The Caretaker of Dreams Wins The first time the rainbow mysteriously appeared on a tunnel visible from the Don Valley Parkway, the North York parks department painted over it.
But the guerrilla mural artist — known as “the Caretaker of Dreams” — persevered, eventually winning them over.
Now, 40 years later, the city has officially restored the psychedelic mural that has brought smiles to countless grim commutes — just as the artist intended.
posted by modernnomad
on Nov 3, 2012 -
25 comments
Gestalten TV - Exploring Visual Culture. A series of documentaries on (mostly) art and artists.
posted by dobbs
on Nov 1, 2010 -
2 comments
Urban knitting, guerilla knitting, textile street art,
yarn bombing. Whatever you choose to call it, this artform takes everyday objects of the city — such as trees, lampposts, street signs, bike racks — and wraps them up in colorful knit cozies. You'll find these wonderful oddities all over the world, from
Manhattan to
Sydney to Edinburgh to
Philadelphia to Oakland to
Chicago to
Bisbane and back to
Manhattan again. People have
written books about it. It has inspired an
Irish cellphone commercial. Metafilter's own
ErikaB made a
tree sweater that was featured on
Metafilter and on the front cover of Seattle's
The Stranger. Magda Sayeg's blog
Knitta Please is a showcase for some of her delightful projects, including a
Smart car,
coffee shop sign, and
crutches. (
Also, previously.)
[more inside]
posted by Blazecock Pileon
on Jun 25, 2010 -
37 comments
The Free Art and Technology (F.A.T.) Lab is an organization dedicated to enriching the public domain through the research and development of creative technologies and media. You may know them from such projects as
How to build a fake Google Street View car,
public domain donor stickers,
internet famous class, the
first rap video to end with a download source code link, or their numerous
firefox add-ons (such as
China Channel,
Tourettes Machine, or
Back to the future). FAT members have been hard at work standardizing various open source graffiti-related software packages, including
Graffiti Analysis,
Laser Tag,
Fat Tag Deluxe and
EyeWriter [previously] to be
GML (Graffiti Markup Language) compliant.
Fuck Google.
Fuck Twitter.
FuckFlickr.
Fuck SXSW.
Fuck 3D. FAT Lab is
Kanye shades for the open source movement.
posted by finite
on Mar 13, 2010 -
8 comments
FillCell is a sort of graffiti wall of mini-posters drawn with very simple tools (to impressive effect, in some cases). Flash - drag the background to see more of the wall.
posted by Wolfdog
on Jan 4, 2008 -
1 comment
Pinning down the elusive Banksy. "The art world is the biggest joke going," he has said. "It’s a rest home for the overprivileged, the pretentious, and the weak." Yet the stencilist/graffiti writer's pieces regularly sell for hundreds of thousands of pounds at places like Sotheby's--not bad for a man who still remains cloaked in complete anonymity. The
New Yorker gets a rare e-mail interview. [Previously:
1,
2,
3]
posted by dead_
on May 15, 2007 -
33 comments
Borf is dead. The
masked mystery whose ubiquitious
graffiti has confused Washington for months is revealed to be an 18-year-old anarchist. He had a good run, though, getting his work on dozens of locations in
D.C., then going on tour through
Raleigh,
New York and
San Francisco, inspiring an
internet following in the process. And while his work wasn't brilliant enough to match the romantic counterculture image he tried to create, there's a truly sad story behind his pseudonym and
icon: both belong to a friend who committed suicide two years ago. Of course, that's unlikely to arouse the sympathy of the various city officials spending (I would assume) hundreds of thousands of dollars to remove his work.
posted by gsteff
on Jul 15, 2005 -
62 comments
A few months after his first (donated)
statue, "
Drinker", was
kidnapped, London's guerrilla artist
Banksy reveals a new statue, a £22,000 solid bronze prostitute with leather boots and a
thong,
dedicated "to thugs, to thieves, to bullies, to
liars, to the corrupt, the arrogant and the stupid."
posted by shoepal
on Aug 5, 2004 -
25 comments
The Stop Bush Project
...a documentation of anti-Bush sentiment from around the world expressed through graffiti, placards, flyers and other spontaneous, 'guerilla' means.
posted by moonbird
on Jul 3, 2004 -
77 comments
Street Memes. a sticker, stencil, or poster that can spread a single image around the world. Unlike traditional graffiti art where each piece is unique, street memes can be copied repeatedly, taking on a life of their own, and spreading through the collective effort of people scattered around the world. [via Eyebeam reBlog]
posted by soundofsuburbia
on Jun 25, 2004 -
12 comments
This site has a real cool slide show of a bunch of graffitied Rudy Guiliani tv movie posters in NYC subway stations (under 'Other'). Some other good stuff by this artist to check out, too (Flash required).
posted by Miyagi
on Apr 27, 2004 -
11 comments