David King, San Francisco Artist Who Designed Iconic Crass Emblem, Dies at 71
Sam Lefebvre Oct 22 (KQED)

David King, the San Francisco artist best known for designing the English punk band Crass’ iconic and widely reproduced anti-establishment emblem, died at home Thursday following a years-long fight with cancer, his frequent publisher Colpa Press confirmed to KQED. He was 71.

The English-born designer, photographer and musician, who moved to San Francisco in 1982, created what would become known as the Crass symbol—a stencil-friendly design incorporating a cross and what he called a “diagonal, negating serpent” with two heads—more than 40 years ago to criticize the mixture of church and state. He also participated in New York’s Downtown scene of the 1980s and the Mission School milieu the next decade in San Francisco.

The “explosive and memorable image” has “acquired a ubiquitous independence as a sign of protest,” design historian Steven Heller writes in a new book of King’s work. A popular tattoo, the symbol is perhaps rivaled only by Black Flag’s logo in subcultural prominence. It’s also been appropriated for commercial purposes, moving King in recent years to revisit the stark symbol in various publications and exhibitions with color and levity that better reflects his work’s tone.

“David’s iconic symbols were a badge of authenticity in the underground scenes across the globe in the pre-internet era, recognizable at 65 mph on the back of a squatter punk meandering down an alleyway at four in the morning,” writes the artist Barry McGee, who King met at the San Francisco Art Institute, in Gingko Press’ new David King Stencils. “What symbol has even come remotely close to so immediately showing one’s allegiance to an ideology or attitude?”

King, remembered for his poise and sharp dress, was born in the United Kingdom on April 10, 1948. In a 2013 interview with this writer, he described being attracted to the “riots” and “beacons” of color in commercial designs on comic books and candy wrapping amid the grey, post-war cityscape. Mod fashion of the 1960s was more to his liking, and King attended art school from 1964 to 1967.

In college King met the artists eventually known as Penny Rimbaud and Gee Vaucher of Crass, afterwards working as a graphic designer. At the inception of punk, he gravitated towards stencils, subverting the militaristic style to promote peace. In 1977 at the communal Dial House near London, King encouraged Rimbaud to write down his criticisms of the state’s propagation of Christian values through public education, leading to the pamphlet Christ’s Reality Asylum.

Twitter ad campaign runs afoul of city vandalism laws
EXAMINER STAFF; Sep. 12, 2019 4:45 a.m.; LINK with photos

Some BART riders have called a recent Twitter ad blitz around Powell Station “irritating” and “overkill,” but city officials are calling it illegal.

Or at least part of it.

The social media company launched an ad campaign this week in San Francisco and New York City that covered the walls of the station with images of user tweets about Twitter.

All well and good, if potentially annoying for some viewers, but the campaign continued outside with sidewalk chalk stencils extending into the Tenderloin — and that puts it in breach of The City’s vandalism laws, the Department of Public Works said Thursday.

“Our sidewalks are not to be used for commercial purposes, they are not billboards,” said Rachel Gordon, a spokesperson for DPW. “Any company that advertises on our sidewalks is breaking the law.”

Gordon said DPW will typically send crews out to remove the stencils and contact the person or company responsible to collect the cost of the cleanup.

“Our crews really should be focused on other areas, but we want to keep our sidewalks free of commercial content,” Gordon said.

A Twitter spokesperson on Thursday said the company’s media agency had “confirmed necessary approvals ahead of the chalk installation.”

“We haven’t been made aware of any legal issues related to the chalk. We will of course comply with any requests made by the city,” the spokesperson said.

Twitter is not the first company to run afoul of The City’s strict vandalism laws with sidewalk stencils.

Lyft, to give one recent example, drew legal action from City Attorney Dennis Herrera in 2015 after it stenciled ads on sidewalks across The City.

Battle against taggers makes its mark as San Francisco’s graffiti plague eases
SF Chron (LINK)
Evan Sernoffsky Jan. 4, 2019 Updated: Jan. 4, 2019 4 a.m.

