re: time and painting.

hello friends, fans, foe and lovers,

hope all is well, as usual i've been busy doing workshops and work on new art and stuff, even started writing some new poems which i'll include post haste. 

been painting up my mum's house, she has been letting me paint what i want. 

check it out.

 

i used mainly acrylic house paint, which took longer, but it's a big improvement as i reckon the last time the house had a coat a paint was 20 years ago or longer. i used 3 in brushes and rollers for most of it. i used 2 cans of black acrylic aerosol for the black outlines of the octopus creature and the sparrow type bird as well i used aerosol. the rest i used a couple gallons of outdoor acrylic. it's non-toxic and easy to clean up. anyway, this is what i did for a couple weeks recently, still lots more to do. these paintings took time, the octopus took about 8 hours and i had to start painting at 6 am to beat the heat. aerosol is faster, but more expensive. i can of it is about $8 to $10 while a gallon of acrylic latex can be had for free or as cheap as $5 and covers a lot more wall. well, there you have it.....

until next time,

cb

 

re: upcoming art exhibition in Kelowna!!!

hello friends, fans, foe and lovers,

i've got an exhibition coming up very soon, as in tomorrow is the opening night, haha. if you're in the Kelowna, BC area, do come say hello and meet myself and other artists from the Arbour Collective Marvin Strange and Kast. We'll be around for chit chat and i'll be playing guitar as well as doing a brief artist talk. it'll be controversial apparently but not as bad as the last show i had at Alternator Centre, where i had 2 death threats for my Jesus Coyote show and there were plain clothes officers there just in case.

in the meantime,

i'll included the text for the curatorial statement:

God save the Underworld:

Is a place most people never see, it represents art created on the fringes of society by artists that are on the edges of outsider art. It is art created for people who may never have or will step in a gallery or museum or pick up a book about contemporary or traditional art. It is art without boundaries because the artists never cared or bothered to learn about them, and are freely creating art for an outside and underworld. Street art is often vilified and tied to tagging and vandalism, but the artists of the underworld have moved beyond mere words and are creating socially relevant art. They wrestle with injustice, alienation, poverty, missing aboriginal women and men and other social issues that afflict our society, moving beyond ego and “getting up,” as the slang goes to a graffiti artist only concerned with getting their name and ego known.

http://www.kelownanow.com/watercooler/news/news/Kelowna/15/05/27/Graffiti_Art_in_Kelowna_Bringing_Up_Controversial_Topics

This is art made far from the eyes of a society that no longer seems to care about anything that doesn’t affect them personally, it is art made in dangerous places under dangerous situations because it is misunderstood and criminalized. It is lumped in with vandalism even though it’s created underground and on abandoned and crumbling buildings and infrastructure. The simple act of painting and making art is a dangerous business for the artists of the underworld, broken glass, needles and people on the fringes who are homeless or addicted are often near where they must go to make art. Sometimes they are friendly and sometimes they are hostile to the artists, but it’s a risk they are compelled to face to create the art they need. Perhaps it's a need we carry over the thousands and thousands of years since people have been painting in caves dating back 30,000 years or more. An urge to leave our mark, tell our story and to be remembered, perhaps this is what drives the artists of the underworld.

re: another day another dollar.....

hello friends, family and lovers,

i've got an art exhibition opening this friday at the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art in Kelowna, BC. it features myself, KAST and Marvin Strange, and it's basically an Arbour Collective show. the days have been sunny and i've been feeling pretty damn lately, better and not bitter i like to say. i'm not sure what it is, clarity, relaxing, a little exercise, and being around good people? either one is working and i'm feeling good. which is a little scary. haha. 

anyway, come check out the show if you're in Kelowna or anywhere near and come say hi!

cheers,

cb

my old truck, a 79 ford F250

total gas pig.

before

after

kamloops, bc on

a decent day.

riverside park, kamloops, bc

south thompson river

kamloops, bc.

dope graff

more dope graff

on the road again,

at least closer to home.

dope graff outside

the penticton art gallery

more dope graff

the two as one

leaving penticton, bc.

kamloops, bc on a beautiful, hot day.

pre-show preview

of the show at the alternator

centre for contemporary art,

kelowna, bc

you bet!!!

re: street art........

hello friends, foe, fans and lovers,

here's some cool art by some guy named 'kyoti,' i'd say each piece is 7 x 15 feet in size. is this graffiti or street art?

thoughts?

should it be illegal?

until next time,

cb

re: street art and murals......

hello friends, fans, foe and lovers,

getting some youth inspired and working with kobra cans for the first time on 4 x 8 sheets of plywood, new mediums to explore and express themselves. when i do mural or graffiti workshops, i lay down the unwritten rules, or laws or codes of street art. once they know the rules, tagging and nuisance graffiti stops by 99% in the schools where we go, and people get more serious about the art and technique and using legal walls or making their own walls at home. 

vilifying and criminalizing a means of creative expression never works. people have been drawing and painting on walls for nearly 30,000 years, i don't see it stopping anytime soon. providing safe places for a creative means of expression is the way to go. instead of making our kids go to dangerous places crawling over broken bottles, needles and other hazardous things to just paint on a damn wall is ridiculous. ottawa has open walls and spaces to do graffiti and it's awesome. if people in kamloops think we have a graffiti problem, they've obviously never left this city and been across canada. i've seen cities that have graffiti 'problems,' and believe me, kamloops is about the safest, most beige city i've ever been in my entire life.

