HOME - NEWS - GOOD STUFF - INTERVIEWS - OPENINGS - VIDEO - MUSIC - CALENDAR - ABOUT - RSS - SHOP -  FFDG 
  >>>STREET ART || PAINTING || PHOTOGRAPHY || COLLAGE || ILLUSTRATION || DESIGN || GRAFFITI<<<   contact us



Vic Blue Interview
Written by Jesse Pollock   
Monday, 22 January 2007 11:34
This award winning Bay Area photo journalist talks about his trade and its changes as the web plays more of a roll.

Victor J. Blue is a San Francisco based freelance photojournalist. He has worked extensively in Central America since 2001, concentrating on the post-conflict situation in Guatemala, as well as covering issues of national importance in California and across the country.

His photographs have appeared in Time, Newsweek, US News and World Report, Le Monde, the San Francisco Chronicle, and various newspapers and magazines internationally. He has shown photographs in solo exhibitions and been included in group shows at Juice Design, 111 Minna Gallery, and Yerbe Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. As a participant in the 57th Missouri Photo Workshop, he was honored with the Spirit of the Workshop award, and was recognized with an Award of Excellence by the San Francisco Bay Area Press Photographers Association in their 2005 competition. He is represented by the World Picture News photo agency in New York and is currently a staff photographer at The Record in Stockton California.

We at a Fecal Face are proud to bring you an interview with this talented photographer. We have known Victor for a while and his photos never cease to amaze us every time we check back with him.

// Gutting a house in the Ninth Ward. New Orleans August 2005

What do you do and where do you do it?

I am a documentary photographer/ photojournalist, which means I take pictures of people and what they do, how they live, who they are. I do it currently in Stockton CA, where I work for a newspaper called The Record. I also do a lot of it in Central America, and around the US.

I don't think I've ever eaten in Stockton. Are there any good restaurants out there? Got a favorite in San Francisco?

Stockton has got some gems, I like food, so I am always on the hunt for the good spots. We got a really good Thai place downtown and a couple of good Indian places, but it is no SF. My favorite place on the planet earth to eat food is Taqueria Cancun on Mission and 19th, and I love Burma Superstar too.

// A dog, abandoned in the 9th ward. New Orleans August 2005

You seem to travel a pretty substantial amount. Would you ever live anywhere else? Or I guess more importantly, why did you come back to the Bay Area?

I like traveling, but really I do a lot of work in other places because they are places that attract and focus my attention. I have a hard time producing work in SF, I don't find stories here very easily, but in Guatemala or El Salvador, I feel like I can throw a rock and hit something I want to do a story on. I would definitely live somewhere else, I would like to eventually work as a foreign correspondent or work on more international stories. That's where my passion is, even though I love community journalism as well. I came back to the Bay Area because it is a good place to look out from. There is a lot of outward looking people here, people involved in things and there's a lot going on.

I have seen your name credited to several different news associations. Do you still work for AP (Associated Press)? What was that like?

I got my start stringing for the AP in Guatemala during the 2003/04 presidential elections. The AP guys in Guatemala are all good friends, and have helped me out a ton. In 2005 when I was back in Guatemala, I helped them cover some World Cup qualifiers. We work together real closely, we chase stuff down together, and we cover stuff together. There have been a few other times when I sold pictures to the AP from other events or pictures I made got put on the wire, like the Republican convention in 2004, or pictures I make at my paper. I actually tried to get something going with them freelancing in SF years ago, but the office here wouldn't give me the time of day, whatever. So I never worked for them full time. Working for them was fun, it was with friends, but it is pretty competitive and fast paced. You are constantly aware of where the Reuters guy is and that you have to file your photos before him or you're screwed.

// Flooded streets. New Orleans August 2005

// Victim of Katrina. New Orleans August 2005

How is working at a newspaper? I grew up with a parent working as a staff photographer for a city paper, so I know it can be quite rewarding at times.

Making the decision to go to work for a newspaper was a tough one after freelancing for a while, but I love it. The market for photojournalism is smaller than ever, and getting the squeeze every day. Everyone is competing to have their pictures published in just a handful of magazines, and they use more and more portraits and advertising style pictures instead of documentary ones all the time. In many ways, newspapers have become kind of the last bastion of photojournalism and documentary photography. It is hard and expensive, and time consuming to produce this kind of work. Also, the public's appetite for celebrity and "trend" news over what actually happens in the world devalues what we try to do.

