WATCH THIS FILM!!

 

I just watched this film recently and it is nothing short of brilliant.  Our ideas and creativity forge the future, and the thought that corporations are on the forefront of buying, controlling and hoarding our cultural evolution is unacceptable. As an artist, I take this personal.
"RIP!-A REMIX MANIFESTO" look it up, download it, watch it.

South African hip-hop.....sick.

Jack Parow, Die Antwoord....this stuff is blowin my mind.

Jack Parow - Cooler as Ekke from Emiel Tor on Vimeo.

broken fingaz

Stop motion graffiti....slick.

Broken Fingaz -Graffiti Stop Motion from Broken Fingaz on Vimeo.

At the MEC

Despite being late spring and -12, Montreal was still a good time. I stumbled across a lot of great galleries (not hard since they are everywhere) including the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, which happened to be showing  “Marcel Dzama – Aux mille tours (Of Many Turns)”.  Dzama is a Canadian born artist living in New York and although I had heard of him before I had never seen his work to this extent. The show covered a huge array of Dzama's art...but what really put my jaw on the floor were his dioramas, an intense and dark look into an almost dream-like carnival cartoon world that you didnt want to wake up from, yet didnt feel comfortable staying in either. Dzama is all over the internet in galleries and such but pictures dont really do his art justice, if you ever get the chance do not pass on seeing it in person. 

 

Marcel Dzama is represented by David Zwirner

 

Half empty or half full

I think it was Picasso that said "you can do anything in art, as long as you never do it twice". Repetition and imitation are an artists worst enemies and when your drained your at the greatest risk of those flaws. I have been working pretty hard lately and the batteries need recharging, I believe a vacation is in order. So I'm off to Montreal for a week. I'm gonna take some photos, check out some galleries, eat some food and visit an old friend. Sometimes all you need is a change of scenery and to press the reset button.

BE BACK NEXT WEEK!!

                                                    

See you all next year!!

So the dust has settled and the first annual Capital City Tattoo Convention turned out to be nothing short of a monster success. Every last bit of hard work payed off, the show was stellar and the support was unbelievable. The media and pictures are now starting to flood in and its almost overwhelming to see the sheer amount of stuff out there. This one especially hits home for me...

To all the sponsors, volunteers, artists and attendees.....a sincere thank you.

For more photos, media and stories follow these links:

Facebook Cap City fanpage

Capital City Tattoo Official Website

Huge slideshow of FLICKR uploads

The show must go on...

  7 months ago a friend came to me and said he wanted to throw the first ever Victoria Tattoo Convention, now here we are with 4 days left until the doors open and the show starts. We have worked our fingers to the bone on this one. We have been met with resistance and overcome it, we have jumped hurdles and gone through hoops, we rode the roller coaster of highs and lows right till the end and never once did the idea to call it quits ever cross our minds. Amongst all the hard work has been the support ..the city and all those that chose to get involved have truly been the fuel that kept the fire going. With 4 days left, I want to give credit where credit is due. To the guy that stuck to his guns no matter what anyone tried to do or say to throw him off his path - Shawn Stienberg, you got guts man.

  I encourage everyone that reads this to CLICK the link and check out the site. This weekend is going to be a BLAST, so come down to the show and give your support to all the artists and bands that make Victoria the unique city that it is........

I'm going to try and continue posting through all the madness leading up to the convention but to be honest, its a little hard to keep up with at the moment. If anyone out there is interested in hearing me tattoo live on the radio I will be on the ZONE 91.3 morning show Wed March 10th @ 8:30 am.

A cross the universe

Inspired by my last post,  I set out to do some stuff related to the best french DJ duo ever, JUSTICE. I took a slew of abstract photos (by messing around with my shutter speeds and exposure values) blasted the music in my headphones and then cleaned it all up in Photoshop. All the songs I chose are off the Cross album which is now a few years old but still one of my personal favs. If you havent heard it....now is the time to check it out. Life can get pretty hectic sometimes and it's good to just crank some tunes and do some art for the fun of it. - Dont be shy, vote or comment at the bottom..let me know what you think!

Track4 - Newjack

Track9 - DVNO

Track11 - Waters of nazareth

Track6 - Phantom Pt.2

Track3 - D.A.N.C.E

A good time for music you might not know about.

I have been waiting for spring. As far as I'm concerned its a good time for music. Ed Banger Records is set to release 2 albums really soon (supposedly this month), 1 by Justice and the other from Uffie. Now, I'm a big Justice fan, and as much as I'd like to sit here and talk about how awesome they are I'm not gonna...because its the Uffie single that totally caught me off guard. Uffie is pretty effin cool. About as cool as an american born, hong kong raised and now paris based underground rap chick can be. For the past few years she has only released singles or worked along side guys like Justice and any talk of a solo record has just been rumor. But now  her new album "Sex, Dreams and Denim jeans" is set to come out this month and I really hope it has all of the old school hip hop crunchiness of this single...check it out.

