loud paper

pink and green

This weekend is the AIA Conference in Boston, exciting, no? No.

Sure, I'll roam the expo floor, but I am really going to Beantown for the new exhibition, Parti Wall, Hanging Green, at pinkcomma gallery. The show features some of my fave firms, young offices that I've been lucky enough to write about or work with over the last couple of years, including: Höweler + Yoon Architecture; MOS; over,under; Studio Luz Architects; and UNI. I love it when the world gets small.

Here's the info:

Ten emerging architecture and design firms collaborated to create a prototype green wall. The planted installation will be suspended from a blank brick surface on the newly converted loft building at 90 Wareham Street in Boston’s South End. The five-story-high structure will be visible from the entrance to the gallery, where the installation’s collaborative design process and works of individual firms will be on display. The ten firms—all of which were formed in the last six years—joined together to establish the Young Architects Boston Group in January. The group’s prototype green wall will illustrate how Boston’s scattered brick surfaces could become opportunities for zero footprint public art that improves the city visually and environmentally.

Friday, May 16, 2008
Viewing, 5:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.
After Party, 10:00 p.m. - midnight

pinkcomma gallery
81B Wareham Street, Boston, Massachusetts

rewind and play

Photo via Wollaeger’s blog.

Albus Cavus, an artist collective headquartered in New Brunswick, New Jersey, sends news that it is collecting films for its upcoming Street Art Film Fest 2008. This year it’s screening in NJ, DC, and CA. Several films are already listed on the program including a couple by stenciler and performance artist Peat Wollaeger: Casa Del Luchador and Bill Hilly the Stencilbilly.

Not on the program is the apparently well-known (10,000 YouTube hits since it was posted in December) but new-to-my-eyes piece, My Tribute to Keith Haring…Miami 2007. In a subculture that routinely stresses hidden identity and cool posturing, what amazes me is that Wollaeger transforms himself into a Haring doppelganger—hair, eyeglasses, jeans, sneakers—before stenciling a mural in the artist’s likeness. All of which is captured on film. The lines between representation, re-representation, and the pure pleasure of fandom are all blurred.

In an interview at ourartsite.com Wollaeger has this to say about the piece:

The mural is a large scale mural project called Primary Flight in the Wynwood arts district being curated by Blackbooks stencils and will feature murals by Logan Hicks, Michael De Fo, David Choe, Futura, Lady Pink, Andy Howell and many more! I am doing a very special tribute piece to Keith Haring for three reasons. One...he is probably one of my favorite artists of all time. Two...December is AIDS awareness month, and Keth died of AIDS In 1990. Three...because Keith would have turned 50 this year. I am doing a pile of his figures in the background to represent all that have been lost to AIDS and then over the top is a large portrait of Keith Haring in my style. I have cut off all my hair and I will be dressing as the Artist as a tribute...I even purchased 3 pairs of vintage Air Force ones, just to make sure I found the right pair that he would have worn.