Opening under cover of night somewhere in Paris, four stories beneath la rue, a secret subterranean gallery in a sealed tunnel appears suddenly. While activity on the street overhead is hectic and dense with cars, trucks and pedestrians, the dry dust is ankle-high here in this darkened silent morgue, its cool dank air now permeated with fresh aerosol. The Underbelly has been here, and if you discover this curated collection of Street Art and graffiti in the chilled dim light, you are officially lost. And lucky……..

READ MORE AND SEE MORE IMAGES HERE

Source Magazine- SABER

Under pressure from artists, the council is revising a 2002 law banning murals on most private property to legalize the city’s best-known works and some more recent pieces.

By Richard Winton

From the aging homages to Chicano history on the Eastside to Shepard Fairey’s towering “Peace Goddess” watching over downtown, Los Angeles has earned a reputation as the street mural capital of the world.

But for nearly a decade, much of this artwork has been done illicitly.

City ordinances make it illegal to create murals on the vast majority of private properties. Officials estimate that more than 300 murals have been painted over in the last several years, a fact that has frustrated artists as well as property owners who commission the murals.

“The mural capital of the world is no more,” said the artist Saber, who had a mural covered up by a city-contracted graffiti work crew earlier this year. “They buff beautiful pieces, harass property owners and threaten us like we are in street gangs.”…………………….CONTINUE READING HERE

Its October 14, 2011, day 28 of #OccupyWallstreet. America is rocked. The world is watching, the media is manipulating, people are energized. Citizens have come together to express their frustration with corruption through this robust and peaceful protest movement.

Occupy Wall Street is the first real protest movement of my generation. Satellite movements have sprung up in every major city across the country including Los Angeles.  Making art is the best way I know how to participate and what a better way then to create a huge American Flag that breaks up into 64 individual protest signs laid on the South East lawn of City Hall. The slogans written on each sign were grabbed from the related Twitter hash tag topics on #OccupyWallstreet #OccupyLA. With the frustrations of the 99% mounting, Pandora’s Box has been thrust open. Complacency is no longer an option…………

Photography By Saber And Jon Lake

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AAAHH The Splendor Of Pareee……….. No place better to get twacked out on Cafe Au Lait and Spliffs….

Graffiti is Graffiti, StreetArt is StreetArt but what is in this show is ART. The reason these works were even in the museum is because the art work speaks for itself. All of this hype centered around the idea that “StreetArt” only belongs in the streets and that this museum show has some how disrupted this code is a limited argument. Its only the named label of “Street” art that seems to cause conflict.  Graffiti and StreetArt are an act of a public artistic display but the idea that it only belongs outdoors falls short of the bigger picture that this art has greater merits than it being on someones walls. To prove that point I started this blog off with Chaz Bojorquez’s Graffiti Mandala as a perfect example of a timeless hand painted masterpiece. Graffiti/StreetArt label or not nobody can deny the crafted ability of this piece yet again proving the fact that its all about the work. We Graffiti artists just happen to come from painting ART In The Streets…..

Perseverance at Known Gallery. This show is an amazing display of contemporary artists dealing with the struggle of transitioning from Graffiti artists to  the title of just plain amazing artists. Revok, Rime and Roid each bring with them over twenty years of experience of making art, where ever it was executed. Their unique vision is validated by the years of prolific art making using many different materials usually at a large scale. The art world will not be able to deny the pure artistic integrity of those who have built their respectable credibility of  painting in the public sphere. The art work always speaks for itself…….