Jenny Berry's Art Blog

"The Buffer" No, it's not a new TNT series. Yet.

Okay. The coolest thing just happened. A city buffer just walked into my studio... a buffer is a municipal graffiti remover paid for by our hard working tax dollars. "They make the world a beiger place to be" has always been my personal homage to them ;) — will I ever stop writing ad headlines? ack.

 
My all-time favorite Banksy piece here says it all. From his 'Cans' show in London earlier this year. Photo: NY Times.

Anyway... said buffer likes my art. He was referred to me by a mutual friend and fellow aficionado of fine street art. But here's the interesting part. He also likes a lot of the street art that he's paid to destroy... um... I mean... clean up.

He likes it a lot and he takes pictures of all of it before he paints over it. I love this guy!! He showed me the pics and they're absolutely amazing. I'm going to use some of his shots in my art for definite.

So the buffer (who shall at this point remain anonymous) and I start talking about how yes, some of it is obnoxious and a destruction of property and just plain old stoopid, dumb and ugly. granted. But some of it, even here in little old Albuquerque, is freakin amazing... and all the more poetic because of it's short life expectancy. 

But now here's our buffer taking pics of all this stuff because he KNOWS it's art and making a catalog because it's really bothering him that he has to destroy it to feed his family, jobs are scarcer than scarce here... and... I feel like Chili Palmer in Get Shorty pitching a screen play idea right now... and then he says to me that one night soon when he's going out on a call he's going to let me tag along and get pics and video of all this shit in like real time. this is amazing!! i'm so psyched. 

 
Photo courtesy of Halton Chemical in Canada, those folks that bring us all that beige paint we can't get enough of. You know what scares me... Monsanto and other chemical companies don't scare us... but graffiti does. That is truly scary.

I want to do an interview series with 'The Buff' too and see if we can get it published. An art book of destroyed modern masterpieces... have buffers from all over the country shoot stuff with their cell cams before they buff it. I'd put some resources behind that project. Maybe even a 'Buff-umentary' if you will... what? too much? If not a 'Spinal Tap' reference here, then where?

I'll post it all here first so stay tuned. I've been out with the artists/writers and it's always a blast... but always on legally appropriated walls so don't even start :) but this is like the other side of the coin and to find a storm trooper (he's well aware that this is how he's viewed) with empathy is almost too good to be true. 

The Buff is an amazingly compassionate and interesting person and I can't wait to do this series of articles and photo exposés with him. And we'll see where it leads. Maybe we can open some minds on both sides of the issue. 

Marilyn Monroe as consumable product?

© 2011 Jenny Berry Art "Supply and Demand No. 2"

These are the first two finished paintings in a new series titled "Supply & Demand". Quite a different take on the term than Shepard Fairey's I think. But maybe there's some similar logic now that I think about it.

© 2011 Jenny Berry Art "Supply and Demand No. 1"

I've always thought of Marilyn Monroe as arguably the first human consumer product. She was picked up, re-constructed and mass marketed and we ate her up. The whole thing always kind of freaked me out.

Norman Mailer's biography probably inspired this series more than Andy Warhol's portraits did. But I wonder sometimes if Andy didn't see her the same way. 

He certainly had a fascination with product marketing and celebrity is people marketed as products meant for consumer consumption. I thought about adding these to the "Consumo" series but they feel different to me. 

So now if I'm to take my own advice of a few nights ago seriously and find something uplifting or inspirational here... at risk of being sappy... it is kind of interesting how Marilyn Monroe was man made but now Lady Gaga has been able to make herself.

Marilyn undoubtedly brought celebrity to new heights, which are now being leveraged (exploited?) to their seemingly fullest extent... just not sure if that's good or bad though.

But then without celebrities who would write cook books and sell us appliances and drugs?! And feed starving kids in third world countries... Okay, that was my best stab at being uplifting. screw it.

David Foster Wallace takes a stab at irony

“Look, man, we’d probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is?” — DFW

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE by Philip Burke for The New Yorker 1991

Searching tonight for some large, dense blocks of text that i'm going to be using as 'meaningless' texture — symbolic... check... ironic, check — in some paintings this week (ie: choice excerpts from Joyce's Finnegan's Wake and Wallace's Infinite Jest) I came across the above quote from the Larry McCaffery interview with David Foster Wallace circa 1991.

