KAVES designs label for 2011 Beaujolais Nouveau

The marketing director of the firm where I work gave me the most thoughtful holiday gift. She knows about my passion for graffiti and street art and gave me a bottle of

2011 Beaujolais Nouveau. The label just happens to have been designed by Brooklyn's own "Mr. KAVES". And so the bottle sits in my fridge. The New York Daily News recently ran an article on KAVES and the design.

-- Eric Deal

STYLE WARS REVISITED

Henry Chalfant, the producer of the film Style Wars just shared some information with me regarding the film and its restoration effort.

Pitchfork features an interview with Mr. Chalfant, Linda Habib the film's line producer and two of the artists featured in the film-- Carlos" MARE 139" Rodriguez, and John "CRASH" Matos.

Read story at Pitchfork.

Support the Style Wars fund raising drive at Kickstarter.

COPS PAINTING GRAFFITI?

Looks like law enforcement in the UK is getting into the street art game.

Saw this on the BBC web site and had to share it.

-- Eric Deal

Gloucestershire Police have stencilled the number of arrests the force has made on streets around Gloucester.

The street stencils, applied at 30 city sites, are to highlight the force's "harder approach" to lawbreakers as part of Operation Scorpion.

Since its launch in September, the countywide operation "aimed at tackling any low-level issues" has led to 102 arrests in Gloucestershire.

Supt Rob Priddy said the stencils were a way to "draw attention to our work".

Read more on BBC.co.uk

NEW BOOK: GRAFFITI 365

I received an advance copy of this book a few months back, but decided to wait till it was available for purchase to blog on it.

This book is unique in that it is perhaps the first book to cover both street art and graffiti effectively. It is written by Jay Edlin aka TERROR 161/JSON, an veteran of New York's subway graffiti movement. He's a cat with a reputation of being difficult to please, so the selection of artists in the book is real cream of the crop -- no scrubs or mid-level players here.

365 covers the artists with succinct and at times witty profiles. The book is a crash course in both street art and graffiti.

In an era where literally thousands of images of graffiti and street art are available in books and on the Internet Graffiti 365 has some rare gems..Don't sleep…Grab it!

www.abramsbooks.com

-- Eric Deal

From the Publisher

About the book

Graffiti 365 delivers the first real insider’s view into the contemporary graffiti and street-art scenes, as well as their antecedents. A fun, wide-ranging survey of the international graffiti movement, this book uses more than 600 rare, previously unpublished, or legendary images to introduce and describe important artists—from Blade to Banksy—and styles—from bubble to wild. Along the way, Graffiti 365 covers different eras, cities, legendary walls and crews, police and public responses to graffiti, and more.

The author of Graffiti 365, J.SON, has been an artist and historian of the graffiti movement for decades—he started writing graffiti in 1973 and retired in 1984. Unparalleled in its breadth and depth of coverage, Graffiti 365 is a wide-angle snapshot of an entire movement.

About the author

Jay “J.SON” Edlin has written for The Source, Blaze, and Mass Appeal. He recently was interviewed for Jon Naar’s Birth of Graffiti.

Andrew “Zephyr” Witten is the author of Dondi White: Style Master General and has written for Vibe, The Source, and Juxtapoz.

Support KickStart MARE 139 Exhibit

ARRACK MODERN ART

Presents

Carlos MARE139 Rodriguez

STRUCTURAL INTERVENTIONS

Help Kickstart this amazing exhibition by donating your support and receiving art in return. I can’t do this with out the help of our creative community and our supporters so help spread the Kickstarter url-http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnwendelbo/mare139-graffiti-sculpture-the-carrack or donate to the cause.

The more support we receive the more expansive the effort will become to advance the exhibition in the gallery and public space. This will be a groundbreaking effort for my sculptural graffiti works and I hope you all can be a part of it. My collaboration with John Wendelbo will push into new boundaries and we want you all to own a part of it by becoming advocates for the show.

What are we doing?

a LIVE 28 foot long, 8 foot tall graffiti and stencil mural outside the Carrack on Parrish Street Saturday Nov 19th: you, your kids, somebody gets to bring home a part of the wall, and it’s all during Durham ART WALK.

What’s the deal?

The wall mural has been subdivided into a bunch of panels of different sizes, some 1’x1’ and up to 4’x8’. We are pre-selling only blank panels ahead of time to pay for the show (we have a seriously wild installation for you that week end indoors at the Carrack): you can purchase a panel, you have no idea what will be on it besides the excellent Art of any and all MARE139 / WENDELBO collaborations. What you do know is that it’s going to be awesome, raw, genuine and authentic. Of course panel sales stop before the beginning of the performance, wouldn’t be fair otherwise! We also DO NEED to pre-sell $1000 within the next two weeks to make sure all goes smoothly.

Hi Arts NYC pledges to match $2,500 towards the show if we meet that goal!

To get more info, view a video of a 3D sculpture we will be using as the basis for one of our lay-ups, or to buy a panel now and visit our kickstarter page here! (simply follow the ‘back this project’ button once you’re there).

See you on Saturday November 19th downtown Durham at 111 west Parrish Street!

NEW JERSEY GRAFFITI

I'd recently been on New Jersey Transit and it looks like there is some effort to get some graffiti moving on it. I saw remnants of pieces buffed off the train exteriors. It felt like almost ever other train had a car with a buffed painting. I even saw some incomplete pieces… as if the writers got raided or the train pulled out of the yard before they could finish. The system also has plenty of track side pieces. It's not New York 1976, but, hey, it made my day more interesting!

Eric DEAL CIA

THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN GRAFFITI

Like I said, I haven't been blogging much...Back July I attended a book launch party for The History of American Graffiti, Roger Gastman and Caleb Neelon's latest book. It was held at The Hole, Kathy Grayson's new gallery located on the Bowery in lower Manhattan. The big draw at the event was the presence of a group of New York's pioneering graffiti artists who are featured in the book. TAKI 183, SJK 171, SNAKE1 MIKE 171, LAZAR, ROCKY 184 and others signed books. The event drew more folks from art world circles than graffiti writers, but many were in attendance, like PAID 3, REVOLT, ZEPHYR, TERROR 161, WANE ONE, IVORY TM7, T-KID 170, DOC TC5 and giants such as LSD OM and FDT 56.

About the book

The scope of the book is quite vast, in fact if feels a bit like an encyclopedia. It covers modern graffiti from its beginnings in Philadelphia and New York but also touches on earlier movements like freight train monikers and Cholo graffiti. What really makes this book stand out is that it sheds light on many cities that have been generally overlooked like Kansas City, Cleveland, New Orleans and others. My personal favorite part of the book is the photo of a tag by JULIO 204, one of New York's earliest writers.. To the best of my knowledge it is the first and only book to publish such a photo.

The History of American Graffiti --The big picture!

Eric DEAL CIA

From the Publisher

The History of American Graffiti By Roger Gastman; Caleb Neelon, Harper Design, Hardcover