graffiti

Pratt!

Posted by hil

Ah, yes! The wonderful irony of Canberra Liberal MLA, Steve Pratt, calling in the media to record him heroically scrubbing off graffiti, only to find that it was a legally commissioned work, and now he will be charged with vandalism of public art. It’s pure gold! I will refer you to Ampersand Duck’s full account, since she does it so well. The artwork was done by byrd, and I was fond of it; it was relatively close to where I live.

Byrd

The irony is no doubt especially sweet for the Labor Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope, following the brew-ha-ha when he was forced to fire one of his aides for doing some anti-Howard stencil work behind the Ainslie shops a couple of years ago:

Moss graffiti and secret worlds

Posted by hil

mosscastle

We have been deep in drought for some years, but in just the last few weeks we have had enough rain to encourage small patches of green to peep through, and suddenly there are beautiful verdant mounds of moss appearing in nooks and cracks in the pavement, and around trees in the gardens. I’m beginning to think I might be able to experiment with this recipe from Stories in Space for getting moss to grow in specific areas:

Recipe:
(serves to create several small pieces or 1 large piece of graffiti)
1 can beer,
1/2 teaspoon sugar
several clumps garden moss
Plastic container with lid, blender, paintbrush

‘To begin the recipe, first of all gather together several clumps of moss (moss can usually be found in
moist, shady places) and crumble them into a blender. Then add the beer and sugar and blend just long enough to create a smooth, creamy consistency. Now pour the mixture into a plastic container.
Find a suitable damp and shady wall on to which you can apply your moss milkshake. Paint your chosen design onto the wall (either free-hand or using a stencil). If possible try to return to the area over thefollowing weeks to ensure that the mixture is kept moist. Soon the bits of blended moss should begin to re-couperate into a whole rooted plant – maintaining your chosen design before eventually colonising
the whole area.’

I love the other images and ideas at Stories in Space, in particular Myrmidon Castle (pictured above), and Hideaway.

Street Art

Posted by hil

Graffiti_1Canberra has been convulsed over the naughtiness of one of the local government’s staffers who was caught doing a spot of anti-Howard stencil graffiti. You have to hand it to local politics for making mountains out of mole hills!

If you are interested in street art, take a look at The Wooster Collective: A Celebration of Street Art. They have some very cool images. For example, here is a Salvador Dali mural in Lima, Peru. They had an exclusive report on Banksy‘s activities in mid March, showing the works that he installed in four of the prestigious museums in New York.

There is also Wooster Mobile, ‘a Wooster curated art gallery of images which you can download onto your mobile phones in cities around the world’. The aim is to provide artists with a new revenue stream and at the same time generate funds for a non-profit organization called Keep A Child Alive, which provides life-saving drugs for AIDS sufferers in Africa.