Being at a newspaper brings a whole new set of demands; yes, you have to shoot a lot of assignments that you think are pointless and stupid, and you have less time to spend on ones that are good because you have that daily deadline looming over your head. And yes, a newspaper is a big, sometimes lumbering organization that can be pretty stupid sometimes, and dealing with the bureaucracy of it can suck. At the same time, you have that big organization behind you. For example, I worked on a story on migrant worker education for three months. Almost whenever I needed it, my editor gave me the time to work on it and it got published in the paper as a three part series over three days. There were days when I got paid just to go out and hunt this story down, sit around in people's homes, go to school with little kids, go out in the fields, and make pictures. After all that, it got more space than it ever could have in almost any other publication. Every day, I get to have a conversation with the 70 to 80,000 people who read The Record. I get to show them their neighbors, their towns, their lives from my perspective and hope they understand it in a new way. It can also be thrilling at times when you have to chase that spot news, like the overturned semi-trucks and the shootings that go off all the time. It can be boring sometimes too, but the bottom line is that I get paid to meet people and hang out with them. I step into people's everyday, and try and say a little something about what it's like to be them.

What kind of equipment do you use at the newspaper these days? Is it all digital, or do you still shoot film for them?

The newspaper is all digital. We each get a kit, 2 cameras, lenses, and a laptop. It's fun to listen to guys who have worked in newspapers for a long time tell stories about the film days - souping film on deadline, all of that. I have enough trouble getting what I need done in a day, I can't imagine doing it on film, jesus.

// Closing a wound, El Hoyon prison. The phenomenon of the Maras, violent Central American gangs that originated in Los Angeles, has become a nightmare in the region. After years of crime and extreme violence, the gangs have lately been subject to repression from governments tired of the insecurity, utilizing methods reminiscent of the counter insurgency wars of the 1980's.

// El Hoyon marero.

// El Gato recovers from a gunshot wound to the head, hospital Escuintla.

// Members of the Mara 18, El Hoyon prison.

Do you have a preference for either film or digital while shooting your own work? What kind of cameras do you shoot with?

I like both film and digital, and for me it depends on the story which I will use. I love black and white photography, and I have no qualms about shooting things digital and converting them to black and white, but I also shoot a lot of film. It has more latitude, more dynamic range. Film makes you slow down, shoot less frames. I shoot with Nikon digital and film cameras, and I use a Hasselblad XPAN quite a bit too.

How do you manage to get the sort of photographic access you do? For example the prison stories or the land evictions.. Do you have to have many meetings and talks before hand, or do you just show up and hope for the best?

I always used to wonder the same thing. Then when I started doing it, I found that it just comes. The first documentary project I ever did, I just showed up. I got off the back of a truck, walked into this farm, and said "Hi. My name is Vic and I want to stay here and take pictures of y'all" They were like "Uhh, no," but eventually they were into it. You have to explain yourself, why you are there and once people understand what you are trying to do, they are usually ok with it. But you have to do your research, and make contacts. I spend a good deal of time meeting with people, making introductions, trying to partner up with organizations that are working in the same themes as me, they are often a good resource to help introduce you to subjects. For some things, like to get into a prison, you have to have good contacts or know someone who does. My friend Rodrigo was on good terms with someone in the government, so he got us in. But like with a breaking news situation, things are different. You are there, things are all messed up, and you are just working and hopefully people aren't paying much attention to you. For something like the land stuff, that was a mixture. Some of those places I had contacts that introduced me, some I just went to. Then the trick is to disappear, become a part of the scene and see what happens around you. The best advice I ever heard about access was from Robert Capa who said, "Like people, and let them know it."

People definitely identify and treat photojournalists with somewhat of a different attitude. Being in those volatile situations, has your camera ever protected you from an otherwise bad outcome?

Not exactly. I have been in only a few situations that were particularly dangerous for me as an observer. In today's world, everyone, from high school football coaches to combatants in Somalia have a pretty savvy understanding of the power of the media and want to control how they are portrayed in it. That usually means controlling your access to them, or worse, controlling situations so they look a certain way on the news. As a journalist, one of our jobs is to see through that kind of manipulation and to help our readers see through it. I have always had more hassle from officials trying to keep me from doing my job than I have from the people I was photographing. But sometimes you are there and things are happening, and you have to make the pictures whether people want you to or not. Sometimes people get angry, and you have to deal with that.

