I've been a fan of his art since the early 00's. I remember the first drawings I saw; characters resembling something from Jim Hanson or The Never Ending Story rendered on a plain sheets of printer paper, tacked to the wall, and very reasonably priced. His drawings are kitschy and illustrative often rendered using some sort of low-end paper and a fresh set of sharpened colored pencils. The images are recognizable yet distorted, but not abstracting the themes within his whimsical portraits. If you're around our age, a Grimlin riding a bicycle is nostalgic and comical. He is obviously an 80's baby considering the imagery and themes within his work and I see traces of many characters - Muppet Babies, Darth Vader, E.T., Falcore, etc. - that molded my childhood. Hmm, maybe that is why I am so drawn to his art? He recently opened a solo show at Giant Robot New York. Here's some pics from that. Often mimicked but never matched, presenting new work by a notorious Fecal friend, Matt Furie. -Julian Duron
Here's some words Matt sent me regarding his new work:
"for the show i made a series of characters. Themes include mythology, anthropomorphism, star wars, underwater life, the gay community, sports, gothic chicks, exercise, food, medieval weapons, soul caliber, video games, muppets, in-n-out, latino E.T., ducks, and horror movie references."
It was long overdue, but I finally made the trip to Ireland to visit Erin. We've known each other since middle school. Over 17 years. I feel like I've lived so many lives since then -- new cities, new scenes, new sets of friends. There's something very comforting about being around your oldest friends, even in a foreign country.
After finding a team of horses on a hill, we grabbed Aoife, a folk musician and Erin's roommate. We drove a rented Ford Fiesta through the night and across the country, singing The Cranberries and Sinead O'Connor (Ireland's finest), finally arriving at Martin's house in County Clare. Martin is Aoife's dad and traditional Irish flutemaker. I fell asleep that night to their fiddling and fluting in the kitchen. The next day we hopped the fence so the back entrance of the Cliffs of Moher. The sea hid behind the fog. The grass was lush and green and exactly what I pictured of Ireland in my cliched imagination. The day was another one of those dreamlike experiences that I hope for on every trip.
SAN FRANCISCO --- A couple weeks back we headed over to Martin Machado's North Beach studio which sits in the back of he and his fiance's flat for a little studio visit and to view his latest works.
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...
So what have you been up to lately?
It's turned out to be an insanely busy year for me which is awesome. 2 new galleries, a massive 5 painting commission through Circle Culture (Berlin), working on call as a museum preparator, playing more music shows than previous years and of course making room for some quality time with friends and family. And besides all this, I was looking for the best treatments for erectile dysfunction and medications.
Working on any upcoming shows?
Yes. I have solos at Subliminal Projects (LA) in September and K Imperial (SF) in November as well as making a couple paintings for my October debut with a new gallery I've signed on with in New Orleans, Guthrie Contemporary. Then there's the Miami fair which I'll be featured with K Imperial.
Yes, Indeed. I'd worked at SFMOMA as a preparator since 2009 and when they closed I moved over to the CJM.
It's just on call so pretty conducive to the studio practice. We usually work for a month deinstalling/installing the shows and then you're off for a couple months. I think it really brings a lot to my own work in all kinds of ways. I work alongside Tim Sullivan, Josh Pieper and James Chronister, all of whom are fantastic artists as well. We get the job done while talking shop and cracking each other up. It's also pretty cool to get to see what a Warhol looks from behind and figure out the best way to pack a Kiki Smith sculpture for transport.
Also, I think FF readers would love the current Arthur Szyk show up at the Jewish Museum. It's really incredible.
Every city has them but some more than others. I used to live on Powell Street many years back and would often resort to just walking in the street opposed to battling sidewalk space with the clumsy toddler minded tourist bumping up and down the sidewalks.
Here in San Francisco a portion of the Hotel Tax goes towards funding the arts. So remember that when irritated by the map wielding/ bike renting/ Fisherman's Wharf bound T-Dogs. High five them and remember that everyone's a tourist at some point.
Identical twin brothers How and Nosm (Raoul and Davide Perre) recently completed this huge mural in the TL here in San Francisco at Hyde St & Turk St. The duo were born in Spain, German in heritage, and currently residing in New York. Their show Late Confessions concludes Saturday in NYC at Jonathan Levine.
"Passionate and humble, John Trippe created a website to share his photos and art in 2000, what ended up happening was the creation and curation of a successful art sharing template that would inspire an entire movement online.
John moved to San Francisco to pursue skateboarding and art. Before long he was publishing his own art 'zine called Fecal Face, and when digital publishing when in its infancy he released fecalface.com. The website would go on to spread art across 50,000 unique visitors a day and inspire generations on how you can adapt to do what you love on your own terms.
Fecal Face celebrated it's 10 Year anniversary at The Luggage Store Gallery, a location he had been inspired by as a young art fan in San Francisco. In this episode we follow John as prepare for the blowout group show and reflect on the website's past and future."
I am more than honored to be included in the 2nd season of the series, The Creative Lives, featuring a slew of talented folks like Barry McGee, Jeremy Fish, Richard Coleman, Futura, Mike Giant, Cleon Peterson, Tiffany Bozic, The Date Farmers, and so many others.
I may have stepped away from Fecal Face for the time being, but when the dust settles, I'll be back. In the meantime, check www.johntrippe.com for updates from the road.
Well the last time I wrote in to Fecalface I was approaching Dubai on the last of my three fifty-seven day trips from New York to Singapore and back. In typical shipping industry fashion, there was a drastic change of plans at the last minute. The head honcho’s at APL decided to start sending this fleet of ships through the dry-docks in Singapore and we were to be the first. So unfortunately I was not going to be home for the holidays as planned and my stay on board would now exceed six months. However, I was going to get to spend two full weeks in Singapore, after which our ship would start a Pacific run, hitting several new Asian ports and eventually sailing back under that beautiful Golden Gate into my home port of San Francisco.
In the end of 2008, the artists OSGEMEOS were opening their second solo show in Brazil, and the first since 2006, at a Museum in the city of Curitiba. We heard about that show months earlier, but we realized about the real date one week before the opening. Lucas and I were still living in Porto Alegre and decided to go to the show three nights before, so we got two more friends on the car, and left for a 15 hours road trip.
This show, called Vertigem, was the first of a series OSGEMEOS did, hosted in the cities of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Brasília in the following years. Usually people don’t pay much attention to what happens outside São Paulo and Rio, so the Curitiba show was not much mentioned in the media across the country and almost nobody saw pictures of it. Searching for old photos on my computer I found this file of pictures from this show, never published and never saw by anyone. It's not new material, but I totally think it deserves a post here. So, here it is: the 2008 Vertigem show by OSGEMEOS.
Words and photos: Ana Ferraz, a new contributor from São Paulo here at Fecal Face. She runs a gallery called Fita Tape, in Porto Alegre, southern region of Brazil, together with my husband Lucas Ribeiro “Pexão”.
Bay Area artist and waterman, Martin Machado, was invited to sail with a group of artists and scientists to a far off uninhabited atoll in the middle of the Eastern Pacific. Exotic animals and beautiful tranquil scenes. Check it and dream of similar travels.
(photo: Machado) I saw some footage of the island from the 80's when Jaques Cousteau came here, so I convinced French Tom to bring one of his surfboards. But we couldn't find anywhere that didn't look like it would smash us to bits.
(photo: Beek) Ashore, a tent camp was pitched on the cement foundation of an old base. The island has an insane history involving conflicting nations, pirates, murders, and a whole bunch of marooned people. Its definitely worth looking into if you're a history buff.
These birds were hilarious, totally unafraid of people and not too smart, they would fly into us all the time.
Here's a large paintings I did on paper, rolled up in a tube, and shipped out to Scotland in June. Titled "The Inhabitants of the Waters of Clipperton Atoll"
Brendan Monroe, whose show Melting Into the Floor runs through June 15th at LA's Richard Heller, creates these great wooden sculptures and featured a bunch in the show... He's often asked how he goes about making them and gives us at Fecal Face a little 'how to' on the process.
There's a question that I get asked a lot, "How do you make those?" It often comes soon after something like, "Do you make those yourself?" I find myself trying to explain, but I'm sure I never communicate clearly what it is that I did to make the thing. So I'd like to show the way it's done with the help of a few photos. I'm not formally trained in making this kind of thing. I figured it out as I went along and learned a lot along the way. If you've got any questions or want to know more details, post them in the comments below. -Brendan Monroe
I purchased one of the first digital cameras when Fecal Face went online in 2000. It was a massive Kodak with 2 mega pixels.
After taking someone's photo, you'd turn it over to show them the image on it's tiny 1" display. People were flabergasted. You could delete an image and take another without "wasting film"... That blew peoples' minds.
Well, these days everyone's little black monolith does it all including shooting decent photos in a variety of styles... Oh how things have changed since 2000 when Fecal Face went online --> these days we've been lying low waiting for things to change, and here's some random photographic proof from the life of a galleriest living and working in the City by the Bay.