re: home sweet home.....

ahhhh, home, i love it and hate it! hahaha

anyway lovers,

don't get me wrong, i love traveling, i love making art, i love meeting new peoples, i love wrecking new places, but it's nice to get back home. plus, i usually do extended tours, or am gone a week or six at a time. all my plants have died, well, not all, i've got four that are heartily still giving it a go. haha.

but i miss my kids dearly, and even though each trip is supposed to expand my mind, or my group of contacts, i don't really believe it is always that beneficial? the art world, like any world is full of liars, sycophants, double talkers, back stabbers and the like, but it is also full of potential patrons, friends, lovers, leavers, and the like, so it really is a fun way to navigate the world.

just be smart. or stupid. whatever. hahahaha, don't take advice from me.

i am just as capable of self-sabotage as well as anyone else! and i often do it by accident, and sometimes by design! hahahahahahah.

anyway, here's some images from the road.

enjoy!

cb

the wall i painted at 180 projects/gallery

in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario

Reggie's, a great dive pub/bar in SSM,

it reminds me of the Central Pub in Kamloops.

a lot.

dials, gadgets, spinners and things.

my baby, i missed her. 

she's always by my bed. 

waiting for some action.

re: graffiti thoughts.....ideas/solutions......

i just wrote this letter to the kamloops graffiti task force: not in a hostile way, but offering thoughts/ideas/solutions.

yeah, kamloops needs some walls, criminalizing graffiti obviously doesn't work, painting over it doesn't work. if we have a few legal walls in town, that could be painted white every 3 or 4 months so kids could hit it again, would help. organize a couple annual community art exhibitions downtown and at the NSBIA house, i've shown there."organize a festival. celebrate it, encourage mural/big graffiti instead of just tags. tags are where we all start, and it either becomes something, or it doesn't and kids get older and stop.

i grew up extremely poor in kamloops, i got into bad situations, i did graffiti, i rebelled, i felt excluded from society. i felt like i wasn't heard. no one cared. luckily, i got into creativity, and it saved my life, and it's how i make a living now. i ain't rich, but i'm alive and happier than i was back then.

graffiti is a social problem in that it is poor, disenfranchised kids trying to be heard, to be seen, nothing is worse than growing up poor and hungry, with addicted parents, in a disgustingly imbalanced society where so much affluence is around you, and you feel like you'll never share in it. don't know how to, no role models, no guidance, it's not just kids bombing walls irresponsibly. sure, there are lots of middle class kids tagging and bombing, but they stick to the south shore, the rest hit the north shore.

a few weeks ago i was doing a workshop in a school where almost all the kids lived with their grandparents. last year i was at some school somewhere, and there was a presentation by someone talking about alcohol abuse and stuff, then a kid put up there hand and said, "yeah, but my parents don't drink, they do drugs." later i found out it was meth/crack. old school people drink, younger parents hit harder drugs. i've participated in reading programs at elementary schools, helping young kids learn to read, hearing their stories got me back into working with youth.

graffiti is a symptom of a larger societal problem.

and when a small group of people wage war against a movement that is global, they are always going to lose, and there are better things to do with the money in graffiti task forces. put that money towards something, instead of hundreds of thousands of cash and litres of ugly beige, grey or white paint. is that the kind of world people want to live in? one devoid of colour? everyone wearing beige? or grey? or white?

we need creative solutions to address actually "hearing" kids doing graffiti, instead of the usual, ignoring, painting over and criminalizing it.

we need to be innovative and design new programs, start turning kamloops into an arts and artist destination city. everyone i know who is a professional art, or wants to be a professional artist moves away. because there are no opportunities in kamloops. the same goes for authors, musicians and filmmakers. i stay here because i have kids, but moreover, with the internet, i can live anywhere now, and go to the cities i need to go for work and come home.

we need vitality and imagination, we need to give the youth something to do, or they are just gonna drink and get into trouble. especially kids who don't "fit in," i mean, sure there's lots to do if you have a strong social circle and have money. if you don't, then you find other ways to occupy your time. kids say the same thing to me, they're bored, there's nothing to do here. nowhere to go. i feel the same way, i go on tour, or go on the road for awhile, and when i get back, i'm bored as shit. where's our vital arts/community centre that's open until 9 pm? or even, dare i say it 10 pm?

you invest in a vital, imaginative arts/community centre, with cool modern programs, i'll be anything kids will go in droves. have a few jam rooms with real instruments, have a couple hip hop rooms with gear for kids to record in, have a couple art studios indoor, have a wall that kids can hit outside, have monthly concerts where kids can show their skills. have monthly art exhibitions. people will say "ooh that's too much money," but if we invest that money directly into kids, it'll pay off in the long run socially. i was in kelowna last year, and had to do a presentation to city council there, and found out the cops get over $20 million per year, that's a lot of scratch.

take 5 % of that and start a youth/arts/community centre that's in tune with youth, and you'll save 10% in the long run. probably even more.

these are some of my ideas/suggestions at creating a vital arts community in kamloops. feel free to share this all with the board, look forward to meeting in person.

cb