// Exhumation at Comalapa, a former Army base. Guatemala suffered through a brutal 36 year civil war that killed 250,000 people and displaced more than a million. The war was a wound from which Guatemala has yet to recover. Continued exclusion of indigenous peoples, land takeovers as a response to extremely unequal land distribution, and persistent grinding poverty, all causes of the war, persist and contribute to the escalating crime and insecurity that have become Guatemala's new social crisis.

// A plantation adminstrator is tied to a tree by squatters at a land takeover, Finca Maria Lourdes.

// Squatters prepare to resist eviction by the National Police, Nuevo Palmar.

// Campesinos wait for news of the authorities after a land takeover, Finca Maria Lourdes.

You did a podcast to accompany a story for the San Francisco Chronicle that came out pretty well. I don't find that type of multimedia experience with photography all that often. Do you like talking about your work? How did that come about?

The podcast came about because Jim Finefrock, the editor of the Insight section at the Chronicle, worked closely with me on the gang story and wanted a little something more for the reader. I wrote the text for that story as well as made the photos, and he was a tough editor, but he made the story 100 percent better. Generally no, I do not like to talk about my work. I'm not into this whole "intrepid journalist-bringing the story home to you-Anderson Cooper-360, blah blah". It isn't about you, it's about the people in your stories. So the podcast was cool because I got to explain some things a little more fully that got edited out of the story because of length. For example, I got to talk a little more about how immigration policy here in the US helped create the gang phenomenon in Guatemala, and how we should think about that in this new climate of insanity around the issue. But I don't like talking about myself or what I do, the focus is the pictures and the stories they tell.

Weirdly enough, the huge push in journalism these days is towards more multimedia for the web and there are photographers doing incredible things with it. Most folks are putting together slideshows with audio they collect and edit together with the pictures. Some, like the folks at the San Jose Mercury News are doing just video, and pulling frame grabs from that for the paper. It's kind of crazy right now, like a feeding frenzy. A lot of papers are believing the hype that they are on the way out and are trying to figure out how to survive and are trying everything to beef up their websites. There are some pretty seriously influential photojournalists that are convinced that video is the future and still cameras are one the way out. I am not convinced, and I don't think newspapers are going anywhere for a while. I could talk about this forever, but for me personally, I am focused right now on making the best, most powerful pictures I can. I am interested in producing multimedia stuff as an alternate way to get the pictures seen by more readers, and to make them more interesting to look at. But I am into photography, and I am not yet convinced that shooting video is the same, just with a different camera. We will see.

I notice that you have work with WPN (World Picture News Agency). I see more and more photographers using their service and I have heard mixed reviews. How do you like being involved with them? Has it worked out for you?

Dealing with an agency is a complicated thing and I have learned a lot working with WPN. Some of it has been great, some of it not so great. When they first agreed to represent my work, I thought "Ok, that's it, now I have an agency.. here we go." I was so wrong. The most important thing I have learned is the limit of what an agency can do for you. Far more important is your relationship with your clients, the magazines. WPN has blown up over the last couple years and they have gotten a lot of good work out there, but they have been through some growing pains. I do however, have some friends there that have helped me out.

// Old indigenous woman at the US border fence, Mexicali. Each year hundreds of thousands of immigrants make their way from Mexico and Central America to the United States. Two borders serve as the greatest obstacles in their journey to the north-the US/Mexico border, where migrants evade an increasingly vigilant border patrol, and Mexico's border with Guatemala, where they face many dangers, including gangs, bandits, corrupt immigration officials, and the "train of life and death."

// Migrants climb the US/Mexico fence, Mexicali.

// Honduran immigrants peer through the door of their holding cell, Tapachula Mexico.

It seems like it's been a while since you were in a Bay Area gallery show? Are you still interested in showing or are you more in the photojournalist aspect of creating a story these days?

I guess the last show I was in was Hot and Cold at the Yerba Buena Center about a year ago. I am interested in showing in galleries, but for me it has to be the right context. I believe in documentary photography as a form of communication, and one that can speak from art objects - prints on a gallery wall, projections, public installations, whatever. Is it art? I am not sure. It is and it isn't, and there are tons of other folks who can fight about that better than me. As far as the art scene in SF, I think documentary photos can bring a lot to it. They can add a lot to the conversation. As a photojournalist, I am trying to reach the most people I can, to communicate things about the world as it is. This is done most effectively through the mass media, but because I come from a culture committed to DIY, to underground communication and individual voices, I am down to communicate there as well. I think it would be cool if curators looked to documentary photographers, were open to them adding to the conversation, like what Hamburger Eyes has done.

Tell me a little about the Heartswork project you collaborated on with Tiffany Bozic, Paul Urich and Chris Duncan. How did that collaboration come about and what was it like traveling around with those three?

Heartswork was a project that Chris Duncan, Tiffany Bozic, and Paul Urich put together as a road trip/series of gallery shows. The idea was to go on the road for 6 weeks, make a bunch of art, and show it in NC, Tampa, and Philly. They asked me to go along and shoot photos of the whole thing which turned into a little self published book, Will The Circle Be Unbroken. We all piled in a van in January and drove around the country in the winter to make art. It was good for me because I had just gotten back from Guatemala after spending 7 months there, so I liked doing this little personal project with them. When we got back I edited the pictures down and we hung out at Juice and put together a book that was part photo essay about the trip and also a catalog of the shows. The trip was great and in hindsight, it was kind of almost innocent, earnest. We slept on peoples floors, ate what people cooked us or what was at the gas station at 3AM. I would love to do it again. We met a ton of great people, and got infected with their creativity and enthusiasm while we were trying to infect them with ours.

// Will tattooing Aaron, Mendenhall St.

// Face Down in Shit, the Onion Cellar.

// Aki, Aya, and Derek, Chapel Hill.

// Crickett, Greensboro.

You seem to shoot non-stop these days. Is there anything else you love doing as much as taking photos? Anyone or anything you are really excited about right now?

I am pretty into reading these days, I read a couple of magazines each week and I am currently kind of obsessed with the New Yorker. I am always working through a couple different books, usually issue type stuff or history, but I am trying to read more novels. My brother works for AK Press, so I follow what they are putting out. I always have the "core things" that get me excited, then I am always collecting new things. I am always into and inspired by Salinger, Orwell, Galeano, the Spanish Civil War, Goya and Schiele, Eugene Richards and Larry Towell, etc. Also in the last year or so, I have been really into This American Life, I want to do something like that but with photography. I just read Fat City, a novel about Stockton that was great, and Maximum City, a book about Bombay that blew my mind. I love music, especially good mix tapes. Art wise, I try to keep up with what is going on around here, I love SF art. There is a great low key, DIY current here. I like a lot of the contemporary big shots too, Kiefer, Ruscha, Magdalena Abakanovich. These days I am feeling Paolo Pellegrin and Trent Parke, and David Guttenfelder as far as photographers go.

I just got back from a week in North Carolina, and that got me excited too. My best friend got married, and it was kind of uncertain if I would make it or not, because I wanted to be in Guatemala the same day for the 10 year anniversary of the peace accords there. I was torn between work and life and it made me kind of mad. After a week in NC surrounded by all these people I care about so much, it put things in perspective. I was thinking that I had to choose between the two, but I realized that what makes me good at what I do - producing journalism and at the same time running around with my friends and family. Just being with all these people, talking about music and life, kids, art, pipe dreaming and dealing with our realities at the same time, it was good. We all go home every year, this big crew of folks that live in SF, NYC, Portland, all over. We end up in NC to have New Years together. Everyone's getting older and it gets harder, but it's important to keep it alive.

You can see more of Victor's work on his website: victorjblue.com

You can also see further pieces and portfolios here and here. {moscomment}

Related Articles

Alison Blickle @NYC's Kravets Wehby Gallery

Los Angeles based Alison Blickle who showed here in San Francisco at Eleanor Harwood last year (PHOTOS) recently showed new paintings in New York at Kravets Wehby Gallery. Lovely works.


Interview w/ Kevin Earl Taylor

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...


Peter Gronquist @The Shooting Gallery

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.


Jay Bo at Hamburg's Circle Culture

Berlin based Jay Bo recently held a solo show at Hamburg's Circle Culture featuring some of his most recent paintings. We lvoe his work.


NYCHOS @Fifty24SF

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.


Gator Skater +video

Nate Milton emailed over this great short Gator Skater which is a follow-up to his Dog Skateboard he emailed to us back in 2011... Any relation to this Gator Skater?


Ferris Plock Online Show Now Online as of April 25th

5 new wonderful large-scale paintings on wood panel are available. visit: www.ffdg.net


ClipODay II: Needles & Pens 11 Years!!

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.


BANDES DE PUB / STRIP BOX

In a filmmaker's thinking, we wish more videos were done in this style. Too much editing and music with a lacking in actual content. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.


