Clips Shot In Va.."Good Look Wiz"

For You Artsy-Fartsy Types

The whole of today was a beautiful adventure full of inspiration that has continued to flow not only to my pen, but my pencils, razors, markers, highlighters, tape, adhesive and much much more.

LET NARRATIVE BEGIN in 3, 2, 1…

Despite not having gone to sleep until six in the morning, I had to wake up three hours later in order to go to the dentist and get tortured. The office is two hours away from my house in Chicago & since my car is in Virginia and my parents don’t love me enough to drive me, I had to awaken at nine in order to be there by two.

My dentists’ office is SO inconveniently far from my house but thankfully is located in what I consider one of the coolest parts of the city: the lower-North side. Surrounding my dentists’ office in Belmont are thrift stores, boutiques, porn shops, and smoke novelties: cheers!
At one of the thrift stores I visited, I had the fortune of stumbling upon a photograph that I bought for TWO DOLLARS by an unknown amateur artist. Here it is:

After visiting a few smoke shops and searching in vain for a 6-shooter pipe, I wondered onto the “L” and rode a few stops south to a place of which I am vaguely more familiar. Here I went into a store called Beyond The Wall, located on Belmont Ave west of Clark St. I’ve been meaning to get more into visual arts other than photography and have dabbled a little with drawing, but haven’t found much success at it. Immediately after I entered BTW I saw my FAVORITE graffiti book (a long with a various array of others) and had to purchase it. Before then, I’d only seen it at a Burton retail store downtown and always made a point to browse through the pages before buying my desired hat, shoes, etc.

There was also so much art I loved – posters, graphics, figurines, buttons, etc – that I asked the hot guy behind the desk if the store shipped items from there to a desired location, explaining I wanted some pieces for my dorm room in DC. He said no (at which I frowned), but quickly regained my ardor by giving me a card with the website to the official Beyond The Wall warehouse thingy-ma-jiggy. So make sure you visit http://shop.beyondthewall.com/ …and check out the buttons I bought!

Desperate to learn more about visual arts, I toss a couple issues of Juxtapoz onto my heaping checkout pile. Juxtapoz Art and Culture Magazine is the (self-proclaimed) “leading monthly contemporary and underground art bible.” They feature dope shit, seems to always know the new names in the art game, and of course have an online magazine version as well. I purchased the Dec 09 issue as well as the June ’10 issue whose cover commemorates the twentieth anniversary of amazing artist Keith Haring’s death.

The simplistic and yet profound works of Haring are recognized by almost everyone of the past generation as well as art fanatic of this one. I recall my high school art teacher exposing us to his work as well as making us complete an original piece in his fashion during my senior year. More activist than artist, the young New-Yorker left an international legacy commenting on socio-political themes such as homosexuality, anti-apartheid, the crack cocaine epidemic, and AIDS awareness, the disease which killed him at age 31.

Inspired by his minimalist approach and use of space and line, I went home and mocked-up a piece based on a picture I took off of Lake Michigan last year.

I also speckled the negative of a walrus for WHATEVER reason…

…as well as cut a stencil for a model in an H&M magazine. It didn’t turn out as I expected. I think I confused the negative spaces so instead of a feminine blackout it looks more like a villainous man… so I gave him fire hair.

I refused to abandon the hair model stencil so I kept cutting (ironically I cut the hair model’s hair off… on purpose this time) and fused her with a Chanel watch advertisement. I’d like to say that this is a social commentary on materialism… yeah, lets go with that. Here are my tools, including this cool adhesive that is a great alternative to tape.

I don’t know if its hypocritical to write for a fashion blog and speak-out on materialism but… It’s a fine line, you know? I think that a lot of people lose the art behind fashion and just go for name brands and shit… Like you know when people buy UGLY.ASS.SHIT simply because it says a certain brand's name? You know damn well that if that were at Target for $10 you wouldn’t buy that, but because it’s in Polo Rugby you’ll drop $180 on it. Those aren't fashionistas/os – those are fashion fools.

I beg of you, readers, find the art in fashion. Revive it, love it. Also find the art in YOURSELF! I’m so happy I went on this adventure today. Even though it’s slightly off subject I chose to share it with you because it’s necessary. Let shit inspire you. Create and be creative, don’t let yourself be created.

Signing out:
SYDkidd on ?E?