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A Street Art Exhibition | 3

Curator Statement

The exhibition that we will be showing focuses on the careers and work of a collective and select group of artists who have started a new movement in the art world. This movement draws a fine line between street/urban-based arts along with fine art. This fine line is drawn by using do it yourself aesthetics found in skateboarding, graffiti and mural painting. The artists discussed and interviewed in this exhibition will include Jim Houser, Brian Donnelly, Barry McGee, Ed Templeton, Shepard Fairey, David Choe, Dan Witz, Stephen Powers, RETNA & Thomas Campbell. In this exhibition we can see the artists progression and their growth in popular artistic culture. Something that all of these artist have in common is that they all became renown and admired in the art world which is something that had never occurred to them from their various roots in street culture. As all of these

artists have began to be recognized, their work has become sought after and all have created successful careers off of this new urban style created in the 80s and 90s. Individually they have been creating advertisements for popular products, along with designing products themselves and working in film. What really get the word out about these artists are the companies that have their products customized by the incredible artworks that these guys make. These artists have all been commissioned and are being hired to paint and create artwork in well-known locations as well. The feelings and convictions that some of these artist create from how they create their work especially for major corporations compares to their beginnings in street culture are also discussed. This exhibition shows the art of ten artists that have changed the term fine art to fit their perspective on the

topic. They used their urban roots and skateboarding to create a new style that appeals to kids, companies and the fine art world which not many people can say they have achieved. All of these artists are successful in every aspect of their work and bring imagination along with design elements to present visually pleasing compositions. Come on out and take a look.

-Thomas Weigel

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Jim HouserA Street Art Exhibition | 5

Jim Houser is a self-taught painter from Philadelphia. He is also considered an installation artist, which is the process of creating a 3 dimensional piece to transform the perception of a space. He is very well known for his cartoon-like images on small canvases, juxtaposed with poetry and painted objects. Many know him for his work as a designer for Toy Machine skateboards where he creates graphics for decks and wheels. On top of creating the designs for Toy Machine, Jim is a life long skateboarder and true kid at heart. This self-taught painter has accomplished a lot in his career already, combining words and story lines with animated or cartoon like renditions to create frequent themes that give his pieces originality. He creates everything from ten-gallon hats to snakes and large flowers. He is constantly working and thinking of new ways to express his themes. “It’s

a wonder that his paintings, sculptures, and installations don’t show the same frenetic pace – instead, they’re the near opposite: purposeful, considered, and peaceful.” Jim is thought of as a homebody and enjoys working alone rather than with other artists. Being alone gives him a sense of focus that he cannot obtain with others around which is why he enjoys staying home or in his studio. Some of the themes Jim likes to work with are background patterns that can be found through-out his work. Some of these images he draws continually are vines, cowboy hats, hands, scalloped patterns, octopuses, and wallaby-like shoes. Throughout his paintings, he combines imagery with lines of text but he very rarely makes those lines longer than a few words. This said text is intended and thought-out, but only to a point and often changes. Houser

states that, “whatever it is I write down usually changes or is changed by the time I paint it on a painting. I carry as much of the stuff around in my head as possible at one time, and whatever order it comes out in usually is about 35% governed by my conscious and the rest just is what it is.” Jim Houser is an exceptional artist that really brought the skateboard culture into his art, which makes it so popular in the younger generation.

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Brian DonnellyA Street Art Exhibition | 7

Brian Donnelly is and artist born in New Jersey and he is professionally known as KAWS. He has been compared to Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, because of the divide between street and institutional art that he has created. Currently KAWS is New York-based and is a designer of limited edition toys, paintings and clothing. KAWS graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York with a BFA in illustration. He briefly worked for Disney as an animator after college contributing to some very well known cartoons. He began his career as a graffiti artist growing up in his hometown, later moving to New York he started subverting images onto billboard, bus stop and phone booth advertisements. These reworked advertisements left alone for months at a time, but as his popularity grew, the ads became increasingly sought after. Now his work can be found all

over the world and is at very high demand due to the rarity. In the 90’s he designed and produced limited edition vinyl toys and signed deals with companies such as Burton, Nike and Vans. KAWS’ acrylic paintings and sculptures have many repeating images; these are all meant to be understood surpassing language and culture. Some ideas that KAWS likes to display are reworking familiar icons. His most famous remake is called “Kimpsons” where he paints the Simpson family (TV show) with a very unique skull and cross bones for a heads. This skull and cross bone image frequently occurs in his imagery and is now almost a brand for him. Other icons he remade include Mickey Mouse, the Michelin Man, the Smurfs, and SpongeBob SquarePants. Through all of his projects, he has successfully destroyed the line between fine art and mass-produced merchandise. KAWS constantly uses

his products to allow his images to penetrate larger audiences and escape areas outside that of the fine art world. Donnelly has surpassed so many artists because he is a one-man empire. His company OriginalFake, created a means for his art and other merchandise to be sold. During his second solo exhibition the line to get in the gallery was seven blocks and one of his frequent clients, Lance Armstrong bought the biggest painting. “The guy who just a few years ago was hiding in bushes to evade anti-graffiti officers is now being courted by megabrands that want his signature graphic treatment on their products.”