AJ Fosik in Tokyo at The Hellion Gallery

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.


Ferris Plock - Online Show, April 25th

FFDG is pleased to announce an exclusive online show with San Francisco based Ferris Plock opening on Friday, April 25th (12pm Pacific Time) featuring 5 new medium sized acrylic paintings on wood.


GOLD BLOOD, MAGIC WEIRDOS

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.


Jeremy Fish at LA's Mark Moore Gallery

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.


John Felix Arnold III on the Road to NYC

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.


FRENCH in Melbourne

London based illustrator FRENCH recently held a show of new works at the Melbourne based Mild Manners


Henry Gunderson at Ever Gold, SF

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.


Mario Wagner @Hashimoto

Mario Wagner (Berkeley) opened his new solo show A Glow that Transfers Creativity last Saturday night at Hashimoto Contemporary in San Francisco.


Serge Gay Jr. @Spoke Art

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.


NYCHOS Mural on Ashbury and Haight

NYCHOS completed this great new mural on the corner of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco on Tuesday. Looks Amazing.


Sun Milk in Vienna

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding


"How To Lose Yourself Completely" by Bryan Schnelle

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle


Tyler Bewley ~ Recent Works

Some great work from San Francisco based Tyler Bewley.


Kirk Maxson and Alexis Mackenzie at Eleanor Harwood Gallery

While walking our way across San Francisco on Saturday we swung through the opening receptions for Kirk Maxson and Alexis Mackenzie at Eleanor Harwood Gallery in the Mission.


Jeremy Fish Solo Show in Los Angeles

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.


The Albatross and the Shipping Container

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.


The Marsh Barge - Traveling the Mississippi River from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.



contact FF

Gone Fishin'
Tuesday, 13 October 2015 11:39

I don't think at this point it needs to be written since the last update to Fecal Face was a long time ago, but...

I, John Trippe, have put this baby Fecal Face to bed. I'm now focusing my efforts on running ECommerce at DLX which I'm very excited about... I guess you can't take skateboarding out of a skateboarder.

It was a great 15 years, and most of that effort can still be found within the site. Click around. There's a lot of content to explore.

Hit me up if you have any ECommerce related questions. - trippe.io


 

SF Giants' World Series Trophy & DLX
Wednesday, 04 March 2015 17:21

I'm not sure how many people are lucky enough to have The San Francisco Giants 3 World Series trophies put on display at their work for the company's employees to enjoy during their lunch break, but that's what happened the other day at Deluxe. So great.

IMG_9585_sm

SF skateboarding icons Jake Phelps, Mickey Reyes, and Tommy Guerrero with the 3 SF Giants World Series Trophies


 

Alexis Anne Mackenzie - 2/28
Wednesday, 25 February 2015 10:21

SAN FRANCISCO --- Alexis Anne Mackenzie opens Multiverse at Eleanor Harwood in the Mission on Saturday, Feb 28th. -details

a_m


 

The Death of the Artist—and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur
Wednesday, 21 January 2015 10:34

When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.

lead

Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading

 

"Six Degrees" @FFDG
Friday, 16 January 2015 09:30

"Six Degrees" opens tonight, Friday Jan 16th (7-10pm) at FFDG in San Francisco. ~Group show featuring: Brett Amory, John Felix Arnold III, Mario Ayala, Mariel Bayona, Ryan Beavers, Jud Bergeron, Chris Burch, Ryan De La Hoz, Martin Machado, Jess Mudgett, Meryl Pataky, Lucien Shapiro, Mike Shine, Minka Sicklinger, Nicomi Nix Turner, and Alex Ziv.

17_ms

Work by Meryl Pataky

 

In Wake of Attack, Comix Legend Says Satire Must Stay Offensive
Friday, 09 January 2015 09:59

Ron-Turner

Ron Turner of Last Gasp

"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on

 

Solidarity
Thursday, 08 January 2015 09:36

charlie

 

SF Bay Area: What Might Have Been
Tuesday, 06 January 2015 09:36

tiburonbridge

The San Francisco Bay Area is renowned for its tens of thousands of acres of beautiful parks and public open spaces.

What many people don't know is that these lands were almost lost to large-scale development. link

 

1/5/14 - Going Back
Monday, 05 January 2015 10:49

As we work on our changes, we're leaving Squarespace and coming back to the old server. Updates are en route.

