saber / March 8th, 2010 2:57 am

“Freedom” Show Opens At Known Gallery

It was a great opening, with a large eclectic group of artists. Definitely some heavy hitters.

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Saber- “Mini Birdwatching”

Art, Graffiti, News, Photography / Tags: 7th Letter Crew, Art, Art Show, AWR, david choe, Eklips, Ewok, Freedom Art Show, gallery, Graffiti, Graffiti Art, Graffiti Letters, known gallery, los angeles, MSK, Paintings, Photography, Prints, Push, Retna, Revok, Rime, risky, saber, seventh letter, street art, The Seventh Letter, Urban Art

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saber / February 28th, 2010 2:57 am

Bird Watching

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Mixed Media On Canvass

Art, Photography / Tags: 7th Letter Crew, Art, AWR, cityscape, gallery, ghetto bird, Graffiti, Graffiti Art, Graffiti Letters, Helicopter, los angeles, MSK, Paintings, saber

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saber / January 26th, 2010 5:27 pm

Saber- “Tarnish” Open Edition Offset Poster Release

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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.

Price: $20 plus shipping

THE SHOP

Art, Graffiti / Tags: American flag, Art, DNC, Dylan Ratigan, Graffiti, Graffiti Art, Graffiti Letters, Health care, health care reform, Health Reform Video Challenge, los angeles, MSNBC, Obama, Organizing for America, Paintings, saber, street art, universal health care, Urban Art

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Piper Severance / January 9th, 2010 8:42 am

We the People and our American Flag

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.

Saber, Tarnished Flag, 2009
mixed media on canvas, 19.3 X 25 in • 49 X 63.5 cm
art/ photo © 2010 saberone.com

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.

Jasper Johns, Flag, 1954-55

(Detail) Art © Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

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.

Saber, Flag 2010 (in Red/White/Blue), 2010
11 color Serigraph on hand-made Nepalese Cannabina Fiber, 21″ x 30″ (54cm x 77cm)
art/ photo © 2010 saberone.com

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.

Saber, Flag 2010 (Black), 2010
11 color Serigraph on hand-made Nepalese Cannabina Fiber, 21″ x 30″ (54cm x 77cm)
art/ photo © 2010 saberone.com

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.

Jasper Johns, Flag, 1958
Pencil and Graphite Wash on Paper, 8 7/8 x 12 in.
Art © Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

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, Flag 2010 (Gold Leaf), 2010
11 color Serigraph on hand-made Nepalese Cannabina Fiber, 21″ x 30″ in. (54cm x 77cm)
art/ photo © 2010 saberone.com

Like Jasper Johns before him, Saber seems to have grasped the endless diversity of meaning that can be found in the symbol of our nation.

Saber, Mini Flag, 2010
Linoleum print on Fabriano mediovalis card, 2″ x 3″ in.
art/ photo © 2010 saberone.com

Saber’s Mini Flag linoleum 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.

Graffiti / Tags: American flag, Art, Fox News, Graffiti Art, Health Reform Video Challenge, Organizing for America, Paintings, Piper Severance, Prints, PS: the Public Square, saber

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saber / November 17th, 2009 4:55 pm

Phil Frost/ Barry McGee Show- Hollywood

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Art, Graffiti, Photography / Tags: 7th Letter Crew, Art, Art Show, AWR, Barry McGee, Eklips, gallery, Graff, Graffiti, Graffiti Art, los angeles, MSK, Paintings, PhilFrost, Push, saber, seventh letter, The Seventh Letter

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saber / July 3rd, 2009 12:41 am

New Work- More Abstract Graff…

This is a piece that someone recently commissioned me to paint. Mixed media on canvass.

Art / Tags: commissioned work, Paintings, saber

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saber / February 15th, 2009 1:35 am

Saber Interview in February Issue of Inked Magazine

Art, Graffiti, News / Tags: Graffiti, Inked Magazine, Paintings, saber

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saber / January 14th, 2009 10:44 pm

Downtown In Motion

Here is a quick little painting inspired by a photograph I took recently…….

Art / Tags: Paintings, saber

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saber / December 24th, 2008 7:26 pm

Guy Aitchison/Aaron Cain Paintings

I did these paintings to trade for some amazing tattoo work I received on the television series “Tattoo Wars”. I was the fortunate victim of these two tattoo overlords. I was elated during the forty hours of consecutive tattooing, excluding my swollen, football sized hand. The show aired on TLC network about a year ago. Unfortunately the network took all footage off the internet, so I have no link or footage of the drilling sessions.

These two paintings are a product of my friendship and admiration for Aaron and Guy. These artists are considered the best and their work speaks for itself. The intensity of these paintings are a reflection of their own personal traits. They are painted a certain way because of their energy and personality as well as an interpretation on their styles. I hope that makes some sense, but when you look at the paintings you can gauge your own reactions. I see the interaction between myself and these epic tattooers as a small bridge between the graffiti and tattoo worlds.

These two paintings are part of a triptych. The third is with the ever prolific and my good friend Grime in SF. Maybe one day I’ll get all three of the paintings together for an instillation. I’m always glad to be a human canvas for such talent.