.
"Real Artists" (a Thrash Lab special created by Tim Bierbaum)
This first episode of Real Artists finds a number of characters engaged in their daily routine in New York City. Presented as a collection of vignettes, the episode connects the characters and discussions in a digressive unpredictable way.
Long time Fecal Pal, Mike Aho, just completed this great video for Jason Lytle (Grandaddy). You may or may not Mike Aho from his brilliant Internet Shack series w/ Michael Sieben or maybe his music with ((SOUNDER)).
A short video from the Andreas Trolf benefit that we hosted last Friday. Thanks again to the artists, the sponsors and to everyone who came out to purchase raffle tickets and original artworks. Amazing to see so many people support a good dude whose medical bills are WAY up there.
Andreas Trolf was involved in a horrible motorcycle which left him with many broken bones and reconstructive surgeries. 13 specialists worked on him, not only save his life, but to help him get back on his feet, literally. After multiple weeks in the hospital, he finds himself with medical expenses well into the high hundreds of thousands of dollars. The kicker was that the accident (a lady pulled out in front of him) was that it happened just days before he was to sign a insurance plan with his new employer.
If you would like to help, there's a Paypal account set up to go directly towards my medical bills. If you sign into paypal.com, just send the funds to andreasrelieffund@gmail.com, but make sure that you send the money as a gift and not as a payment. Any help would be much appreciated.
Special Delivery Sat Sept 8th Berkeley, California details
A large warehouse in Berkeley, which has been vacant for over a decade, has played a role in the local graffiti scene here in the Bay Area. It was recently purchased by a Bay Area based firm with plans to refurbish the building into a permanent office facility. The owner of the company happens to be on the board for the Oakland Museum of California. As an inspired art enthusiast, he noticed some of the graffiti in the building was done by the very same artists whom are currently exhibiting at the OMCA. Saddened by the destruction of this museum worthy artwork and the cultural history behind it, he asked Endless Canvas to invite the artists back to restore the graffiti in the warehouse.
For the last few months Bay Area street artists have been painting the three story warehouse for a show to open to the public this Saturday evening, Sept 8th. The location of the show will be announced on Friday here.
Anyone going to check this out and wanna cover it for Fecal Face? Let us know. contact(at)fecalface.com
SPECIAL DELIVERY is a large scale mural exhibition featuring a number of prolific street artists from the Oakland / San Francisco Bay Area.
What has resulted is a three part project. Part one: a professional photographer has documented all of the graffiti pieces in the building. Part two: we will be hosting the SPECIAL DELIVERY Art Show. For this we have invited over 80 of the Bay Area's most prolific street artists to paint the interior space of the building, to be exhibited for public view in September. The new pieces will be documented thoroughly then later removed for necessary renovation of the warehouse. It will take about a year to refurbish the building. Once this process is complete, a selection of artists will be invited back to install permanent murals on the interior walls of the building. All three stages will be documented and followed by a published book sharing the project as a whole.
All of the participating artists have spent a significant amount of time creating works of public art in the Bay Area. Some have been featured in museums and documentaries and others are home town heroes in the underground art scene.
Albert Reyes is an artist living in El Sereno, CA. In his backyard he has made a giant haunted house/maze inspired by burned out buildings. Occasionally he will build smaller mazes in gallery settings, but it is his ever changing backyard maze that really impressed me, leading to the creation of a film about it. The film ended up being as much about the unique city Albert comes from as the artist and his creations.
Fecal Face contributor and LA based artist Michael Hsiung teams up with his sister Pearl Hsiung on their ongoing art collaboration called "Fight To The Death."
Students will embark on an interactive journey exploring several works at Dallas Contemporary. This year's summer workshop will focus on Shepard Fairey and his murals in West Dallas. During this time we will also offer a tour through West Dallas to introduce Fairey's murals and discuss the general themes of peace and harmony he represents in his art. This part of the workshop will encourage students to discover, question, and explore contemporary art, focusing on the street art of Shepard Fairey and his techniques of lettering, stencil making, and collage. This is a special opportunity for students to experience art both in and outside the gallery. -more details
Director and Cinematographer : Justin Clemons | Editor : Matt Brundige | Motion Graphics : Dustin Bailey
A little walk through of Mike Giant's show Confessions of an Old Dirty Skateboarder running at FFDG and which is in its final week. 2277 Mission St. San Francisco, CA. Hours: Wed thru Sat (1-6pm).
The boards are from Giant's time as the art director at Think Skateboards from '93-'97. He drew all the graphics.
