These images are from my @Juxtapozmag #saberspick Twitter contest. The winner will be featured in print in an upcoming issue of Juxtapoz magazine. I was looking for experienced artists who haven’t been featured in Juxtapoz mag print edition yet. I like to see a detailed, intense, consistent body of work, consistent is the key word. I stumbled upon some cool painting but when investigating further on their sites or tumblers the body of work wasn’t consistent. That then affected how I felt about the original piece. Some advice: Do not put your entire body of work in your portfolio. This can be  overwhelming  to the viewer because, well, we all really sucked bad at one point! I do not want to see your dilapidated still life’s from your high school art class next to your current strongest work! Sorting through all the art tweets wasn’t easy, below is some of my thoughts on just a small portion of the art piled onto my timeline that I was attracted to, for all sorts of reasons.

Twitter has given artists a new voice. Now people can share their artwork and ideas with everyone live. The fact that I can have access to conversations and ideas from some of the great people I admire is very empowering, especially if I know they are seeing something created by me! I enjoyed watching all the artwork and comments tweeted at me live with artists and observers from all over the world. Even with a small number of followers in comparison to millions the intensity on Juxtapoz and my timeline was clear, people just want to share their art and ideas with the world. Fortunately for us this includes the good, the bad, and the extremely fugly…………..

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Winner!  @YatikaField

When I saw his abstracts passing through my Twitter timeline I couldn’t help but pause, dive in and try to deconstruct the detailed color patterns and sharp movement. Diving further into his work I discovered he lives through his passion as a decedent of the Native American Indians that reflected the specific patterns and motifs in the abstracts. I liked that I had to work for the information. He also works with his public mural crew that has a mission to bring the Native American aesthetic back to the public sphere. No doubt his art stands for something as powerful as his bloodline and the relationship with the story in history of the Native Indian and the Anglo-American conquest. I chose him as the winner because along with a detailed consistent body of work his convictions seep through the paintings. For me I can’t ignore the intensity …..

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#2 @snorvet

His figurative work is almost like visiting an alternate universe high on ketamine where the strange and distorted is the norm and routine and normality is the incurable sickness….

Great sketches and great detailed paintings.

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3. @gregoryganeles

I am always a stickler for photo realistic landscapes, especially when it documents the graffiti on the walls. Gregory has clear painting ability as well as a consistent body of work. He chooses isolated graffiti hotspots as influence, his eye for perspective and placement lends to the sense of depth that sucks you in. Great paintings!!!………

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4. @amycrehore

Is a savage painter. She sneaks by you casting a line and hook that then reels you into her innocent sexual playfulness all the while leaving you stranded as a tickled voyeur creeping in on this dreamlike island utopia where anything goes…I wouldn’t mine being stranded for a bit. Great detailed technical paintings.

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#5 @feildyart

Surfs up! Great detailed works on surfboards. Tiki, skulls, and beach ladies are usually usual, but this guy rocks it! Definitely an updated twist to an older art movement using crisp, clean, graphic style painting style on an unforgiving medium. Just playing around with surfboards takes a bit of know-how and a sense of craftsmanship.

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#6 @raskopticon

This piece is real sick, plain and simple. Rask displays a clear undeniable artistic ability mastering the airbrush with hyper-detail as well as a keen sense the figurative……..

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#7 @rickywatts

I know what it takes to keep a clean consistent pattern using spraypaint. Its not easy. These space rainbow abstracts paintings seem to please my eye. He also does detailed city sketches that show true base experience.

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#8 @liquidwerx

Great figurative illustrations with an awesome color palette, hand sketches and detailed computer work.

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#9 @june22

His work is inspired by a royal Egyptian motif. From hand crafted jewel like sculptures to painting on skateboards he is consistent in his ability to achieve detailed clean lines and patterns that give his work a quality of an ancient archeological find.

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#10 @caseykawaguchi

I like his raw painting figurative style that leaves you with a sense of eeriness.

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#11@jdekal

Clearly a very powerful and talented illustrator, with the ability to master different mediums.

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#12 @stephenhiam

What’s not to love about a home made altered leaf blower turned into a paint-blasting machine from hell. This experiment makes spraying with fire extinguishers look like a spray bottle. Can never get enough of the texture achieved with a paint super blaster!

Simple and straight to the point…Paint and texture.

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#13 @drewtoyours

Great abstract expressionism, raw, layered and leads the viewer to search for subtle hints of deeper meaning.

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#14 @chanceartworks

This work is multi-media collage on newspaper with nice depth and detail.

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#15 @mansanares23

My taste in political commentary with a clean, crisp graphic style.

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#16 @815k1

His work is deconstructed from the point of view of a construction workers day of hard work building with his hands and using the chalk-line. As these measurements and patterns of chalk line built on the work site, it conveys a sense of craftsmanship only earned by a hard day of work.

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#17@coldstudio

Nice painted illustration, I especially like the owl and bullet combo.

