Found on Flickr.com

Ari Marcopoulos (1957) is a photographer and filmmaker. Born in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, he currently lives and works in Sonoma in rural northern California. However, he shoots his photographs everywhere, on the snow-capped mountaintops of the world, in the trail of a small tribe of professional snowboarders, in the garden at home, along Japan’s rugged coastlines or in the streets of New York. Exhibition space MU in De Witte Dame in Eindhoven is proud to be the first in Europe to present from March 17 till April 16 the exhibition Flow, a comprehensive overview of Marcopoulos’ work.

In more than twenty-five years, Marcopoulos has built an oeuvre populated by the most heterogeneous characters ranging from world-famous artists such as Andy Warhol and Jean Michel Basquiat, pop heroes such as the Beastie Boys, top snowboarders and skaters to anonymous street kids, rappers and his own sons and wife. Typical of Marcopoulos’ oeuvre is the intimateness that pervades all of his works.

Whatever company he finds himself in, he is never an outsider, never merely an onlooker like so many of his fellow-photographers.  Marcopoulos belongs to the world he registers, he knows the people in front of his lens personally and intimately. And they know him. They trust him. And their trust enables him to reach beyond the poses and the shallow looks and grasp the essence of everyday appearances. That’s where heroes become ordinary boys and ordinary boys become heroes, where boredom and fun, passion and friendship are taking shape.

Marcopoulos’ intimate family portraits and panoramic landscapes are markedly different from his popular works of street, underground and extreme sports scenes, yet they all share the typical Marcopoulos aesthetic. In the course of time, Marcopoulos, autodidact and never particularly interested in the technical aspects of photography, learned to handle the medium expertly. He makes use of Photoshop and pocket camera without ever compromising his principles. Besides, he rarely finds his sources and kindred spirits among photographers but in other disciplines such as architecture and visual arts. And in other epochs: he is especially fascinated by the portrait and genre painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

In the USA and Japan, Marcopoulos is a big name, but in Europe his work is so far less well-known. The exhibition Flow is certain to bring about a change in this situation. Supported by a size-wise rather limited yet thematically all-embracing overview of the foundations of his photographic oeuvre, Marcopoulos offers in MU a relevant overview of the most recent developments in his work.

In well over seventy photographs, he brings the intimate nature of his work to perfection only to abandon it completely somewhat later. Even though people are generally the leitmotiv in his work, sometimes they have vanished from sight. What remains are endless landscapes full of ice, water and clouds.

In general, Marcopoulos’ closest photographic objects are the people around him, his wife Jennifer Goode and his sons Cairo and Ethan. As a spectator, you get an eyeful of them, including the daily misadventures, scratches and bruises, bloody noses and measles that make a (young) human being a human being. Razor-sharp and as in a moment of utter stillness, Marcopoulos catches the little aches of human existence, the ones that you rarely see but infallibly recognize.

The bumps and bruises of his sons are in sharp contrast with the extreme injuries of the snowboarders and skaters in Marcopoulos’ oeuvre. His sons’ scratches are symbols of life’s gentle teachings – What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger - , but the deep scars and broken bones of the tough kids defying the snow and the streets are worn like real trophies. Proudly parading up and down, they lift their shirts or show off their braces while they have their photographs taken.

In the course of the years, Marcopoulos has shot many thousands of action photos and films for well-known magazines such as Transworld Snowboarding, and various large snowboard brands. In that area, he ranks among the best in the world. In his free work, however, he was like a kind of cultural anthropologist always focussed on life among the kicks of the small group of free-and-easy top sporters, whom he soon enough came to know personally. Therefore, instead of spectacular or stylized jumps, he shows you people bored out of their skulls in desolate hotel rooms, waiting until the umpteenth snowstorm has blown out and the chopper can take off. The games and porn, drugs and booze that help kill the time. Sunburnt noses, swathed necks, exhausted bodies after a day full of ‘transitions and exits’ from summits covered in fresh, white snow.

