GO Blog 09 Guerilla art

So firstly some inspiring tunes. Brick walls is a song by Chicago rapper Qwel. It is a conversation between him and his dad about music and art. I think that is shows the differences between an older and younger generation.



The second is a tribute to street art by the Swede's Promoe and CosMic.



What I decided to do was to combine the street art project with the Community Arts project. The project was focused to raise awareness on single parent women in an urban setting. A woman in our group knew a an artist that was interested in the issue so we collaborated to make the painting that was supposed to be displayed.

By Moira

I interpret this image as there is a need to turn the debate upside down to get a new perspective. Even though Toronto has the largest population of off-reserve aboriginal population, they are very seldom seen in the public life. Taking the art to the streets is to me the most natural arena to speak to people that are not a part of the mainstream. After some discussion on location we decided to put it on a school. We thought that young people would be more open to the picture and actually look at it. This is how we did it.

Canadian Aboriginal Women and Families in Toronto from Rose Lugue on Vimeo.

One of our group memebers went back the day afterwards to capture the reactions. Unfortunaetly there was something wrong with glue and the image was on the ground. So there we could not get any "live" reactions. However, my mom saw the video and here reaction was that it looks like "a real street painting". After the presentation we made in our Creative Arts class one of my classmates said to me that she thought that it was a really cool thing that we did. Enhanced, no doubt by Roses good editing skills.



Photo by Reilly Dow



I had a mixed feeling of excitment and reminicsing when putting it up. Because it needs to be done fairly quick since not everyone thinks that this is a really good idea. I also recollected a lot of memories for doing similiar activities back in Sweden. There I postered both for night clubs and political issues and it has been so long since I did that so it was nice to walk down memory lane.

I wanna link to a Swedish street artist that goes by the name of Akayism. I have enjoyed his work for a decade or so before moving to Toronto.

Another form of public event that I like is bookcrossing. What you do is you sign in a book on the site, the site will generate a number for it that you write in the book. Then you find a creative way to release it in a public space. Then it will be found by someone else and hopefully they will register the book on the site, read the book and release it again, then after a while you can hopefully follow the books travel.

Art word of the post is line.

Mastery and control over lines is essential for the live painting street artist, wether you are making a quick tag or throw-up, or have the whole day to plan your painting it is the lines that will define the art and act as guide to where to color in. During the development of grafftiti one thing that really stands out is how the artists has become faster and faster in creating their art. In the beginning the train yards in New York where unguarded and artists could spend hours painting on the trains. Today we increased security the usually do not have more than 5-10 minutes to make their art work. Has this influenced the overall quality of the paintings? No, in most cases the techniqes are more advanced today even though the have a shorter amount of time to do it in.