Meet the ninjas

I walked into work yesterday and it didnt take me long to realize we got a computer virus. GREAT. Now I know most of the time they're meant to target big banks, corporations and capital institutions to upset the politcal adgenda bla bla bla, but 99% of the time they get US - the average joe. They leave our digital life crippled and inoperable, usually cost us time and money to get rid of, and are basically just the biggest pain in the ass the internet can throw our way. Now as I'm digging around on forums, trying to find out a way to get our little tattoo studio's cyber-ship up and running again, I got to thinking....what really are these litttle viruses? Sure they are coded programs made by some asshole to mess with our lives, but what are they really? As an artist, I want to know - what do they look like? You wanna know? Alex Dragulescu took the data from various computer viruses and turned them into visual models....say hello to the evil digital ninjas folks.

DEGREEDIPLOMAS.EXE false advertiser Adware virus

HUIGEZI audio/video hijacker

TROJAGENTIL3 password keylogger

PHISING1 infected email scanner

TT.PDF trojan email

CIMUZ info stealer

STORM remote control worm

SPYSHERIFF rogueware/adware

TODYNHO infostealer

Art history take out

So, I live downtown and I have to say nothing really beats the atmosphere and flavor of a chinatown market. Great deals on crazy weird toys, cheap groceries, noodles & bbq duck...all good stuff, but one of my favorite things to get in chinatown - Lobster chips. If you've ever had Shrimp chips they're pretty much the same except they're not. They are Lobster flavoured. Now I dont know if it's because they're some sort of alien-insect hybrid pseudo delicacy from the nether depths of the ocean but Lobsters sure do get alot of attention, even in the art world. Why Lobsters? Not Prawns, Crayfish or King crab -  Lobsters simply are the coolest cat in the ocean.  My thanks to you Mr. Lobster for being the delicious, eccentric mascot of the art world and my thanks to you Six Fortune Foods for making my favorite Lobster snack.

 Lobster Phone - Salvidor Dali - 1936  

             Lobster - Andy Warhol - 1982  

Lobster and cat - Pablo Picasso 1965  

       Popeye - Jeff Koons - 2003
Ella Schiaparelli dress - 1934

 


               
               

The road to gold.

  USA 5 - CANADA 3  Is this blog about sports? no. Is this blog about the Olympics? no. I am however a Canadian and yes I do love my hockey. So you could say I was disappointed over Canadas loss to team USA today in Vancouver, but it aint over till its over and I do have faith we will grind through and get the gold. What does any of this have to do with art? One word - perseverance, art is one of those tricky beasts that can slip through your fingers at any moment and will keep you chasing until the very end, lose your steam and that golden ring is loooong gone. I never really thought of it before but I guess creating art is kind of like playing hockey ...grind grind grind, give 110%, take a hit, keep your head in the game  ..you cant win em all but when you do you know it and it feels great . I know I am an artist for the same reasons those guys play hockey, because I love it. No matter how many times I get knocked down I get right back up , persevere and get back in the game because that next great piece right around the corner. So on the subject of sports vs. art im posting some work by Mike Orduna AKA Fatoe who did a series on boxing champs (its not hockey I know but hey there really isnt a lot of hockey related art out there). His work is SICK and it is well worth the visit to his site to check him out.   

FATOE.COM

Dont burn your eyeballs.

So normally realism isnt my thing, but thats not to say I cant appreciate it. I have always admired the work of guys like Chuck Close ...bitingly realistic images that just burn their way into the back of your head (if you get the chance check out the link). I caught this story today that was showcasing a slew of hyper-realism artists and given the amount of time I spend on the other end of the art spectrum, it was kinda refreshing. Grabbed a couple of my favorites to post. Keep in mind these are all PAINTINGS - link to the full story at the bottom  :)

Full story from DIGG : http://digg.com/d31JJQ6

Wtf cool......

Just saw this on DIGG and couldnt resist .....deffinatly the coolest/strangest & more-than-likely not cool thing I have seen in a while...............

To start a blog.....

How the hell do you actually start a blog in an eventful way? No clue here, I am a lot better a keeping a ball rolling than starting it. My intentions on this lil project are simply to post daily (at least try to do it daily) the art that I am currently working on and all the things I find along the way that I find cool and inspiring. My hope is that I might be able to figure out exactly what it is that drives me to do what I do. My friends always ask me where my art and ideas come from , but i'm not sure if I know, but I do know what I like so I will start there. One thing I like for sure is art......one of the very few things I don't think I could live without, if it didn't exist I am not sure I would have a purpose on this earth. My niche in the whole art thing is painting, so without any further blabbering, a new painting I finished recently: