Mural of rare yellow-billed cuckoos is a mix of social commentary and environmental conservation

Louis SahagunContact Reporter (LA Times)
<< Photo by Tani Ikeda

The rare yellow-billed cuckoo is a shy, slender, long-tailed bird that migrates from Central America in spring to breed in streamside forests that once thrived throughout Southern California.

And that got some female high school students and two art instructors at the Miguel Contreras Learning Complex’s Academic Learning Community in downtown Los Angeles thinking about developing a mural about federally threatened species and people who come from as far away as Central America in search of a better life.

What they produced over the next year and a half with research, photographs, stencils, spray paint and house paint on a huge wall overlooking the school’s basketball courts is a mix of female empowerment, social commentary and environmental conservation.

VELVETEEN ANGEL
the movie, the soundtrack, the comic book
A compilation of single-panel dramas by Victor Gastelum
1991-2007

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PREORDER NOW from END FWY...
This item will ship April 30th.

Product Details

Genre: Single-panel Dramas
Publication date: April 24, 2015
Publisher: END FWY Press
Edition & Language: First Edition, English
Format: Comic Book
Pages: 36
Product dimensions: 5.5 x 8.5 in

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Some of these pieces first appeared in:
CRUMP COMICS (Upland, CA)
THE PUNCHLINE (San Pedro, CA)
THE RISE AND THE FALL (San Pedro, CA)
STOOL (Long Beach, CA)

As well as on LP & CD cover art for bands such as:
RIG (San Pedro, CA)
NOTHING PAINTED BLUE (Claremont, CA)
CALEXICO (Tucson, AZ)

Some of the pieces dated 1991-1999 were compiled as
DAFT (the incomplete compilation of single-panel dramas by Victor Gastelum)
Compiled here as VELVETEEN ANGEL 1991-2007

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Victor Gastelum has been creating his spray paint stencil multiples since 1988, and showing them since 1992. The multiples are usually limited to 10 pieces, and because of the spray paint technique, no two prints are alike. Most of the stencils are sprayed on aluminum, heavy drawing paper or heavy holographic card stock. Gastelum’s art has been published in numerous books and magazines including F*cked Up + Photocopied, Ciudad Hibrida/Hybrid City and The New York Times Magazine. Victor Gastelum has also collaborated with his long-time friends, Tucson-based band Calexico, creating art for many of their albums. In addition Victor has collaborated with other artists such as Chaz Bojorquez, Raymond Pettibon and Rolo. He has been published by Hamilton Press (Venice, CA) in the form of a collaborative lithograph and an art book cover and by Self-Help Graphics (Los Angeles, CA) in the forms of serigraphs as well as monoprints of their albums. Victor Gastelum is a native Californian and lives with his wife Ivy and kids Ariana and Adrian in Long Beach, California.

Sometimes stencil-maker and alltimes artist/activist David Solnit talks us through a great how-to on making awesome, hand-made protest banners. Though there are no stencils being made in this video (There are stencils available for May 2016 Keep It In The Ground campaign by Cesar Maxit), David's belief that ANYONE can do what he's doing is one reason Stencil Archive is alive and still sharing stencil art with the world. It's a fun, grass roots, personal thing that you all can easily do. And it is creative!

Art Tips for Activists from Ralph King, Hawkview Pictures on Vimeo.

Spraying a wall in 1987 on the Ru Pare School in Amsterdam with spraycans and stencils by Hugo Kaagman, the film is made by Alex Vinkenoog, son of the legendary Hippie King Simon Vinkenoog

<<< SMiLE in Boulder, CO

Thanks to folks who sent in pics: CC, J Buse, Larry, Josiah

>NEW< In the streets with SMiLE (Boulder, CO)
>NEW< About Ponny (Italy)
Chile
Blek (just one)
East Bay/Oakland
One from Cali
Boulder, CO
One from Indiana
One from Ohio by Jubilee
Swoon in SF
New NIZ mural in SF (collab with Agana)
Eclair
fnnch (just one)
Solis
On Divis
In the Mission
One on Valencia
Two here and there in SF

<<< Le Loup (Hamburg); photo by TXMX

New artist archives from Hamburg and Berlin, compliments of the one and only TXMX.

>NEW< F.P.T. (Hamburg)
>NEW< Ketauu (Hamburg)
>NEW< Le Loup (Hamburg)
>NEW< Mr. Fahrenheit (Hamburg)
>NEW< MTS: Putin is Gay (Hamburg)
>NEW< Rumo (Hamburg)
>NEW< Sobre (Berlin)

<<< Zabou in Berlin (photo by TXMX)

Just got the annual submission from Hamburg legend TXMX. Managed to process them all and upload the majority of them tonight. He snapped pics in Italy, Berlin, and Hamburg. Code sent some our way and a few others from Europe are in this batch. More coming from the TXMX files, as well as some others from the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. Until then, hold your hats!

Alias (from TXMX)
Banksy (just one)
C215 (just one, from TXMX)
Code
CSP (just one, from TXMX)
Liebsein (from TXMX)
Marshal Arts (from TXMX)
Mimi the Clown (from TXMX)
Ocioso (from TXMX)
Robi the Dog (from TXMX)
Tona (from TXMX)

Hamburg, DE (from TXMX)
Berlin, DE (from TXMX)
Italy (from TXMX)
Spain (just one)
UK (just one)

Four weeks can come quick. Prepare for a good time, with a presentation currently titled "Not Banksy".

Other Cinema on Facebook.
Craig Baldwin's OC HQ.

The Handcrafted Paper Stencils of a Kimono Designer Who Turned to Prints
by Claire Voon on February 24, 2016 for Hyperallergic

For decades, the late Japanese artist Yoshitoshi Mori worked as an established kimono designer, using a stencil-based technique to dye his textiles. When he shifted his focus entirely to printmaking in 1960 after experimenting with the medium, he continued working with this layered design method. His resulting wealth of kappazuri — works produced with carefully hand-cut paper stencils — drew from the mingei folk art movement of the ’20s and ’30s that cherished handicraft. Looking further back into Japanese visual traditions, they also focus on subjects of pleasure widely depicted in the ukiyo-e of the Edo period, showing sensual courtesans, kabuki actors, and scenes from Japanese myth. Multilayered and composed of intricate shapes, Mori’s prints are best appreciated up close, an opportunity given by a current exhibition at Ronin Gallery that also features a handful of his sketchbook illustrations and paintings.

While stencil-based printmaking may conjure images with rigid forms, Mori’s prints are incredibly dynamic, composed of thick but fluid lines that constantly move the eye. One rendering of Taira no Tomomori, a warrior figure and popular character included in kabuki plays, juxtaposes swirling patterns on the man’s garments with dramatic hair that shoots from his head like a fountain. In another print, the voluptuous curves of a woman taking an afternoon nap seem to make her teeter on her back. Although his works do not necessarily involve movement, with many of them being portraits, his playing of negative and positive space introduces a delightful animation.

Witch-Wife will open at Chandran Gallery (459 Geary St., San Francisco) on Friday, February 19 from 7–9:30 p.m. and will run through April 1. ChandranGallery.com

The show will feature new works in both painting, block-prints, wheatpaste, sculpture, installation, and murals. For Brooklyn-based artist Swoon, this is the first time in a few years we have seen her in a gallery setting with this much new work. From our small preview last week, the installtion and sculptures are some of the duo's most ambitious works to date.

East Bay Express Preview, with interviews of artists, is here.