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#18 @jonlovesart

Jesus, guns and fast-food, this obvious commentary seemed to be very relevant in relation to the topics the day I stumbled on to this on Twitter. Unfortunately this topic seems to continue to escalate here in the good old USofA during election seasons. Jesus loves you……..

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#19 @dannymeza83

Great interpretation of Michelangelo’s Creation Of Adam…….

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#20 @motelcampbell

I can always appreciate the creative process and the struggle to search through abstraction using raw tools like charcoal.

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#21 @cynthiabsl

WE NEED MORE FEMALE ARTISTS! Cynthia is working through her creative process with detailed drawing moving towards an illustrative style.

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#22 @melikepainting

This guy art is all over the place but the spray paint abstract faces have some nice line work.

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Saber, who has been curating a special photo and video on our Twitter, and Facebook accounts respectively all month long, wrote us this morning with a piece remember the death of his friend, and fellow graffiti writer, TIE ONE, who was shot dead on March 18, 1998 in San Francisco.

REST IN PARADISE YOUNG JONATHAN SEE LIM, “TIE ONE” ….. Read More Here At Juxtapoz

This is the second Holiday 2011 Tee drops of the season. These items will be available Here on our Online Store and at one of our Authorized Dealers across the globe.

MORE HERE

More than 5,000 people, including 2,000 area residents, have signed a petition on Change.org protesting a Los Angeles policy that effectively bans public artwork.

The surge of support follows a daring skywriting protest in September by Saber, a prominent L.A. artist featured in the Museum of Contemporary Art’s national public art exhibition this year. His associate and friend Piper Severance launched the campaign on Change.org in conjunction with the attention-getting stunt.

“I’m in this campaign for the long haul,” said Saber, who is also selling t-shirts with The Seventh Letter to fund this creative protest. “Los Angeles public art is under attack. I love this city, so my goal is to help Los Angeles reclaim its title as the world’s mural capital.”

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Read more and sign the petition at Change.org

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I am really looking forwards to this show. All three of these guys are a huge inspiration to me. These guys graffiti art work is on the cutting edge of the movement. Don’t miss it!!!!!!!!!

Get yours at: store.theseventhletter.com

The Seventh Letter artist Revok was arrested and sentenced to 180 days in jail. To help pay for legal fees SEVER designed this limited edition THE SEVENTH LETTER x FREE REVOK tee shirt, all proceeds will be donated to Revok’s legal fund. Available exclusively at: store.theseventhletter.com

-My homie Angel and i just did this collaborative box set packed with never before seen images from the two of us as well as some other goodies… only a 150 handmade sets all signed and numbered.

MORE INFO

Walking in to this I have to say I was pretty nervous. I really had no plan on what I was going to paint other than I needed to paint a piece that represented what I was working on currently. I envisioned this fuzzy White Piece swirling around in the back of my head. When I arrived to check out the space the wall seemed even more challenging considering the size. Of course Revok was already ahead laying out his mural. First he created grid across the space. This gave him some structure to build his cluster of letters. Revok basically built his piece as he went. As long as I can remember he has been free-styling every piece he paints. It is very interesting to watch him paint. Revok spends quite a bit of time on the computer building complex logos and letters using Illustrator program. His approach to painting walls is like as if he was possessed by Illustrator, it’s like watching a human printer. His idea behind his piece was to include a few bold statements and names of other artists or friends who aren’t with us anymore. The more Revok layered the letters, the more it turned into this big complex puzzle piece, giving the viewer an opportunity to piece together the hidden names. He didn’t want to be selfish by focusing on his name solely. Rime came in and filled in some of the negative spaces with his looney style characters. Joe’s personality can sometimes remind me of a punched out cars sales men with the precise hand of a heart surgeon. If you look closely at Rimes lines you’ll see there is no wasted strokes. He paints his lines with one clean shot each time.

I on the other hand, usually only focus on the letter structures of my name. To me when you freestyle a piece you stumble onto a path of discovery. I find I feel limited when I paint from a sketch. Free-styling allows you an opportunity to whip a letter differently or discover new connections. My name to me is like capturing movement and flow using the essence of the letters characteristics. Saber isn’t my name as my identity but a mantra to tap into a free flow of abstraction. As a kid I was obsessed with Robotech, Transformers and Gothic churches, I guess it eventually evolved into an energized moving liquid glass battleship. That actually sounds kind of crazy but that’s what’s so intriguing about Wildstyle. Once you dive down into the puzzle, little secrets reveal themselves. You also have to put yourself under the mindset that you are going to paint your best piece, as if you were going to burn the wall to the ground. That level of confidence definitely comes in handy under pressure, especially in a situation like painting on the museum walls.