http://www.mu.nl/exhibitions/65-flow/65-flow-images.html

adicolor LO
Customization Tool – Acrylic Paints, two paint brushes and wooden palette

The adicolor LO was introduced in 1983 as an all white training shoe specifically created for the adicolor concept; this much-loved silhouette emerges for the first time in over 20 years as a replica of the original model. As a clean, white shoe with refined customization tools – a set of coloured paints, paintbrushes and wooden palette - it offers an infinite amount of customization possibilities. Furthermore, the white leather upper can be coated with a sealant before and after customization to protect and enhance the overall finish shoe. Notable features of the ’83 version that are recreated here include the comfortable and practical ghilly lacing system and rubber cup outsole. Furthermore, each pair comes with a set of luxurious cream laces and a set of specially printed laces; both are suitably finished off with lazer etched metallic lacetips.

That's the official drill, now here's our spin on this amazing project. This is adicolor W1, the most deluxe model in the whole range of 6 white shoes with different customizing tools. As you can see it comes packaged in a wooden box with a palette and the 6 color paints. I'm not sure it beats the white leather box, sandalwood last and gold shoe horn Superstar 35 from last year but it's damn close, so we'll have to call it a dead heat for packaging supremacy. Whatever your preference, this is a monster project. By now most of you will have seen the email circulating with access to all the adicolor shoes - if you haven't stay tuned and we'll upload them all as soon as we can.
Sneaker Freaker

http://sneakerfreaker.com/article.php?id=484

Forget 50 Cent and Ja Rule - the latest artists causing a stir in the hip hop world are Jewish rappers who pay homage to their religion and ethnicity.

Groups such as 50 Shekel (pictured left), 2 Live Jews (featuring Dr Dreidel and Ice Berg), Chutzpah and Hasidic rapper Matisyahu have attracted the attention of fans described by cultural commentator Naomi Wolf as "Hebesters": twentysomething Jews who are "about as far from the neurotic characters in a Woody Allen film as you can get. Here is what they are not: self-deprecating, deweeby, asexual or yearning for goyishe [non-Jewish] validation". Shekel, rattle and roll.

One of the true British graphic originators of our time, his work has been hugely influential in music and youth culture since he started out in the late 1980’s. Fresh from art school he landed a job at The Face magazine under the watchful eye of Neville Brody. Over the past fifteen years he’s worked for Arena, been the art director of Straight No Chaser magazine and founded the company ‘Swifty Typographix.’ Between 1990 – 1995 his output reached a whole new level producing a diverse volume of distinctive record sleeves for Mo Wax, Talkin Loud and Source 360 including the labels iconic brand logos. 
 
By 1997 he’d set up ‘Typomatic’ the UK’s first independent font factory, and with an arsenal of killer fonts to his name Swifty was firmly established as a major source of inspiration for young graphic designers everywhere. With continued presence in the music industry through work for Far Out Recordings and Melt 2000 Swifty’s signature style made the leap to TV, with clients ranging from MTV, Channel 4, BBC2 and Channel 5.
 
Swifty continues to work across these genres today, still art directing the highly acclaimed Straight No Chaser magazine as well as over the last two years lending his skills to them lot over at Addict.

New camo range over at Addict

Banksy's Girl with the Heart Baloon

Beautiful Losers is an exhibition of multi-media art and design that explores the recent work of a diverse group of visual artists that have emerged from the subcultures of skateboarding, graffiti, punk, and hip hop in U.S. urban centers. The core of the project involves painting, sculpture, and photography, as well as film, video, performance, and product design by more than thirty individuals who have emerged in the last decade--some now established figures in the art world, but many receiving their first broad exposure here.

The exhibition also includes a concise overview of the work of a previous generation of artists who have had a direct influence on the aesthetic development of the artists in question; an environmental soundscape that traces the relationship between these subcultures and various genres of popular music; a selection of ephemeral materials (album covers, skateboard decks, toys, zines, etc.) produced in or related to this milieu; and a film and video program to be screened within the exhibition itself.

