We are very happy to add this beautiful poster to our open edition collection. The outpouring of support for this work has been awesome. These prints have been made for all the people who want to support Saber’s message…
Artist: Saber Title: Tarnish, 2009 Size: 18″ x 24″ Description: This is the open edition offset poster of Saber’s painting, “Tarnish”. Printed on heavyweight 110lb. recycled card stock
NOTE: Due to high demand, please allow 1 week for shipping confirmation.
SABER/Luxury Loves Company -Collaborative Handbags Project
Saber Studios has teamed up with Diane Rosenstein at Luxury Loves Company to create a unique and beautiful limited line of functional artwork. The handbags combine Saber’s raw graffiti style with LLC’s high quality, handcrafted materials and simple design.
“As we see some of the trends of the Graffiti Art Movement expanding into pop culture it was inevitable that elements of the movements aesthetic and design would collide with the fashion world.
In my vision of a perfect universe graffiti would be plastered on everything, so when I was asked I knew exactly where to start.”
In case you missed this one….Saber talks about his battle with Epilepsy and Insurance Companies, being a finalist in Organizing For America’s “Health Care Reform Video Challenge” and the conservative reaction, the Release of his “Flag 2010″ Print Edition, and what the American Flag symbolizes to him.
SABER/Luxury Loves Company -Collaborative Handbags Project
Saber Studios has teamed up with Diane Rosenstein at Luxury Loves Company to create a unique and beautiful limited line of functional artwork. The handbags combine Saber’s raw graffiti style with LLC’s high quality, handcrafted materials and simple design.
“As we see some of the trends of the Graffiti Art Movement expanding into pop culture it was inevitable that elements of the movements aesthetic and design would collide with the fashion world.
In my vision of a perfect universe graffiti would be plastered on everything, so when I was asked I knew exactly where to start.”
-Saber
Limited Edition of 20.
Signed & Numbered by Artist. Each bag has two original hand-painted canvases by SABER, and each bag unique.
I just want to thank everyone for their interest in this edition. I appreciate the support and I look forwards to creating more work. I have been receiving some touching emails, specifically from those who are affected by Epilepsy. I will to continue to shed some light on our predicament on the state of health care in this country through my art. As long as I live I will be a representative of the graffiti art culture and I hope to push further into the veins of Art History with the help of my Friends, Family and people like you who believe in what we do.
A few months ago a video that Saber created was chosen as a finalist in Organizing for America’s Health Care Video Challenge. You can see the original video entry over on Arrested Motion (as well as some great production shots of the new Flag print which you can buy here). Needless to say, the video had a few critics (see the full Fox News response), but I doubt any of them understood what is means when an American graffiti artist turns his talent toward such a powerful (and art historically significant) symbol.
When I saw the first flag he painted last year, I was surprised. It was overtly political in a way that had been uncharacteristic of Saber’s art thus far. Compelling in its raw emotion, the dingy gray of the white stripes was created by words like oil, Katrina and Blackwater. Scratched into the textured surface, those words seem to further stain the flag with the dripping of red American blood. And in the square, he wrote the names of people, a real source of American power. This Tarnished Flag spoke to me of the anger, sorrow and silent shame of things done in the name of all Americans in the first decade of the 21st century.
With the impasto technique Saber was using, I could not help thinking about Jasper Johns (born in 1930), one of most significant and influential American painters of the twentieth century. In the mid- to late 1950s, Johns became known for painting, as he put it, “things the mind already knows,” familiar icons like the American flag. The detail below of Flag illustrates an early technique of his, painting with thick, dripping encaustic over a collage made from found materials such as newspaper. Yet, even though it is literally made up of the news of the day, Johns’ America of 1955 still retains it’s tidy rows of red and white stripes and pattern of stars.
I wondered last year if the symbol of the flag would be as strong a draw on Saber as it was on Johns, now I feel certain of it. In Saber’s recently released Flag 2010, the tidy order of mid-century America has been shattered. The states represented by stars in 1955 are now gone, replaced by the words: “We the people.” Like much of our civil discourse, few barriers are respected and paint drips and juts aggressively over the lines. In this series of prints, the “white stripes” seem to recede back, forming a wall on which the issues of our time are being hotly debated.
If the life and movement of the color print speaks of a vibrant (if aggressive) civic debate, then the black version of the Flag 2010 shows the country drained of meaning. The layering of the words look even more tangled and muddied in this version, a stark reminder that difficult issues can imprison minds that only think in terms of black and white.
You can see the same ambiguity of meaning in Jasper John’s work on paper, Flag, from 1958. While still clearly legible as the flag, the active pencil scribbles and gray graphite wash that form the symbol appear to dissolve much of its meaning and power.
That ambiguity vanishes in Saber’s gold leafed version of Flag 2010. In this print, solid gold bars with heavy outlines form the barrier between the rich and the rest of us. This is the symbol of a “greed is good” America, a place where money buys political power and the growing income inequality of last 30 years has resulted in a second Gilded Age.
Saber’s Mini Flaglinoleum print is only the size of a credit card. As we enter 2010, bailed-out out banks are giving out millions in bonuses while raising fees on their customers. I don’t know about you, but I believe that a symbol of America that is within reach of “we the people” is better than any cheap plastic promise.
Never one to shy away from controversy, Saber has been up to some very interesting things lately… Watch the video and see what he’s been producing; in and out of the studio…
We’re very excited to announce the release of the highly anticipated (thanks to Arrested Motion), “Flag 2010″ limited edition serigraph by Saber.
Here are the details:
Artist: Saber Title: “Flag 2010″ Size: 21″ x 30″ (54cm x 77cm) Edition: 11 color Serigraph on hand-made Nepalese Cannabina Fiber. All separations hand-painted in studio by Saber. Hand-Pulled by the master printers at Modern Multiples. This edition was created in 3 color-ways; 60 Prints in Red/White/Blue, 15 Prints in Black/White, and a hand-laid Gold Leaf edition of 3.
Red, White, and Blue- Edition of 60- Price:$180
Black and White- Edition of 15- Price:$280
Hand-Laid 23k Gold Leaf- Edition of 3- Price:$1200
First of all, it was an honor to paint with Vulcan. He is one of my all-time favorite writers from NY. Secondly, Montana 94’s are the shit. Straight up, no bullshit, I am happy to use any paint available including mud if it be so. Coming from the days of watery Krylon, chunky solid Rusto, and moldy house paint, its a privilege to be able to use paint that has been developed specifically for writers and artists.
But….. If only there was a manufacturer in the United States? cheaper.??? I had to buy some paint recently at some bourgy art store and three cans cost over 30 fucking dollars. That means an average piece would be over $200! I never let my lack of funds or access to European paint keep me from producing more pieces. Hopefully these competing European spray paint companies could open their eyes to the profitable leviathan sleeping on the Western Hemisphere. It’s unfortunate that the American brands of spray paint won’t acknowledge that the graffiti art culture could be a huge market for them. We are the ones burning through cans, not DIY hipsters and little old crafting ladies.
Buy the way, painting at paid event is not a crime!!!!
