Pretty City

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Bof Brigade Street Party Video

BORFYOU Street Art Party/Video Communique (via GRL)

Monday, August 07, 2006

decoy hits iceland

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

City to City: Interview with Allyson Alapont (Porto Alegre, Brazil)

How did you get started into street art and what do you enjoy most about putting your work into public space?

I have been doing street art since last month. I have finished a course about stencil art and after that I started to think about my own projects. What I really enjoy on putting my art into public space is the fact that maybe I will never know what people will think about it and what they say to another person when they see it. This curiosity is even better when you put something on the street and it disappears.

How would you describe Porto Alegre as a city for making public art?

I would say Porto Alegre has a lot of nice places to make public art, but there are a wave of vandalism on the city. Grafitti art you can see everywhere, we have lots of good artists in this area. As natural, the old citizens are not acostumated with street art, they generalize all of them and they say that's all vandalism. But a big part of the young citizens really enjoy art and accept it, so they are our mean public. What my friends and I are trying to introduce on the city is an art that plays with people, making them confused or suprised, because for years they walk looking the same walls, the same streets and places and then an artist goes there and changes something on that area. The results are amazing and it makes people change their thought about that area.

Are there a lot of artists there who put work up?

As I said, there are lots of good grafitti artists and they came from the suburb of Porto Alegre where the hip-hop culture is very big. In these days I have seen a stencil that shows a child disappered, actually the child is not disappered and it is spread all over the city.

Have you put up work in other cities?

I just get into street art, so I didn't have this opportunity yet. But of course I have plans for another cities, like Caxias do Sul, São Paulo,Manaus and Montevideo.

The stencil w/the hanging dog is really amazing but with the boy holding it up is even better. What inspired this piece for you?

I could say that it cames from Brazil's reality, a huge country with the third biggest social difference. I made this stencil on a poor area and they don't even know what is stencil and they don't even know how a "real" fox can be showed on the wall. So the results are exciting, because they stay excited with this kind of work. About the fox is an idea of mine to spread it on the city, just for fun. The antenna on its head is my own mark, and the antenna is nice because it makes people imagine more about it that it really is.

What are your future plans?

I'm only 18 years old, so I got lots of things to do. I'm going to make a web site, where everybody will have access to see my work. I have already started with a project, it's called SUPERCONDENSADOR, it consists of do stencil art in the homelesses' and crazy street people's clothes. They are really enjoying it. With this project we can show the Brazil's reality and how these slaves of system survives.

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

decoy and kelly

Monday, July 03, 2006

SHISHA FENCE

location: AM tennis courts
medium: hooka pipes

Monday, June 19, 2006

DECOY

Artist Interview: DECOY

Q. How did you get started putting works out in public space?

i had started making t-shirts for two local bands, people chasing people and the monorail. back then i would make my own stencils for the shirts. at the same time i also made a few stencils to put up around town.

Q. Where does the moniker "decoy" root from?

decoy began with a shirt too. the whole thing started out as a project. i had made myself a shirt that read DECOY on the back. i got a lot of feedback form that one shirt. more than most. so i started making DECOY shirts and giving them out to people. i wanted to create a name or label that didn't really exist. a decoy shirt like a gap shirt, but there was no decoy store that you could get it at. i've probably made and given out at least 4-5 hundred shirts over the past two years. i've mailed them to strangers, given them out to friends, given them as gifts to people...etc.

exactly how it began:

one day my friend and i were making shirts with cut out iron on letters. we didn't have many left and we didn't know what to spell on the shirt. she opened the dictionary and pointed to a word. the word she pointed to was way too long. she looked down at the rest of the page. she said what about DECOY. i thought it was a hot word. we made the shirt. that's how it bagan.

Q. I think your characters really connect with the city. Are you trying to interface them with the people who live here?

yes and no. my work is about who i'm with and where i'm at. it's about me and my surroundings and my life. and i live in washington dc. this is my home. i hope my work connects with the city. and some pieces do more than others. i think when the environment and the art really work together that's when you get an amazing piece.

Q. I saw one of your drawings, a small two-headed character, on U St. almost a
year ago and then recently a larger version of it. Is there a story behind this character?

when i had first moved here i had met this amazing group of people that were my age and pursuing something similar to what i was searching for at the time.

my best friend and i had gotten really close to one person in particular. until one day we recieved a letter in the mail saying that we were selfish people and together we were a two headed monster. it was a very confusing time.

the two headed monster image is one that i feel very close to. i usually draw from a model or from another image of some kind. there are only a few drawing that i've done where i didn't use a model, this is one of them. the actual painting has more to it. it's yellow and red and large. it reminds me of a flag. that painting is a reminder of a very specific time in my life.

i like this painting because i think it can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.
despite the specific meaning behind the painting for me, i find this image to be very universal.

Q. How do you feel about showing your works in galleries vs. public space. Do the two relate for you or are they separate?

the two relate for me. one's inside and one's outside. i love doing both. i love to see my
paintings hanging in a gallery where the room and the space work together with my paintings. i love to see a great artshow. but i equally love to walk down the street and come across an amazing piece of art. art is art. i'm not really sure if there's one place where art is suppose to be. if i come across a piece of art and it effects me in some way, if it alters my day, good or bad, if i remember it and tell others about it, then it's done it's job as a piece of art. it doesn't matter to me if i find it at the national gallery of art or walking to work.