They usually strike at night. Spray can in hand, they scrawl their crude tags on San Francisco’s historic brick facades, business windows and sidewalks.

And when morning reveals the destructive spree of graffiti, the vandals are usually long gone, leaving property owners with a stubborn cleanup job — possibly even a fine.

But thanks to an aggressive new strategy by police and prosecutors, such incidents of vandalism appear to be in decline, according to the latest numbers. Reports of graffiti to 311 have hit an all-time low since the city started tracking the data at the start of 2016.

There were 3,371 such calls in November compared with 7,611 reported during March, according to data provided by the district attorney’s office.

Street Artist Chase Explores Light and Space as His Pattern Park Debuts
LILY MOAYERI | MARCH 30, 2018 | LA WEEKLY

The horror show that is parking in Los Angeles is legendary. And parking in West Hollywood takes the nightmare to a whole other level. But Pattern Park, the fourth and most recent of West Hollywood’s micro-parks, is a bright and colorful spot in this dismal landscape.

The park was designed and painted by renowned street artist Chase. His striking patterns, applied using spray paint, exterior latex paint and stencils, decorate the sidewalk surrounding the parking lot on the north side of Sunset Boulevard between Sherbourne Drive and Horn Avenue. Also benefiting from Chase’s instantly recognizable style is the parking booth inside the lot and the fence surrounding it, which is decorated with cutouts of Chase’s signature eye.

From Venice Beach to DTLA, from Ventura to Long Beach, many walls in the Southland feature Chase’s murals. Born and bred in Antwerp, Belgium, the 40-year-old Chase has lived in Los Angeles since the mid-’90s and he doesn’t take his adopted hometown’s acceptance of his art for granted. Over eggs Benedict at brunch al fresco in one of the Sunset Plaza restaurants just across the boulevard from Pattern Park, Chase — who sports an “LA” tattoo under his right ear — recalls his early days of trying to differentiate street art from graffiti for Los Angeles business owners.

“You didn’t used to see walls like you see now,” he says. “You saw some alley work behind Melrose or downtown back alleys. You saw some stuff from freeways. Venice had the tattoo shop and the graffiti walls, but I always thought the art was good enough to be on the main street.

SMiLE, it’s good for you
Boulder’s incognito street artist on a life of rebellion

By Emma Murray -  April 19, 2018

Emma Murray | Boulder Weekly

Ten minutes before I turn onto Pearl Street, my phone vibrates. A message: “I forgot to ask… Will you keep my identity a secret?”

I’m en route to a cafe, meeting the person responsible for the impressionist cats, portraits and landscapes sprinkled around Boulder’s downtown electrical boxes, alleyways and forgotten doors — like the tri-color tabby’s face that stares at me from a brick wall on 17th Street.

“Of course,” I reply. Inside, I order a coffee and scan the crowd. What does an incognito graffiti artist look like? Painted or dirty nails? Long hair, makeup? Grunge or hipster? Another vibration. “Look for a pair of sunglasses resting on the table,” he (which he may or may not be) tells me.

I walk toward the back of the room and spot them: The glossy lenses staring up from a two-top, flanked by an elbow on each side. One hand loosely cups a mug, the other rests flat on the table. The person is leaning forward, shoulders slightly rounded, gazing down as though examining the creamy chai’s layered design.

As I approach, he looks up. “You must be Emma,” he says.

So this is what a graffiti artist looks like. Not what I expected.More babysitter, less hoodlum. “You must be SMiLE,” I whisper as I sit down.

He glances around the room with fugitive eyes, nods, and we begin.

Anti-Trump Mural Sparks ACLU Lawsuit and Public Art Dispute in New Orleans
Shortly after putting up a mural on his private property last year, Neal Morris received a letter from the city demanding its immediate removal and threatening jail time.
Benjamin Sutton for Hyperallergic

<< Cashy-D's anti-Trump mural in New Orleans (photo courtesy and © Neal Morris

Late last year, New Orleans developer Neal Morris commissioned the local artist Cashy-D to paint a mural on his private property. On November 4, the artist completed the piece, which features text from the 2005 Access Hollywood recording, in which President Trump boasts of sexually assaulting women. In the mural, select nouns have been replaced by images, like emojis in a text message.