For over 7 years Media Temple has been hosting Fecal Face with their wonderful tech support, fast servers, and with more bells and whistles than what we know to do with. As far as we're concerned, they are the BEST hosting provider out there, and it's been a pleasure to be associated with them.
They swung through FFDG a couple weeks back and got this short interview for their client showcase series. Be sure to watch the others they've done with the likes of Keep A Breast, SurfRider, and others HERE.
This video will most likely be the best thing you see today. Epic video of turning SF streets into a giant hot wheels track.
Shot on the actual streets of San Francisco, California, GYM5 features a focus on fast, raw and precise driving action. Filmed over four days, director Ben Conrad and his team are back to work on their second Gymkhana production and delivered the entire city of San Francisco as Ken Block’s personal gymkhana playground. DC Shoes also provided fellow DC athlete and longtime Ken Block friend, Travis Pastrana, to make a cameo appearance on his dirtbike, and S.F. resident Jake Phelps of Thrasher Magazine fame also makes a cameo as Block hoons S.F. in his most incredible Gymkhana yet.
We swamped hanging the show for Friday's opening, but wanted to share with you this great animation Gino Bud Hoiting, who lives and works in Paris (France, that is), emailed over last week. It's got a catchy beat.
Mel emailed over this awesome video of ways to get it done when there's no opener in sight. And no surprise this Sumers, who made the video and lives in Austin, is good pals with Michael Sieben.
How fast till' someone at an advertising firm sees this and copies it for a future Budweiser campaign or something. I can see it now. "And be sure to upload your video of your creative way to open your bottle of Bud on our website". It would be a great campaign actually.
This is a short film that I was a part of for Adam Young's solo Art Show at Common House Gallery entitled: Songs of the Early Riser. Adam had a concept for a video installation. I took his concept and put it into a video. We originally had 4 different edits looping at the show in his installation, but this edit is a compilation of my favorite clips from the three day shoot. This has been the most fun project I have been a part of to date. Sitting around with your friends killing a couple of six packs of beer trying to think of different means to open your next drink is pretty fun. I encourage you to try it. -Chris Sumers
In a unique and diverse Detroit neighborhood a transition is taking place. People are moving out, but people are also starting to move back. There is a devotion to this neighborhood, a unique challange to create a place that is rich in diversity, exciting and fun to live in, beautiful and clean to play in. Ride-it Sculpture Park come this summer, with your help, will become the first sculpture park where you can officially ride the art. Not to mention a place where bored neighborhood teenagers and adults can meet, play, create, build and ride on.
Ride it Sculpture Park consists of four vacant commercial lots along East Davison Freeway in Detroit and an adjacent vacant house as the main site for the project. The house will serve as a mini indoor park, transforming parts of the house to be skateable and livable at the same time for visiting skateboarders and artists. The park will extend into the neighborhood revamping neglected alleys, garages and other vacant lots, creating a new and positive use for the forgotten and dismissed landscapes of this great city.
OUR TEAM: Artists and skateboard industry professionals from the neighborhood and across the country:
Project Partners: Emerica, Independent
Media Partners: Thrasher, Slap, Juxtapoz
Joe Brook, Photographer for Thrasher Mag. THE MAN who got this going.
Director of the documentary film DRAGONSLAYER --> DRAGONSLAYER is a documentary about the skateboarder Josh "Skreech" Sandoval. He's a character and the film follows his many ups and downs dealing with young parenthood, competing, and relationships. However, rather then try and make some type of statement about him, it just presents him objectively in the way that he is through wonderful cinematography.
I spoke with Tristan Patterson, the film's director, over the phone and asked him some of the questions I had after watching his film.
ATTENTION: The following interview may contain SPOILERS -- so you may want to watch the film before you read it.
Skreech is what I describe as a crusty kid. He doesn't seem to shower often and often hangs around a semi-homeless group of friends. Anyways, midway through the film they all take a road trip together and all I could think about was how bad the van must've smelt.
"To be honest, I think we all smelt pretty bad," said Tristan "so I can't really be judgmental about it"
It's that approach to the filming that allowed Tristan to capture so many intimate moments though. Especially, in some of the scenes where he got footage of underage kids drinking and using drugs, which I imagine would've been next to impossible if he had started preaching at them.
"I wasn't witnessing anything that I wasn't doing at their age. So who am I to tell people about how to live their lives"
But what about when they would trespass onto peoples' properties to skate their pools? Wasn't he nervous?
"I figured that if anything happened, we'd be able charm our way out of it."
Wowzas, there's a lot of art happenings this weekend, and while you're making the rounds, be sure to stop at SFAI's MFA show Currency opening Friday, May 17th at the beautiful old SF Mint Building (88 5th Street).
SFAI's 2013 MFA graduates—working in painting, photography, printmaking, film, sculpture, installation, digital media, performance, and across media—will present work that embraces the Institute's signature spirit of experimentation and conceptual risk-taking.
Opening reception: Friday, May 17, 7–9 pm & running through Sunday 11-6pm daily. -- complete details
London based Pedro Matos opens the solo show Building Castles Made of Sand this Friday in Los Angeles at the Martha Otero Gallery featuring a new series of oil paintings on canvas and azulejo panels - a traditional Portuguese medium of hand-painted, tin-glazed, ceramic tile work.
San Francisco -- CCA opens their 2013 MFA Thesis Exhibition this Thursday, May 16th at their SF campus. Every year another graduating class produces steller work. One of the best SF art events worth getting to, but be sure to get there early as there's always a long line. ~details
Our buddies at Needles & Pens celebrate their 10th anniversary on Friday, May 10th, and it's not to be missed with this steller lineup - all going down at The Luggage Store.
Check the details, mark it in the calendar, and we'll be seeing you there!
San Francisco based photographer, Michael Jang, who's been shooting for decades and who has captured some great shots over the years (Reagan and Frank Sinatra is a good one) turned his camera on his family while growing up in the suburbs in the 70s. An intimate portrait of a Chinese-American family inside their Pacifica home living their lives. Sounds benign, which it is, but what also makes the images fascinating.
The Jangs - Opening reception, Thursday, May 2, (5:30-7:30pm) Stephen Wirtz
"The Jangs" photography by Michael Jang opening Thursday
British artist Ian Francis opened up the solo show Season 1 Episode 0 last night, April 25th at NYC's Joshua Liner. We've been fans of Ian's work for years. ~show details & works.
Although I missed the opening of Northern-California photographer Michael Garlington's newest show, Constructed Realities, I was fortunate enough to see the work still up during the Metaphysical fundraiser a couple weeks back at 111 Minna. Metaphysical fundraiser, an auction to benefit Wayne Ernzer. --- The ghoulish photographs in their heavy, hand-made frames are reminiscent of photos from the old west, and the glass crucifixes, complete with fetuses and guns, emphasize the accumulated time within the works themselves. Whether you're looking at the frames, the photos, or both, this show deserves a visit, and a walk through the golden archway Garlington constructed around the front door.
Fecal Face contributor Rachel Ralph (rachel(at)fecalface.com) has been profiling this Oakland based painter as he travels about Japan. In this segment, we feature some photos as he prepared for this show and residency at Spes-LaB in Tokyo which opened last weekend. Arnold will be featured in SFMoMA's Minna Street windows on June 8th.
Last Saturday, here in SF's Mission district, Guerrero Gallery opened two new shows with Philly based Alex Lukas and SF based Richard Colman respectively. Colman's work occupied the project space while Lukas' work and foliage was presented in the main space. Worth getting to if you haven't already.
Just got back to SF after a little trip south to Sayulita, Mexico. After 10 years without a vacation, me and the Mrs. headed south for some mental time off sitting in the sun, swimming and enjoying the watery Mexican beer. Here are some photos as we get back into the swing of things again.
Athens, Greece based designer, architect and artist Dimitris Polychroniadis emailed over more of his work which consists of mixed media, pop-humorous diorama sculptures that make a comment on the harsh realities my country and much of the world is facing at the moment.
FFDG will open a group show with the artists from the famed Skull & Sword Tattoo on Friday, May 17th (6-9pm). Artists: Grime, Henry Lewis, Yutaro, and Lango. Below are a series of videos on Grime for Vice's Tattoo Age produced in 2011. Fascinating look at one of the greatest tattoo artists alive today.
ARYZ (Spain) opened his newest gallery show at Fifty24SF last Friday and, if you live in the Bay Area, you need to go. This dude can obviously paint, and he doesn't need an entire building to show his impecable skill. The show has lots of small works on paper which contrast his highly-defined line work to his hard-edged painted objects. The contrast between the hard and soft was the most striking thing to me about his work, since I had never seen it in person before, and the washes blend with the thick paint seamlessly. The show also contains a larger work on canvas, a huge head suspended in the back of the room, and a big wood sculpture of a wolf figure. This diversity in such a small space was impressive, and those of us that went to the opening even got to meet the man in person. If you didn't make it out this weekend, check it out before May 31st when it closes and these works will be off to some very happy new homes.