RIP DFW and BTW, it is a good point and maybe I need to think about it. Wallace could not be called a Pollyanna by any one's standards so it made me stop and think. Art is the mirror of a culture okay, but as artists do we have some responsibility to uplift and redeem and all that too? 

According to D.T. Max, in a 2009 New Yorker article about DFW's unfinished body of work "... as Wallace saw it, irony could critique but it couldn’t nourish or redeem."

Most of what I do is ironic yet I can't help but see his point. Without redemption or some offer of resolution we're just mocking and that's just cheap and far too easy.

Maybe as artists, writers, film makers we do have some responsibility to offer more than that in our work? Maybe being a mirror for us to see, if we choose to look, how we really are isn't enough.

Really? Being the documentarians of darkness and stupidity isn't all that's required of us? Who knew?

Do we need to offer hope? Or does that just get sanctimonious? I don't know. I could make an argument either way but I don't have time now... those paintings aren't going to paint themselves :) 

Street Art now at the MOCA?

LA MOCA's been bombed — not literally, calm down the art is okay... bombed is a euphemism for street writers and artists gettin all up in there and blastin the *!#&* out of it... with spray paint — But this time it's legal and there's nothing the graffiti patrols with their bottomless vats of beige paint can do about it! So far the hoodlums in question haven't hurt anything but I'm sure they're being closely monitored. And the MOCA has, in my humble opinion, never looked better!

Is there anyone that really thinks the wall pictured above would look better beige... really? Thank god the art world is finally standing up to the bureaucrats and given these artists the credit and the venue they so badly deserve!

'Art In The Streets' opened on April 17th, the first ever major exhibition of all the biggest artists in the street art movement, past and present.

The exhibition will be at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in LA until August 8th. From there it'll be moved to The Brooklyn Museum where it will be on display March 30 - July 8, 2012.

Kenny Scharf painting at Art in The Streets. Photo by Gregory Bojorquez

Here's an awesome sneak preview of them setting up the show last month by Martha Cooper, a great photographer that has been documenting the movement since it's beginnings in the late 70's. 

And here's a direct link to Curve, MOCA's newsblog (All photos I've added here are courtesy of Curve). Some great info about the show and some absolutely amazing pictures of the opening and lots of pics and vids of the artists at work setting up their displays. I'll be posting my own take on the show when I get there. Can not wait!

As would be expected local police are reporting an increase in unauthorized tagging in the area. Culture Monster talked to MOCA director Jeffrey Dietch who said, "some of the young taggers who are anarchic.... It's a language of youth culture, and we can't stop it. It goes with the territory."

Deitch also told L.A. Weekly that the museum was helping with "tagging clean up" in the area.

And of course as with any sub-culture art/music movement going mainstream you've got your purists and cynics, some calling the show 'Street Art in a Museum'. While I do see their basic concern, that street art is by nature anti-establishment and in losing it's context and in turn anarchic nature, does it run the risk of now being co-opted by the very establishment it sought to rebel against? Listen to Johnny Cash talk about Nashville and The Grand Ole Opry. It's a very old struggle and a very old argument but none the less poignant for it's age.

True: The best way to silence an outsider is to bring them inside where it's comfortable and safe. Once they're in the inner circle they're usually more reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them. Yes, sometimes this kills an artists true inner voice, sometimes it makes their voice stronger. My answer in regard to street art going mainstream: Only time will tell. Enjoy it while you still can.

With Banksy's new movie release, to name only one major event in the movement recently, street art is enjoying a meteoric rise in mainstream popularity and thus, sadly, as to be expected, is starting to alienate it's core audience as it picks up a more mainstream following.

Nick Lempert of the Justseeds collective made some very good points in an op-ed piece on artinfo.com recently. Jeffrey Deitch, the new director of the MOCA commissioned Italian street artist Blu, to do a mural on the side of The Geffen Building as part of the Art In The Streets exhibit.

Blu painted the above mural of coffins draped in dollar bills instead of American flags. Deitch asked Blu to change it because of the risk of controversy (no complaints ever actually came in) and upsetting the neighboring community (Japanese-Americans mainly and veterans at a nearby VA hospital). Blu refused and Deitch beiged the thing over. 

Quite a bit has been written about the controversy but I think Henry Chalfant's (photographer/documentarian of the graffiti movement) statement to Hyperallergic sums it up best: "MOCA couldn't have left the mural there as an affront to the community who considered it sacred ground, and who, in no way, were the deserving targets for the mural's powerful message. With street art, context is all-important. I would have loved to see the mural in front of the offices of Halliburton-KBR or on Wall Street, for America's war profiteers to see."

Blu responded in a very thoughful and thought provoking email in the Hyperallergic article as well. He is a brilliant artist and it makes me so sad to see this piece destroyed. As Chalfant also states, it really is a tragedy to lose such a brilliant piece of work and the word censorship, as much as it makes Deitch and MOCA, and many of us cringe, might be fitting but it's also a reality and it's the central issue around this art form as a whole and one of the things that makes it so compelling. What is rebellion if it doesn't occasionally offend? and what is the human race without rebellion? Capitalism can not function well without controlling rebellion. It makes me think about this stuff. I think we need to think about this stuff. Blu's work makes us think. Deitch's decision to remove it makes me think, too.

Whatever your feelings about the show, censorship and about street art itself, you should try to take it in if you have the chance. It is arguably one of the biggest art events of our times. Me, I'm going to try to make the LA show before August but maybe it'll be Brooklyn in the spring? Who knows but I'm not missing this for the world. 

Trash As Treasure: Some incredible recycled art

These artists are doing amazing things with found objects. Some of this stuff is just mind boggling. The recycling/repurposing/upcycling (insert fav nomenclature here) thing is something I've been exploring a lot in my own work lately.

I've got piles of metal in the backyard and as of yesterday... my very own, brand-spankin new, angle grinder for smoothing the edges of some old rusted tin siding that I found that I want to paint on. I was calling it an ankle grinder... didn't hear the guy at Harbor Freight right... but now I can not only pronounce it, I can actually use it so I'm going to be painting on metal soon too... hopefully with good results. 

Here's the first one I did last summer. Hopefully more of this type of work will be coming along soon. I like the idea of pulling things out of the dump and making art out of them. Something just seems very right about that somehow.

Look close at those sharp edges. The ankle grinder's going to take care of those though :)

Below are a few excerpted highlights from a very informative feature article - the entire blog post from Somethin Beautiful is totally worth your time. This barely scratches the surface of the artists they feature in the article. 

Sarah-Jane van der Westhuizen

The art is created from old car parts, recycled metal pieces, and anything the artist could get her hands on. Van der Westhuizen has installed several of these trash sculptures all over Europe.

Frank Russell

The shark piece below, Captain Crunch, was constructed from hubcaps, food packaging tins, and the leg of a male mannequin. The fins are copper and the teeth are soup cans. It is ten feet long. Russell specializes in these sculptures produced from found objects.





Mario Caicedo Langer

Langer creates sculpture from trash and broken gadgets.





Jason Mercier

Mercier specializes in celebrity collages done with the celebrity’s own discarded objects. While Hello Kitty likely didn’t discard any objects, Donald Trump and Mariah Carey probably did.






Tom Deininger

Deininger is widely known as a famous artist who upcycles junk into fine art installations. He is also a highly regarded and collected visual artist.






Subodh Gupta

Brass pots and eerie skulls from a mashup of metal parts are just part of what this skilled Indian artist has done.




Ha Schult

Schult is known for creating massive installations of people constructed from trash in major locations around the world. Here are just a few of them.











Tyree Guyton

Guyton created the Heidelburg Project as an urban renewal project, transforming a rundown section of Detroit from a place where people were afraid to walk to an art exhibition that people wanted to visit.





Charles Kaufman

Kaufman’s crushed can art is done on crushed soda and beer cans.

2011 TED Prize winner: Artist, JR

JR is a French artist that has been amazing the world with his Inside Out project.

He is the much deserved winner of this year's TED Prize. This amazing video clip will bring you up to speed on one of the most amazing artists of our times.

TED Prize Winner JR & INSIDE OUT from TED Prize on Vimeo.

 

Banksy's New Film: Exit Through The Gift Shop

British Street Artist Banksy's documentary film, "Exit Through The Gift Shop" may win an academy award tonight but all anyone can talk about is if he wins, will he bound up onto the stage wearing a monkey mask (on rare occasions where he does make public appearances he wears one) or will it just be another Banksy no-show (like at his own art shows).

He's mostly known for being unknown. No one, well, no one who's talking, even knows who he is. Although his street name and antics are infamous now, I'm writing this for the few who still may be unfamiliar with him.

If you're unfamiliar with Banksy, you really should check him out. His work is brilliant and ballsy and he is arguably the world's most famous living artist. Forget Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, etc. - I love both don't get me wrong - but Banksy is the current rock star of the art world.

And if you haven't seen his(?) documentary, Exit Through The Gift Shop you should get on it. It gives you an inside glimpse of the street art world in action like nothing else you've ever imagined possible (assuming you imagine those types of things, I do. Often) and if you don't know the importance of the street art movement yet... um, might wanna get on that one too :)

Don't be like those people who turned their noses up an Van Gogh when he tried to sell Starry Night on the streets of Arles hoping only to bring in enough money for dinner (and maybe some bandages) only to have their great grandchildren pay MORE for Starry Night mouse pads a few decades later. Geez, that was embarrassing. Let's try not to do that again shall we?

Just give Banksy an hour and a half of your time and if he can't make a believer out of you... well I don't know what to tell you... you can already buy Banksy mouse pads...  he's not going to go away. You are not required to LIKE the movement only to understand the cultural significance and fairly consider it before dialing the graffiti removal hotline... oh never mind, here's the trailer...

 

Highlights from Art Basel Miami Beach

I just got back from Art Basel Miami Beach and my mind's a blur with all the amazing work I saw there. 

  

The highlight for me I'd have to say was the chance to meet a big influence of mine, Shepard Fairey (of Obey Giant fame).

For anyone unfamiliar with the show it's the art world's premier US international art fair. The new sister show to the famous Art Basel Switzerland. It's the one US event that serious art collectors don't want to miss or as the always sarcastic NY Times calls it... Costco for billionaires. Droll.

Anyway... for me it's just a chance to see current work by the most famous artists alive today. You wanna see the dead guys, go to a museum but what about the people painting right now? 

What about the work they did 6 months ago? 

Most of that will be sold off to private collectors and you'll be lucky if you can even google a decent image. 

For me this is the best way to see what the best of the best are doing right now. The downside is that for days now I feel like the top of my head's been blown off.

This piece was one of the most talked about pieces at the show. Kehinde Wiley's "Equestrian Portrait of King Philip II" in in the Deitch Projects booth. 

The less than thrilled look on my face has not as much to do with my reaction to Wiley's painting as it does to my mother's inability to take a picture in less than ten minutes :) 

I wanted someone to be in the picture so you could have an accurate idea of the size of this piece. It's really breathtaking in person, to say the least. 

Wiley's sense of humor, irony and his talent never need further comment.

Some, no most, I want to say almost all of my favorite artists working today are represented by Deitch Projects, NY so I spent a lot of time in their booth. 

If you've read any of my long, rambling rants of how street art has influenced my work you've heard me go on in detail about Barry McGee (Twist) and Shepard Fairey and you're probably familiar with Keith Haring so I'll spare you... 

Here's some of Barry McGee's latest work. 

  
Barry McGee "Untitled Bottle Installation" 99 glass bottles various dimensions 

 

Type Richard Prince or Ai Wei Wei into Google Images and you'll get a load of what most collectors came to the show for this year. 

These artists have done undeniably amazing work but most of it was done in the 70's. I can love it but it's largely irrelevant to what I'm painting now. Today. 

I came to see what the best emerging artists are doing right now. And for me, these guys are it. 

I also loved seeing Lisa Yuskavage's new work, too. Again... Deitch... seeing a theme here?