Ten days later, Morris received a letter from the city’s Department of Safety and Permits faulting him for not following the proper permit process, demanding the mural’s removal, and threatening a “maximum fine or jail time for each and every day the violation continues plus court costs as prescribed by law.” Now, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Louisiana has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Morris against the City of New Orleans, alleging that it has violated his rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

“The ideal outcome is for the City to scrap its burdensome, confusing (and unconstitutional) permitting process for murals,” Bruce Hamilton, a staff attorney at the ACLU of Louisiana who is representing Morris, told Hyperallergic. “We don’t believe the government should get to decide what is art, which art is deserving of expression, and which art the public is allowed to see.”

H&M Lawsuit Against Street Artist Could Have Changed Copyright Law [UPDATED]
The clothing company claims it has dropped its lawsuit against the artist Revok after widespread outcry and calls for a boycott, though the artist’s lawyer claims that is not true.
Claire VoonMarch 15, 2018
Hyperallergic

Update, 3/15/2018, 4:30pm: According to the Daily Beast, H&M has withdrawn its lawsuit. It shared the following statement:

H&M respects the creativity and uniqueness of artists, no matter the medium. We should have acted differently in our approach to this matter. It was never our intention to set a precedent concerning public art or to influence the debate on the legality of street art.  As a result, we are withdrawing the complaint filed in court. We are currently reaching out directly to the artist in question to come up with a solution.

Update, 3/15/2018, 6:45pm: When reached by email, Revok’s lawyer said he was unaware of H&M’s decision to withdraw the lawsuit. “I don’t know what they are talking about and have not seen them make any public statement,” Gluck told Hyperallergic. “The lawsuit is not dismissed, and the artwork is even still being used on their website.”

We have reached out to H&M’s lawyers for clarification and will update when we hear back.

Update, 3/15/2018, 10:00pm: Revok’s attorney Jeff Gluck told Hyperallergic via email that he has spoken to the counsel for H&M, who told him that “that they are not in fact dismissing the lawsuit.” Hyperallergic has reached out to H&M’s attorneys and to the company’s PR department to confirm this but has received no response. Its statement noting that it is withdrawing the complaint has been shared as a story on its Instagram account.

Update, 3/16/2018, 11:20am: Court records indicate that the case was withdrawn this morning by “Voluntary Dismissal.”

Street artists are calling for a boycott of H&M after the Swedish clothing company took legal action against a graffiti artist to refute his rights over his own work. Across social media, artists including INSA, KAWS, and Lady Aiko are denouncing H&M for what they describe as an “assault on artists’ rights,” and calling for a boycott of the company.

Icy & Sot Interview: Iran's Street Art Siblings on Censorship, Activism & Advocacy
(designboom)
Icy & Sot's Archive

born in tabriz, iran in 1985 and 1991 respectively, street art siblings ICY and SOT began making work under less than hospitable conditions. initially influenced by the graffiti and stencils in skateboarding films and video games, the pair soon began making their own distinctive mark on the walls of their native city. speed and discretion often go hand in hand with creating unauthorised artworks, but this is especially true in tabriz where an unsympathetic and intolerant legal system often hands out charges much more severe than just ‘vandalism’.

at home with the realities of state wide censorship and more than used to their artworks surviving for less than a few hours, political dissent and social protest is a vein that has run through the duo’s work since the beginning. in 2012, ICY and SOT took a solo exhibition of their work in new york as an opportunity to emigrate, leaving iran and relocating to the thriving brooklyn arts scene. since then, the duo’s work has gone from strength to strength, expanding into an ever more diverse number of mediums while retaining its rousing and defiant spirit of resistance through art.

the issues with which ICY and SOT engage are far reaching, and include poverty, homelessness, women’s rights, gun control, and immigration. their most recent show, ‘human (nature)’, presented at thinkspace gallery in culver city, L.A., grapples with the all encompassing effects of climate change on the earth and human kind, and our collective responsibility to fight for the life of our planet. using sculpture, photography, stencil and more, the pair create gripping images rife with narrative that force the viewer to engage with both the inherent beauty and urgent message of the collection.

designboom: can you give us a bit of background as to how you got started? where did the first impulse to start creating work first come from, and how did you go about learning the craft of stencilling? do you remember the first stencil you made?