The content that was on the site between May '14 and today is history... Whatever, wasn't interesting anyway. All the good stuff from the last 10 years is here anyway.

###########
 

Jacob Mcgraw-Mikelson & Rachell Sumpter @Park Life (5/23)
Friday, 23 May 2014 09:22

Opening tonight, Friday May 23rd (7-10pm) at Park Life in the Inner Richmond (220 Clement St) is Again Home Again featuring works from the duo Jacob Mcgraw-Mikelson & Rachell Sumpter who split time living in Sacramento and a tiny island at the top of Pudget Sound with their children.

Jacob Magraw will be showing embroidery pieces on cloth along with painted, gouache works on paper --- Rachell Sumpter paints scenes of colored splendor dropped into scenes of desolate wilderness. ~show details

park_life

 

NYPD told to carry spray paint to cover graffiti
Wednesday, 21 May 2014 10:37

nyc_graffitiNYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?

The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.

Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON

 

//////////
Wednesday, 16 June 2010 17:39


 

 


 

 

 

//////// INSTAGRAM ----- FECAL_FACE

 

Alison Blickle @NYC's Kravets Wehby Gallery

Los Angeles based Alison Blickle who showed here in San Francisco at Eleanor Harwood last year (PHOTOS) recently showed new paintings in New York at Kravets Wehby Gallery. Lovely works.


Interview w/ Kevin Earl Taylor

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...


Peter Gronquist @The Shooting Gallery

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.


Jay Bo at Hamburg's Circle Culture

Berlin based Jay Bo recently held a solo show at Hamburg's Circle Culture featuring some of his most recent paintings. We lvoe his work.


NYCHOS @Fifty24SF

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.


Gator Skater +video

Nate Milton emailed over this great short Gator Skater which is a follow-up to his Dog Skateboard he emailed to us back in 2011... Any relation to this Gator Skater?


Ferris Plock Online Show Now Online as of April 25th

5 new wonderful large-scale paintings on wood panel are available. visit: www.ffdg.net


ClipODay II: Needles & Pens 11 Years!!

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.


BANDES DE PUB / STRIP BOX

In a filmmaker's thinking, we wish more videos were done in this style. Too much editing and music with a lacking in actual content. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.


AJ Fosik in Tokyo at The Hellion Gallery

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.


Ferris Plock - Online Show, April 25th

FFDG is pleased to announce an exclusive online show with San Francisco based Ferris Plock opening on Friday, April 25th (12pm Pacific Time) featuring 5 new medium sized acrylic paintings on wood.


GOLD BLOOD, MAGIC WEIRDOS

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.


Jeremy Fish at LA's Mark Moore Gallery

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.


John Felix Arnold III on the Road to NYC

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.


FRENCH in Melbourne

London based illustrator FRENCH recently held a show of new works at the Melbourne based Mild Manners


Henry Gunderson at Ever Gold, SF

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.


Mario Wagner @Hashimoto

Mario Wagner (Berkeley) opened his new solo show A Glow that Transfers Creativity last Saturday night at Hashimoto Contemporary in San Francisco.


Serge Gay Jr. @Spoke Art

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.


NYCHOS Mural on Ashbury and Haight

NYCHOS completed this great new mural on the corner of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco on Tuesday. Looks Amazing.


Sun Milk in Vienna

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding


"How To Lose Yourself Completely" by Bryan Schnelle

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle


Tyler Bewley ~ Recent Works

Some great work from San Francisco based Tyler Bewley.


Kirk Maxson and Alexis Mackenzie at Eleanor Harwood Gallery

While walking our way across San Francisco on Saturday we swung through the opening receptions for Kirk Maxson and Alexis Mackenzie at Eleanor Harwood Gallery in the Mission.


Jeremy Fish Solo Show in Los Angeles

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.


The Albatross and the Shipping Container

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.


The Marsh Barge - Traveling the Mississippi River from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.


  HOME - NEWS - GOOD STUFF - INTERVIEWS - OPENINGS - VIDEO - MUSIC - CALENDAR - ABOUT - RSS - SHOP -  FFDG 
hosting provided by

© 2017 FECAL FACE DOT COM

Material published on FECAL FACE DOT COM online service is copyrighted by Fecal Face or its licensors, including the originating wire services. Such material is protected by U.S. and international copyright laws and treaties. All rights reserved.

Users of the Fecal Face online service may not reproduce, republish or redistribute material found on the web site in any form without the express written consent of the copyright holder.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...