The exhibition is conceived and curated by Christian Strike and Aaron Rose of Iconoclast. Beautiful Losers opened in Cincinnati at the Contemporary Arts Center in March 2004 and then traveled to San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in July of 2004. The exhibit will make stops at the Orange County Museum of Art and The Contemporary in Baltimore in 2005, and then travel to Europe in 2006 and Asia and Australia in 2007. A fully illustrated 272-page catalogue published by Iconoclast accompanies the exhibition.

The exhibition is presented in five sections. Roots and Influences examines the work of cultural producers who have had direct influence on the development of the generation of artists and designers that is the principal focus of the exhibition. This section includes examples of the collaborative projects of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol; paintings, drawings, and photographs by Neil Blender, Henry Chalfant, Larry Clark, R. Crumb, Glen E. Friedman, Futura, Keith Haring, Ari Marcopoulos, Raymond Pettibon, Pushead, and Craig Stecyk; and the hand-painted skateboards of Dogtown’s Wes Humpston.

The core of the exhibition showcases the recent multi-media art of Thomas Campbell, Cynthia Connolly, Brian Donnelly (KAWS), Cheryl Dunn, Shepard Fairey, Phil Frost, Mark Gonzales, Evan Hecox, Jo Jackson, Todd James, James Jarvis, Andy Jenkins, Chris Johanson, Spike Jonze, Margaret Kilgallen, Harmony Korine, Geoff McFetridge, Barry McGee, Ryan McGinley, Ryan McGinness, Mike Mills, Steve Powers, Terry Richardson, Clare Rojas, Ed Templeton, Romon Yang, and Tobin Yelland.

Tommy Guerrero, a former professional skateboarder, turned his attention to music in the last decade, producing four solo albums and numerous projects for other musicians. Working with samples of popular music relevant to these subcultures, Guerrero created a Soundscape that enhances the exhibition environment.

The exhibition also features a wide selection of Ephemera and Limited Editions created by the artists in Beautiful Losers, as well as other artists and designers in their milieu. This section includes album covers, shoes, prints, skateboards, toys, and zines.

Finally, an extensive program of related contemporary and historical Film and Video will is screened in various places throughout the installation.

A lauded and much-respected cult figure in a bi-coastal subculture that comprises skaters, graffiti artists, and West Coast surfers, Barry McGee was born in 1966 in California, where he continues to live and work. In 1991 he received a BFA in painting and printmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute. His drawings, paintings, and mixed-media installations take their inspiration from contemporary urban culture, incorporating elements such as empty liquor bottles and spray-paint cans, tagged signs, wrenches, and scrap wood or metal. McGee is also a graffiti artist, working on the streets of America’s cities since the 1980s, where he is known by the tag name “Twist.” He views graffiti as a vital method of communication, one that keeps him in touch with a larger, more diverse audience than can be reached through the traditional spaces of a gallery or museum. His trademark icon, a caricatured male figure with sagging eyes and a bemused expression, recalls the homeless people and transients who call the streets their home. “Compelling art to me is a name carved into a tree,” says McGee. His work has been shown at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the UCLA/Armand Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and on streets and trains all over the United States. He and his daughter, Asha, live in San Francisco. More Information over at http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/mcgee/

Barry McGee
Installation view
The Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University, April 29th – July 25th, 2004

Barry McGee
Installation at Deitch Projects, New York
1999

Barry McGee
Installation view
The Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University, April 29th – July 25th, 2004

Photos from http://www.modernartinc.com/barrymcgee/

"From the backstreets of Seattle - grafitti painted over with a patchwork of colours. The destruction of graffiti becoming a street art-form in itself." Jan Chipchase Future Perfect

More photos on Jan's site.