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Barry McGeeA Street Art Exhibition | 9

Barry McGee is a painter and graffiti artist from San Francisco, California. Known as TWIST, his work draws heavily on a pessimistic or negative view of the urban culture, which he describes as, “urban ills, overstimulation’s, frustrations, addictions & trying to maintain a level head under the constant bombardment of advertising.” McGee is very influential on the urban art scene and graffiti world. He really popularized the use of paint drips in urban-influenced graphic design, as well as the display technique of clustering paintings in galleries. “These clustered compositions of pictures are based on similar installations he saw in Catholic churches whilst working in Brazil.” He was also an early practitioner in the art of painting directly on gallery walls, imitating the real quality and nature of graffiti.

McGee’s paintings are very iconic, consisting of central figures and abstracted backgrounds consisting of drips, patterns and color fields. He has also likes this idea of painting portraits of street characters on empty bottles of liquor. Other forms of art that McGee practices besides graffiti is painting flattened spray cans picked up at train yards and painted wrecked vehicles for art shows. McGee along with Donnelly have collaborated with major corporations in designing items such as clothes, shoes and bikes. He is very well known because of his controversial shoe design for adidas. The show claimed to have a racial stereotype on the sole of the shoe when in fact it was a self-portrait showing his Asian heritage and background. McGee has had numerous shows in many kinds of galleries. He was married to the artist Margaret

Kilgallen, who died of cancer in 2001 which is very influential on his art and can sometimes bring very morbid themes into his images. The market value of his work rose considerably in 2001 as a result of his being shown in the Venice Biennale and other major exhibitions. Much of his San Francisco street art has been scavenged or stolen due to this rise in value.

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Ed Templeton

Ed Templeton is a professional skateboarder turned fine artist from Huntington Beach, California. In 1993, Ed founded a skate company called TV and later Toy Machine skateboards that eventually collaborated with Jim Houser. Outside of skateboarding which is really what brought popularity to Ed is his art and photography. He began painting the graphics for his skateboard company, TV and later for Toy Machine. All of Ed’s art can be brought back to this idea of skateboarding. When interviewing skateboarders ESPN reported that every single one they interviewed respected him and liked his art. Because of the meanings and style he created behind his imagery this brought popularity to him and his company. His imagery is relevant to the skate culture and urban life and will always stick to this strict idea.

In 2000, Templeton’s book of photography Teenage Smokers received first place in the Search for Art competition, winning $50,000 and opening doors for Templeton’s art. Towards the end of 2001, Ed’s artwork was featured in galleries and really started taking off. “He is a featured artist of “Beautiful Losers,” a touring art exhibit, collected art book and feature documentary film, which includes the work of various contemporary artists” (Rose 08). Beautiful Losers includes a lot of art that provides skateboarding and other urban themes to the art community in a different perspective not normally shown the way the book portrays it. Templeton and some other members of the Toy Machine skate team skated on ramps and cars that was setup at the base of the Cincinnati Contem-porary Art Center for the temporary showcase of Beautiful Losers tour.

In 2008, Ed Templeton released a video after 11 years of research called Deformer. The film is basically a sum-mary of Templeton’s personality as an artist. He also opens up and discusses human and aesthetic growth in the “incubator of suburban outskirts”, Orange County, California. He still con-tributes to the art world in many ways such as photography and paintings but more recently he co-founded the arts magazine, ANP Quarterly.

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Shepard Fairey

Frank Shepard Fairey is a contemporary artist, graphic designer, and illustrator from Charleston, South Carolina. Fairey emerged from the graffiti and skateboarding scenes. He first became popular for his “André the Giant Has a Posse” (…OBEY…) sticker campaign. His work became more widely known in the U.S. presidential election of 2008, because of his Barack Obama “HOPE” poster. “The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston calls him one of today’s best known and most influential street artists” (Vallen 07). In 1988, he graduated from Idyllwild Arts Academy, and in 1992, Fairey graduated from Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Illustration. “Despite breaking many of the spoken and unspoken rules of contemporary art and culture,” his work and signature apparel is and can now be seen in museums and galleries all over the world.