Water McBeer is please to announce its latest exhibition "Precious" a solo exhibition by David Bayus (April 6 - May 4, 2013) -- David Bayus born 1982 holds his BFA from the Savannah College of Art and his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. David lives and works in San Francisco and is a founding member of the basement collective. This will be his first exhibition with the world renown Water McBeer Gallery highlighting his most recent achievements with paint and digital media. David Bayus will be exhibiting 5 relatively large-scale mixed media works along with a collaborative object featuring Hungarian sculptor H.R KOONS.
The Shooting Gallery handed over the reins to the Red Truck Gallery (a New Orleans based gallery) which curated their new show, Hard Time Mini Mall and opened the it on Saturday night. This is my favorite show (so far) in the Shooting Gallery's new space and was packed full of art, a mini bar, and cowhide rugs. The Red Truck Gallery chose works with clear craftsmanship and it was easy to see in Ian Berry's denim assemblages and Chris Roberts-Antieau's awesome quilts. The space was completely packed, making it hard to see each piece individually, but this show deserves a second trip anyway. I look forward to spending more time with the chandeliers, automatons, and paintings before the show comes down on May 4th.
Toronto based photographer Nathan Cyprys emailed to let us know about his newest series "Neighbour State", and we were about to post it when we spotted this series on his site entitled "Ayre (of Distances)" and had to post this one instead. After you view this one, view "Neighbour State" on his site. Both are visually enjoyable.
Working from found photographs, Lyle's paintings are created through a reductive painting process where each piece is rendered using only black paint and turpentine. Lyle begins this process by priming a panel with white gesso. He then paints a thin, rich, oily black veneer over the primed panel, slowly and systematically developing his images by removing some of the black paint with a cloth. In doing so, Lyle renders layer upon layer of various values of black paint resulting in his signature-style of luminescent works.
London based David Shillinglaw who's blogged it up for Fecal Face in the past recently completed this mural in London as he prepares for his solo show at Stolen Space opening on April 26th.
Our buddy Henrik Haven, who brings us some goodies from his native Copenhagen, has been shooting some of his city's graffiti and street art. Last week we brought you part one of his camera's explorations.
San Francisco based artists Raphael Villet and Sean Vranizan are currently showing Just the Two of Us at Adobe Books through April 21. Here are some photos from the opening and works.
Two twin brothers from Brooklyn, Skewville brought the fun to their opening at White Walls last Saturday night with their new show, Amusement. After all, you can't take a show that starts with a sign reading "Sucks either Way" too seriously. Besides the simplistic yet detailed paintings, visitors got to ride on a bike-powered merry-go-round and throw bean bags at bottles like a carnival game. Even the works made of found materials, like the Battleship boombox and the suitcase made of tin lunch pails, brought a sense of humor to the night. After seeing the work in the back of the gallery, which was much more crowded, Skewville provided a light-hearted atmosphere in which viewers could drink beer, play games, and see some really great artworks.
Brooklyn based artists Sheryo and The Yok recentely completed the mural "Pipe Dreams" in Long Island City at 5 pointz. The Yok also emailed over some photos fom a recent trip to Mexico for the Festival Anonymous held near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico from this past January... Awesome, we're heading to Mexico in a couple weeks.
In the ever-expanding genres of vinyl and resin based sculptural art, there are often players behind the scenes making some of the most impressive pieces come together. Whether you hang out at ComicCon or Art Basel Miami, you've seen sculptural works that PIP (Pretty in Plastic) literally had a hand (or several) in fabricating. Here, Fecal Face interviews PIP founder, owner and fabrication mastermind Julie B., to find out more about how their work all plays out.
I live in SF. I drove across the US last summer in a 30 ft. RV from SF to Brooklyn and did portrait series called Darth Across America, every day people in every day situations, wearing a Darth Vader mask. I raised $2600 through Kickstarter along the way, that paid for gas and beer. I was travelling with 2 other photographers who also did a series of portraits. Mine drew the most attention. It was an experiment in a way, to see if I could use a pop culture icon to unite people that had nothing in common. I was right. I created a community of people across the United States that continue to follow my project, which is soon to be a book. -Julie Schuchard
Our buddy Henrik Haven, who brings us some goodies from his native Copenhagen, has been shooting some of his city's graffiti and street art. Much to offer, we've broken the posts into 3 and will be posting more in the coming days.
Our friend Nicolas Le Borgne, who's shown with us for The Diamond Sea, emailed over some pics from his current show at Spacejunk Art Centers in Lyon, France. Incredible watercolor, pen & ink or acrylic works from this talented 28 year old Frenchman.
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