"David Ersser creates seemingly cold, meticulous reproductions of Hi-Fi equipment, turntables and keyboards. The thin wooden cable running down from the stereo to the floor and to a sculpted plug, is made up of short sections of straight balsa to give the impression of a curve. From a distance these works appear at first flawless, however scrutiny reveals the maker’s hand. This hand is the hand of an enthusiast model maker fervently gluing late at night in his garage. This mode of production and subject matter evoke the nerd’s hermetic and frantic DJ-ing in his bedroom. Lifeless and slightly wonky, his facsimiles are drawings and aspirations made solid, as the teenage geek fetishizes the stereo equipment of his dreams." www.17space.com

Found on www.larryscocktails.com and www.17space.com

Nick Walker emerged from the infamous and ground-breaking Bristol graffiti scene of the early 1980s. As a forerunner of the British graffiti phenomenon Nick’s work became a blueprint for hundreds of burgeoning artists for years to come. Combining intricate stencil images with his conventional freehand methods his work has constantly evolved and always remains innovative and thought provoking. His distinctive style adapted effortlessly from the Bristol streets to gallery walls. Fortunately, Nick’s trademark subversion has not been diluted in the transition.

Nick Walker has just launched a new website (web.mac.com/nickwalkerz/)which he promises that he'll be updating on a regular basis with unseen concept illustration, new paintings, Origin of the Species prints, customized doors, film and general randomness.

Check the new site at web.mac.com/nickwalkerz/

or go buy Nick Walker artwork at www.picturesonwalls.com/

Wikipedia reached a landmark 1 million articles today with the publication of an article about the Scottish train station of Jordanhill.

"The Wikimedia Foundation announced today the creation of the 1,000,000th article in the English language edition of Wikipedia. The article is about the Jordanhill railway station in Scotland, and it was started by Wikipedia contributor Ewan Macdonald." Link

"Jordanhill railway station is a railway station in the Jordanhill area of Glasgow, Scotland. The station, abbreviated JOR, is managed by First ScotRail and lies on the Argyle Line and the North Clyde Line.^[1] It is located near the Jordanhill Campus of the University of Strathclyde and the Jordanhill School. The station is at Grid reference NS546679 (coords 55.8826° N 4.3246° W) with a Glasgow postcode of G11 7DW."

This station really does need a bit of knitwear tagging.

Tilts focus on fun, high impact shapes and strong colours is a reflection of his history as a true graffiti writer, trained on the streets and in the train yards. Similarly, his extensive use of bubbly, curvaceous forms relates to his obsession with beautiful females. Following classic hip-hop graffiti ideology, his individual styled name is the focal point in the majority of his paintings, in Tilt’s case a bubble letter “throw-up”. “Throw-Up” is graf terminology for a writer’s spraypainted name incorporating fast lines and done in one or two colours, designed for fast execution; it is the action which Tilt is most interested in, thus he utilises his throw-up styles to visually communicate the fun of creating graffiti in risky situations.

His ensuing career has been nourished and influenced by extensive travel. Inspirational journeys have seen Tilt exhibit and leave his mark as far and wide as the U.S.A, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico, Thailand, Canada, and in excess of 10 countries throughout Europe. At present, Tilt has published a book of his art and photography title “Fetish Bubble Girls”, which will be available on the night. He is also working on manufacturing plastic models of his throw-ups, heading on more tours and of course painting murals and wallpieces. Tilt is a member of all-star French artist’s collective Le Club 70 and has an avid interest in skateboarding and photography.

TILT BOOK - LIMITED EDITION UNCOATED STOCK FULL COLOUR. 80 PAGES 170mm x 220mm $50.00AUD (+ $16.00AUD SHIPPING)
	MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 'I WANNA BE AN AMERCAN IDOL' 90INCH x 72.5INCH $6,000AUD

For more go here www.refillspace.com

A blog devoted entirely to fantastic pet stuff for animal lovers or as they put it "a collective blog about user-centered pet gear"

'Turn your cat into a lion' A kit to turn your cat into a lion can be found on netpharmacy other interesting articles include 'Dog Fashion in Japan', 'Pet Taxidermy', 'Coolbaby Pet Restaurant' the list goes on check http://petistic.blogspot.com/

A special treat from mcsixth and the WhitePoo group on Flickr