His all-around, unlimited and liberal artistic practice actively resists classification. Constructing off of precedents set by artists such as Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, Fairey moves very easily between the world of fine, commercial, and even political art. Fairey’s multifaceted images of “cultural revolutionaries and rap, punk and rock stars, as well as updated and re-imagined propaganda-style posters, carry his signature graphic style, marked by his frequent use of black, white, and red” (Heller 09). Recently, his HOPE portrait of Barack Obama, as mentioned before, drew a new level of attention and consideration to his work. The HOPE portrait was recently given to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, for its collection. Because of the mediums and places in which Shepard likes to create his imagery, he often runs into legal trouble. Through it all Fairey has

continued scaling fences and climbing a top buildings to put up his decisively simplistic and propagandistic images with the help of his employees. His street work goes on despite changes in health (diabetes), family status, and continued arrests for putting up his work. His 14th arrest occurred when he was pasting his work in an alley near the Denver convention center. Because the charge usually amounts to a misdemeanor and are usually expunged after six months, he mostly pleads guilty and pays a fine.

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David Choe

David Choe is a muralist and graphic artist from Los Angeles, California. His graffiti and murals cover the walls of LA like ornaments on a Christmas tree, consuming much of the area. He is very well known for his vulgar nature but also his aesthetic sense of awareness in images. Choe dropped out of school to pursue his career as a street artist and also has numerous theft and vandalism charges to support his lifestyle. Choe is thought of as an innovator because of how he approaches his art. His award-winning graphic novels, Slow Jams and Bruised Fruit, introduced a new and diverse group of people to museum art, as well as the graphic novel genre. His newest graphic novel is Cursiv: Giant Robot presents a book of dirty drawings and it is exactly what it sounds like, a book of dirty images. His first solo show was at a small ice cream shop in LA and it stayed up for 2 years even though it was only

supposed to be there a month. The show constantly changed after pieces started selling better than the ice cream and really kick started Choe’s career. Some of his earlier work can be found in magazine issues like Hustler, Raygun, Vice and Juxtapoz magazine. Choe was also commissioned to paint murals in Facebook’s offices, which was given to him by the president of the company, Sean Parker. He works in all types of mediums and can paint anything and everything as well as on everything. He has numerous awards under his belt and his work is displayed all over the world. Choe’s work can be found almost everywhere whether it is in comics, murals, toys, music, movies and the list keeps going. Choe is very influenced by the flow seen in comic books and the culture of gothic art, impressionism and surreal images. “The content of Choe’s work is equally

complex and in contrast to the slick, succinct, populist messages of some of his contemporaries” (FecalFace, pars. 4-5).

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Dan Witz

Dan Witz is a graffiti artist and graphic designer from Chicago, Illinois. He is known as one of street and urban life’s premier artist. For 30 years plus years now, Witz has developed new and innovate methods indoors and out, always staying fresh and above art-world trends. “He’s one of the artists that inspired countless others to start painting outside” (Brooks 09). When asked what inspired him he explained that what got his mind cracking was not from the traditional art world. The biggest contributor to his art is graffiti found in subways. The bombed train cars, brought this idea of extreme power and utter originality to his head and he rolled with it. “Photos don’t do it justice,” he said when asked what he saw. Still some of the most astonishing art you can ever see is found in the strangest of places and that is what Witz wanting to bring to the art world and popular culture.

“Seeing and feeling one of those freshly spray-painted trains that comes rumbling and squealing into the station was just an awe inspiring experience.” Other things that inspire him are other artists that use and express themselves in other mediums besides paint like Rembrandt and Goya. Painting in the street and doing anonymous art is best in his opinion. Being free, and having permission to create works is a satisfying way of expressing youthful bitterness with the art culture. Witz really gets into his pieces and begins to obsess over them, he works on some of them for so long by the time he is done they make him feel “nauseated.” He just like Jim Houser likes to be alone. Getting serenity from music and quiet studios is the best work area for this artist. Working on easels and walls for months at a time is very unsettling and difficult because it begins to wear

down the body and take away that gratification of street art; this is why Witz really enjoys working in a peaceful setting.

