Artist Interview

Interview with IRL, anti-tech graffiti artist

Interview with IRL, anti-tech graffiti artist
22 Feb 2015  Renzo (for the Wildernist)

I’d been seeing anti-tech graffiti around my town [Chapel Hill, NC] for the better part of a decade. Over the course of months it would appear in bursts, then slowly fade as the authorities cleaned it. Some places, images, or slogans only seemed to appear once, while others were clearly contested territories where cleaning and painting happened regularly. For years I wondered who the vigilantes that made my walks and bike rides so much more exciting could be. In a funny synchronicity, I finally met “IRL” through a mutual friend the same week another friend of mine started an anti-…

fnnch (SF) Interviews with Hoodline

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: Alamo Square's Ladybug Art

http://hoodline.com/2014/11/here-today-gone-tomorrow-alamo-square-s-lad…

You might have taken a stroll through Alamo Square Park within the last month and noticed something a little out of the ordinary: a line of small, bubbly beetles that seemed to be marching across the pavement in single file.

Here one day and gone soon after, the ladybugs were a cheerful, albeit brief, addition to Alamo Square's winding paths and overgrown gardens.

Here's another look at the ladybugs as tweeted out by the artist, known simply as fnnch:

The art installment has since been painted…

Drew Copus Interviewed (E. Sussex, UK)

Metamorphosis

Hastings Online Times Original interview here

St. Leonards based street artist Drew Copus’ first solo show, Metamorphosis is showing now at The Dragon Bar, 71 George Street TN34 3EE Hastings.  HOT’s Rebecca Snotflower and Andy Tompkins ask him 12 very important questions.

You may well recognise the butterfly motif stencil drawings on display within the exhibition from the walls along your daily routes around the town. The pieces look like they have been stolen from the landscape of Hastings, as they sit on their reclaimed wooden surfaces, collectively displayed in the bar by some kind of crazy graff-loving entomologist. Some pieces include a symmetry of lines and shapes,…

Interview with Melanie Cervantes

Third World Press Collective just had a great talk with sometimes-stencil artist Melanie Cervantes. Melanie and her husband Jesus Barraza crank out amazing political posters for many great causes. Years ago, Jesus told me that he learned how to screen print from old school printers who called the screens "stencils" (and acutally used stencils to occasionally put the image on the screen). I first met Melanie while photographing her stencils at the old Counterpulse space.

"Brown & Proud" by Melanie Cervantes and Jesus Barraza (Stencilada 2009)

Feminist Fistbumps: Artist Melanie Cervantes Discusses Art as Decolonial Activism…

Peter Kuper Interview (Audio)

Peter Kuper is a long-time stencil artist, co-founder of World War 3 Illustrated (with long-time stenciler Seth Tobocman), and current creator for Mad Magazine's Spy vs. Spy. When I was compiling my Oaxaca section for Stencil Nation, Peter was kind enough to take a few minutes from his insane schedule and send me some photos. One photo of a rice stencil ended up in the book. Glad to finally get an interview with him posted on this site (thanks to Boing Boing and RiYL, and Brian Heater).

Interview audio here.

Every time I speak to Peter Kuper, the conversation invariably turns to New York — or, as is often the case, begins there. It’s my own fault. I’ve got this insatiable need to ask fellow residents, artists in particular, what keeps them in the city’s orbit. Kuper is a particularly interesting…

Dave Ryan Rehabs by Making Stencils (Video)

Manticore Stencil with Dave Ryan from David Chen on Vimeo.

invurt.com Interviews DLUX (Now and Then, Melbourne)

Interview – DLUX – James Dodd

http://www.invurt.com/2014/05/14/interview-dlux-james-dodd/
 

It’s 2004, Melbourne, and things for the cities vibrant stencil art community are about to change. For many years the stencil was king – so much so that books were written, international websites spawned and a global movement eagerly watched the streets come alive in nooks and crannies with cut and sprayed works of art. from the political to the humourous,  – in these days, freedom aerosol was still, for the most part, mostly practiced by graffiti artists and what we know as the “street art scene” was dominated by stencils and the artists who created them, plied a swaths across the city.

But 2004 was the year of a major international event in Melbourne, the Commonwealth games, and with it came a massive cleanup across the city – walls washed and sterilised in the name of “making shit look…

Jeremy Novy: Art and/or Vandalism (Video)

Blek,Thinking of L.A.

Blek Le Rat, 'Father of the Street Stencil,' Thinking of L.A.
By Ed Fuentes | on January 16, 2014
Link: http://www.kcet.org/socal/departures/columns/writing-on-the-wall/blek-l…
Archive: http://www.stencilarchive.org/archives/index.php/search?q=blek

Stencil street art is strategic in its placement and monochromatic imagery, allowing graphic arts to become guerilla responses to environmental and social conditions in one swift glance. The urban art form can be found in all major cities, but it thrives in Los Angeles. It didn't have to evolve much from its original source, Blek le rat, the French artist who began stenciling on Parisian walls in the 1970s and 1980s. With the growth of stenciled art in Los Angeles, not to mention around the world, it's important to consider why he's called the…

The Story of an Artist: Victor Gastelum

The Story Of An Artist: Victor Gastelum

Interview with Victor Gastelum.

“Victor is the fifth Beatle, he is the silent one that no one really ever sees.”

—Joey Burns, Calexico

Words: Craig Carry, Artwork: Victor Gastelum

Original Post (with artwork): http://fracturedair.com/2014/01/29/the-story-of-an-artist-victor-gastel…

“Love the run but not the race
All alone in a silent way
World drifts in and the world’s a stranger”

—‘Quattro (World Drifts In)’, Calexico

In an attempt to write the story of the Long Beach California-based artist Victor Gastelum, it is tempting to simultaneously write the story of Tucson Arizona’s beloved sons Calexico. For, across the band’s vast body of sprawling, timeless work — encompassing a string of studio albums, tour records, a plethora of EP’s, soundtrack scores and a multitude of…