Risky is one of the founders and trailblazers of Los Angeles style and a world wide representative of Graffiti Art. He is an originator of founded styles and has painted more pieces than anyone. He was painting full color burners on the freeways when people were catching up on Calicovision. Painting next to Risky is intimating because his energy is huge on the wall. Risky chose to break up the mural space in an interesting way by taking on the alphabet. A to Z is always more daunting then you anticipate. 24 individual stylized letters is no easy task, of course Risky makes it look easy. I can tell you he didn’t sleep for days. These two guys were pulling all niters back to back. Abel came to lend a hand a painted the L. That guy is the one of the cleanest painters ever. Risky finished his mural off with a beautiful, white and blue chrome piece right in the center that seemed to tie everything together nicely.

Cartoon is another great painter to watch. He chunked outs his mural with spray paint and later goes in and airbrushes an entire detailed scene. Cartoon also freestyles his murals.  He kept adding little details to his painting until it turned into little groups of Los Angeles inspired street life narratives. Cartoons skill level lends him the ability to airbrush beautiful classic, candied low riders to jumping on a tall ladder and pulling long hours painting murals. He has proven himself to be the best at what he does, anywhere.

On of my best friend Push had the task of collaborating with Lee, Futura on the large mural in the parking lot. He worked on the massive geometric color patterns, a trademark for him. His strain of Graffiti is one of my favorites. His path has led him so far out of the letter structure base, it morphed into a simplistic geo-pattern style. The beauty of his style is the more simplistic it becomes the more he manages to hide letters in these patterns. He obsesses over his color pallets like a composer with notes. I would definitely characterize Push as obsessive-compulsive, this is what makes his art so unique.

When I paint a large wall I usually try to whip out a base structure with the roller. With some practice you can actually whip around some nice calligraphy lines with the roller on an extension pole. It just really, really sucks when you blast out the base structure and it doesn’t fit. Talk about the frustrating task of painting it all back over again. I really have to be in a good flow or other wise I end up fighting it the whole time and a day gets wasted. This is the challenge of free-styling your piece; you can end up painting yourself into a corner. Because everything in the show was screaming color, I went with the no color look to give my space a sense of calm. I love working in the grey tones pallet. At the bottom of the “R” leg, I painted layered piled on tags ripping out from underneath the white buff as a subtle gesture to the movement itself. The layered tags were names of friends and people who have influenced me or friends who are not with us. People at the museum asked what the title was and the first thing that popped in my head was “Sacred Trash”. I chose this title because it represented the conflicting ideas, Graffiti as sacred, or Graffiti as something disposable and malicious. That Graffiti is something that is reviled and hated by the authorities. Some would claim this a virus designed to deplete property values spawning higher crime rates. Exaggerated stories describing hoards of taggers participating in the urban plight like hungry locusts. Unfortunately, the reality is some of the current recycled press would attest to that point of view including some  right wing think tanks. Some of the artists in the show have been targeted by news organizations and the Authority to perpetuate the idea that this museum show is bad for society. My best friend Revok is now locked away serving 180 days with an outrages $320,000 bail amount yet isn’t charged with any crime. Houses and business have been harassed and raided by armed task forces looking for these “criminal art assailants” and then the story hits front page. Going in to this show I knew some of the powers that be would be furious over a museum institution giving us any credit, let alone open their doors to us. My personal mission was to paint the best piece I could and let the artwork speak for itself.

The last image in this blog is a portrait of Revok and I taking a quick break from painting standing outside the museum early in the morning. Both of us were taking in the crisp fresh air thinking of the long road we’ve been on together. In the back of my mind I wanted to celebrate in the moment for making it there together. What kept me from celebrating was the sick feeling I had twisting in my stomach. It’s a humbling feeling. We knew the authorities would make someone an example for this show. We knew there was a dark cloud hovering. I just want people to understand that there is a price to pay. That debt comes in many forms and my best friend paid with his freedom. The piece Revok painted is more valuable then museum walls itself. It represents one artist struggle against a Leviathan. His life’s path has been altered and that piece is left behind for the museum and public to enjoy. Revok is what gives this show its legitimacy. He is the artist who is locked away in a maze of dangerous halls. His real crime? Being an artist who is misunderstood. If certain people want to criticize the “legitimacy” of  “Art In The Streets” as a valid museum show then they need to reflect on Revok’s artistic contributions to the movement. For those who write us off as malicious vandals, they should pause and ask themselves what they are willing to sacrifice for what they believe in. Before they can pass judgment they would have to walk in our shoes for a block.

To me art is something that is always Sacred. Especially in an art movement that was spawned from a young spirit where you are blinded from corrupt ideas and have no understanding of consequences. In essence it begins pure. The passion is the drive. This passion to create art is Sacred. It leads that young person on a creative path steering them away from societies little boxes. Is this a safe path for everybody? I would say no. Along this path are difficult lessons learned and tragedies. But through the entire journey a dialogue between the creative spirit and the world as we know begins. Contemporary Graffiti movement has opened up a new strain of art and ideas. If I am a criminal, then I willingly chose to be so for the sake of the idea.

Graffiti is something that is Sacred, something that I love. Something that connects me to so many people. Either way, everyone is watching…… #FREEREVOK

Photography By Noah Banks

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