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Stephen Powers

Stephen J Powers also known as ESPO is a graffiti and mural artist born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is most well known for his conceptual pieces as well as his being the editor and publisher of On the Go Magazine. Powers’ work like other artist in this show often blurred the lines between illegal and legal. On January 4, 1997 Powers was commissioned to paint the storefront grates in Fort Greene, Bedford-Stuyvesant, TriBeCa and the South Bronx, covering the entire thing with white and silver paint, using black to make each grate into a letter in his name; this really sparked his popularity. Powers paints in daylight, and usually disguises himself, wearing street clothes. He told the New York Times that, “when a passersby asked what he was doing he would tell them, “I’m with Exterior Surface Painting Outreach, and I’m cleaning up this gate”; the official

sound the name made, and clever quick response was enough to put most people off and leave him alone. Powers targets shops that appear to be out of business and finds grates that are already vandalized in some way. He described his graffiti as a public service because he creates art on ugly things. Although he run into the law before his biggest arrest came in 1999 when police arrested him in his home for graffiti and other types of vandalism after a protest run by multimedia artist Joey Skaggs. Powers work has been shown all over the world and he is a very respected graphic artist. His first solo museum show was at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in which he showed tons of work he had been working on at his Coney Island sign shop. The show brought in massive amounts of attention in New York and Philly. Because of this

publicity Powers was awarded the cover of the art magazine Juxtapoz. Powers is a Fulbright scholar along with being an award winner in other areas. He used this grant to create murals in Dublin and Belfast’s Shankhill area, with the assistance of local graffiti artists. He is the author a handful of books but most notably a book on graffiti’s history, The Art of Getting Over ESPO’s. This book exploits a graffiti writer and their transition into a studio artist.

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Retna

With his real name being unknown, Retna was born in Los Angeles, California and is a graffiti artist/ mural painter. Retna really started to become famous in the early 90’s because of his use of line. “He has become an “eternal broadcaster” of sorts, shining a light to the kinetic urban soul of Los Angeles.” His name, RETNA, is meant to evoke the power, movement and visual vibrancy that he puts into all of his work. He enjoys working and merging photography with the graffiti style. Retna uses paint, time, color, street culture, sensual line, and fluidity to make his paintings different from anyone else’s. Whether his paintings are in galleries or on walls of streets in LA, “they serve as a retina through which we view the urban journal of contemporary art.” When Retna was younger he was introduced to the lifestyle of street art and mural culture. Still in high school,

he led one of the largest and most inventive graffiti art shows Los Angeles has ever seen. He is best known for creating fashion advertisements and designing them with a unique layering style with extremely intricate line work and a bright color palette to reflect an eclectic artistic tradition. Retna has become notorious for his complex painting style and his timeless style. Paintbrushes mixed with the traditional spray can are what make his art so unique and sought after. Many of retna’s painting create a line between fine art and graffiti as well as “power and opposition, between tradition and advancement, between the past and future.” In 2000, at his first group exhibition in the 01 Gallery in Los Angeles people really got to see his work and what he was about, they must of enjoyed it because his career took off. Today, he goes between

galleries and streets with ease deciding what ever he wants simply because he can. Although Retna mainly does paintings he has created other things such as books and installations that have sold for large amounts of money exemplifying that he can do whatever he pleases.

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Thomas Campbell

Thomas Campbell is a self-taught painter, sculpture, photographer, and filmmaker from Dana Point, California. Often working on paintings, sculpture, and other works he splits time in his studio and traveling the world to create short films. Campbell was inspired by the skateboard culture just like the many other artist found in this exhibition. In a recent interview he talks about how without skate-boarding he never would be where he is and probably wouldn’t be doing anything he loved. Campbell’s artworks combine a scribble style along with scripture and text. He takes slogans and anecdotes from his unique vocabulary and juxtaposes them with a deep look at human nature. His paints are very movement-oriented and are as layered with meaning as they are with paint. His pieces usually are composed of several panels and are free-flowing with wide expressionistic strokes of

color. He uses bold and bright graphics with intricate font families of text to create a unified image. Campbell’s photographs copy his style of painting and carry his ideas through them using the intensity and abstraction in a unique fashion. Campbell has been seen in solo exhibitions all over the world including New York, Paris, Tokyo, Denmark, The Netherlands, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Morocco. Campbell completed his first feature length surfing film, The Seedling, in 1999 and got a lot of publicity. This media exposure pushed him to create another and in 2004 he released his second, “Sprout.” Most recently in the spring of 2009 his 3rd surf film “The Present” was released and was probably his most successful, getting better each time. Campbell is a creative director for a small, independent record label called, Galaxia. Continuing his career

as an artist and all around entrepreneur there is not much that he cannot do. Thomas Campbell really has the best of both worlds because he isn’t painting all the time or just sticking to one medium he constantly is changing what he does. Some days he works in a recording studio and others he thinks of crazy compositions. He was able to perfect each form of art through many years of practice and trial. He mentions that he is a very decisive person and knows how to adapt to the things in front of him, which would be a main factor in why he is able to change from art form to art form.