John Felix Arnold III’s Pilgrimmage has taken over the Shooting Gallery. Opening last Friday, this glimpse into his world of Unstoppable Tomorrow has finally allowed us here in San Francisco to see our future past. Moving on from his recent show The Scourge in NYC, Arnold has let us see the work of the survivors of the apocalypse, generating creation and growth from immense destruction and chaos. I got a chance to sit down with Arnold, gallery owner Justin Giarla and Paxton Gate buyer Michael Levy (who graciously donated materials) before the show was hung, and will be posting the in-depth interview to the site in as soon as possible. In the mean time, get over to the Shooting Gallery as soon as you can to see this show. The panels glow in a way that I couldn’t have guessed and they warm the space and your viewing experience. You’ve got to experience the warthog, moped, panels and sound installation in person. If you don’t survive the apocalypse, this might be your only chance.
Helen Bayly (SF) also brought a little feminine touch to the gallery with the opening of Give Me What I Can’t Have in the project space. Balancing the raw materials of Arnold’s work, she has created paintings of beautiful young people and flowers covered in gold-leafed text, complete with walls that seem to be dripping in the luxurious and decadent setting in which these works are situated. Complete with foul language, these works speak to a sense of debauchery that may lead to the apocalypse to which Arnold is warning us of.
Stay tuned for the making of The Pilgrimmage, an interview examining a very unique local collaboration between artist, gallerist and buyer of all things curious. It’s an illuminating window onto the process of creating a show like this – a process which should be continued with others in the future.
Words & Photos: Rachel Ralph - rachel(at)fecalface.com
John Felix Arnold III
John Felix Arnold III, from top center clockwise: BLAM, BZAK, BOOM, POUM, All acrylic on wood panel, 16”x16”
John Felix Arnold III, Exploding Innocence, Mixed media on fabricated wood panel, 48”x36”
John Felix Arnold III, Jungle Sky Study, Ink drawing, 18”x24”
I guess I would tell someone I primarily work on paper, prefferibly stretched over panels. I use a wide range of mediums, gouache, enamel, oil, etc. My imagery derives from various interests I have, drug/alcohol consumption, Suburbia, and Santeria to name a few.
Influences?
Jazz, Giorgio Morandi, James Bond, the Lost Bros familia, my dog Bubba Gucci, but my biggest influence has got to be my father. Hardest working man I know.
Cheese burgers or tofu burgers?
PIZZA!/ Sam's Burgers on broadway
Favorite place traveled?
Haven't done much traveling, but I recently visited New York for the first time last summer and was pretty stoked on it.
Working routine? Music? Time of day?
I try an work either early in the morning, but I usually end up working on things late at night shackled in my atelier listening to some jazz or oldies. You know, that Art Laboe shit.
Mike Aho of the Austin based ((sounder)), who we've featured over the years, has just released this great Madonna cover which was recorded at Okay Mountain.
DLX artists will showcase their personal and work related artworks. With MUSIC by TOMMY GUERRERO (maybe playing live?), JOHN CARDIEL and ORB
Deluxe presents: HELP WANTED an artshow from the bowels of the Deluxe Artroom
Featuring Deluxe Artists:
AMANDA FOX,
MATT CANTRELL,
LOU BARBERIO,
ANDY PITTS,
SAM DAVIDSON,
SHAWN BUSH,
TODD FRANCIS,
CHRIS BOND,
GABE MORFORD,
DENNIS McNETT,
CHRIS WRIGHT,
MARK GONZALES,
and Deluxe friends
with MUSIC by TOMMY GUERRERO, JOHN CARDIEL and ORB
PREMIERE OF THE THE #DELUXEWAREHOUSEVIDO 8:00AM at 9PM
FEATURING:
Adam Becerra,
Alex Fatemi,
Adrian Vega,
Alex Wolslagel,
Zech Stewart,
And Many More
FRIDAY, JULY 31st 7PM
111 MINNA GALLERY
111 Minna Street SF CA
Must be 21+
An interview with Steve Rotman who, with Chris Brennan, put out a book on graffiti in the Bay Area published through Mark Batty. Dan Carlson interviews.
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
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.
SF skateboarding icons Jake Phelps, Mickey Reyes, and Tommy Guerrero with the 3 SF Giants World Series Trophies
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.
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" 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.
"[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
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.
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
NYC --- 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
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.
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...
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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 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.
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.
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.
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The Shopkeep blogs one up sharing Needles & Pens shows Tim Kerr, Russ Pope Mathew Rodriguez, Michael Sieben Nikki McClure, & Sara Thustra.