  
Lisa Yuskavage "Studio" 2009 70" x 74.5" 

But the highlight for me was undoubtedly the Artist's Talk with Shepard Fairey. As I've said before I'm not usually all that interested in what artists have to say. I just like to look at their work. Although verbose, we're not necessarily an articulate bunch. 

We can go on forever about our work (or someone else's) but it's usually best to just let the work do the talking. I think Shepard Fairey might be the one exception that I know of to this rule. 

If you don't yet really see the importance of street art and it's impact on our culture, this is the man to listen to.

I won't bore you with his bio info, Uncle Wikipedia has all you could ever want to know but you might recognize this image.

 

Shepard Fairey in an Elizabeth Daniels portrait

or maybe this one.

 

Shepard Fairey - Obama Campaign Poster

His art has been a major influence in our modern culture and it hasn't even shaken out yet how much of an influence he'll be on modern art. I can say honestly he's been an influence on my style for sure. Here's some of his latest work. He's with Deitch NY also.

  
His talk at Art Basel was as articulate and intelligent as always. He's talking here about how at a recent show in Boston a couple 40 something women graffitied over one of the legally appropriated walls he had painted as part of his exhibit. 

If you can't read the type it's basically telling him to go home but in not so nice words. I won't even comment. It's just too easy :)

  
Here he's fielding questions and talking about some of his latest work.

 
On the screen behind him is my personal favorite of his new stuff. 

He made a very interesting point about street art at one point.

"Street Art is very democratic. Art in a gallery is up on a pedestal and we're afraid to say we don't 'get it'. We think 'I'd better like it cuz I don't want to be the dumb guy'. But with Street Art everybody's free to have their own opinion. People walk right up and tag it - 'this sucks' or 'go home' - there's no Emperor's New Clothes with Street Art."

I for one think he's right. We've never been allowed direct interaction with artists. Gallerists are always there telling us what we must like. 

He likes the feedback. I do too even if I rarely follow it. I need to hear it. 

People email me every day telling me they love or hate something. It's difficult at times but helpful in a way too. You just have to be careful what you listen to or the next thing you know you'll be watching HGTV for current popular color schemes... shoot me.

I had a lady tell me once that I needed to paint more like some woman named Joan "who paints happy things and pretty bright flowers" that she'd seen at a craft show. 

I told her maybe her time would be better spent telling poor Joan that she liked her work before she goes back to teaching 3rd grade because no one ever encourages her painting. I love those people. 

She was upset over a cow skull painting. Just "god awful" she called it. 

I'm sure once someone she trusts tells her she's supposed to like Georgia O'Keefe's cow skulls then she'll love it. That painting is now hanging in a restaurant in Paris. Good thing I didn't listen to her :)

That kind of interaction is important and it's been lacking in the art world. Maybe it's helpful. Maybe it'll choke us to death. Who knows?

  
So obviously the highlight of the show for me was having the opportunity for a brief conversation with an artist that's really influenced my work a lot. He's a very humble person though and didn't want any props. He focused more on ways that Barry McGee and others have influenced both of us. He's a very talented, kind and rare person.  

Here are some of the other stand outs in the show for me:

Albert Ohlen "Jeans"

 

Pizzi Cannella "Salon de Musique" (detail image)

Zeng Fanzhi "Portrait" (detail image)

Shepard Fairey "Aung San Suu Kyi"

Need to clean the studio

 

Stretching A Canvas:

 

Over the holidays I stretched one of my paintings for my cousin. In the photo above, the painting is stretched tight but the corners aren't finished yet. Take note in the last photo of how the corner is folded it'll be helpful if you're planning to stretch one yourself.

Honestly... if I can do this... anyone can. You just need that little silver stretching tool and a staple gun. A T-Square or triangle won't hurt either to make sure your corners are straight.

No seriously, it's easy. Slightly annoying to line up and get the thing straight. But basically a simple process. Ignore the perturbed look on my face :-)

You've got to pull it tight (I believe it does help to grit your teeth and make a weird face - but technically that's optional) and hold it making sure the corner seams are at the top and the bottom of the painting so the edges appear smooth as shown here. Not too tough. Want more details on how to stretch your own canvas? 

http://www.jberryart.com/stretchinginst.html