ICY & SOT: it all started with our career in skateboarding. we used to make small stencils and stickers and put them up around the city. at the time we didn’t know very much about the street art movement, but through internet (flickr) we got to know other international street artists and we became more interested.

we loved the simplicity and quickness of single layer stencils. since it was all illegal in iran we had to be really quick putting a piece up. we learned so many different ways of stencilling by just experiencing. we don’t specifically remember the first stencils, but the very first ones were stencils of punk bands and skateboarding logos, which we decorated our rooms with when were teenagers.

By Deborah Netburn
Feb. 22, 2018
LA Times
<< Photo: A color-enhanced hand stencil from Spain’s Maltravieso cave, likely made by a Neanderthal. Photo courtesy of the University of Southampton.

A red hand stencil. A series of lines that look like a ladder. A collection of red dots.

These images, painted in ocher on the walls of three separate caves in Spain, are the oldest-known examples of cave art ever found. And new research suggests that all three were created not by humans, but by our ancient cousins the Neanderthals.

In a paper published Thursday in Science, an international team of archaeologists shows that each of the three paintings was executed at least 64,000 years ago — more than 20,000 years before the first modern humans arrived in Europe.

“This work confirms that Neanderthals were indeed using cave walls for depicting drawings that had meaning for them,” said Marie Soressi, an archaeologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands who was not involved in the study. “It also means that our own group, the one we call anatomically modern humans, is maybe not so special.”

For most of the last century, researchers have argued that our Neanderthal cousins were intellectually inferior to their modern human contemporaries — incapable of symbolic thought and possibly devoid of language. This, in turn, was used to explain why the Neanderthals disappeared from Eurasia about 40,000 years ago, not long after modern humans arrived there.

However, archaeological evidence revealed over the last two decades tells a different story. We now know that Neanderthals were sophisticated hunters who knew how to control fire, and that they adorned themselves with jewelry and took care to bury their dead.

Street Artist 'Sign-Bombs' Downtown Neighborhoods With 450 'Honey Bears'
Mon. January 29, 2018, 4:34pm
by Nathan Falstreau for hoodline
 

Street art is part of San Francisco's landscape, but one local artist recently installed hundreds of pieces of his work to spark a conversation about using public spaces as a canvas for self-expression.

Over the weekend, fnnch [Stencil Archive album], best known for his depictions of honey bears, ladybugs, seashells, flamingos and turtles, fastened 450 pieces to utility poles between Market and Harrison and the Embarcadero and 5th Street. To comply with city rules for posting signs, he mounted the artwork using zip ties.

The installation, which features an array of honey bears and was billed as "sign bombing," aims to bring attention to what the artist deems "an excessive and absurd amount of [legal] signage." According to fnnch, adhering a "simple sticker" to public property could result in possible felony or misdemeanor charges.

The artist hopes to sway future legislation with the work and has teamed up with Care2 to start a petition urging members of the Board of Supervisors to decriminalize certain types of street art. As of this writing, the petition has garnered 10,816 signatures of support out of a goal of obtaining 11,000.

In particular, fnnch wants the city to decriminalize the application of stickers and wheatpaste—a removable adhesive that's commonly used by street artists.

“What I want to do is show the absurdity of our laws," he said in a statement. "Had these signs been affixed with adhesive to the poles, I could go to jail, but if they are put up with tape or a zip-tie, then it not only becomes legal to hang them up, but illegal for anyone to take them down.”