Urban or urbane? It's all about a good time

One of the many stencils I cut for the event


Recently I was invited by Bloomberg HK to facilitate a large-scale "urban art" mural (better known as "graffiti art" in less polite circles).


Some of the participants were spray-can experts already, and had lots of experience with marking walls

We plastered pictures and newspapers and sprayed stencils all over two planks of cardboard. Mixed up wheatpaste glue (made of water, flower & sugar) to stick up drawings and posters.


Some were hesitant, but had a good time after the first try

Thanks to lots of help with supplies from Colour My World and especially my assistant Tiffany, we had dozens of corporate painters stop by and try their hand at stencils, wheatpastes, and spraypainting.



Some didn't want to stop - this one kept going till sunset

The spray paint was especially popular; lots of kids couldn't get enough. The paint was water-based, so fumes weren't too strong, but Tiffany & I had breathed in lots of colors by the end of the day.

...and they're off - again!

Sydney Harbor

Well we're doing it again, moving halfway around the world. But this time we'll be heading south, where seasons and water-drains and fauna are all reversed beyond recognition. Who knows what'll happen to us down there?

In the meantime I'm offline for 10 days. I'm meeting my Dad in Rome then catching a train to Sicily to photograph some dramatic volcanic landscapes, smack in the middle of the Mediterranean.

yesterday

After a year of blog-linking & occasional email exchanges, I finally met my island neighbor Dr. Marcus Scheutz at his spacious seaview office in Cyberport. Hong Kong U has just launched a satellite campus there, and I stopped by to check it out and discuss design ideas.

Afterwards it was a scenic bus ride through Pokfulam and Central to my printer's in Sheung Wan. I had to make negatives for artists proofs, in order to submit them to the Ministry of Information & Culture in Hanoi (more on that soon).

Then off to Pacific Coffee off Hollywood Rd to meet up with my publisher who's always launching into new ideas, every time we meet. He had a new project for me, and also a large (A2-size) negative from one of my photos. It was a beautifully-printed transparency, thick enough to withstand even my rough handling under glass.


Then visited the essential oil shop in Sheung Wan where I get my cyan chemicals, to order a kilo of Ferric Ammonium Citrate


A few shops away I had a lush little salad of smoked salmon, avocado & mango with freshly squeezed orange juice at a little cafe on Jervois St.


I was drawn in by the interior paint job; after the faux-finishing work I've done it's always good to see how others handle a wall. More often than not in small restaurants, they tend to disappoint. These painters had kept their glazes dark, which made the texture pop out dramatically.


As the sun set I stopped by City Super in IFC for my favorite guilty secret: blueberry smoothie with a vodka kick. I headed upstairs to an underexplored spot with a million-dollar view, little blue bottle in hand.


Sculpture/skylight by a Korean artist on the terrace

The tables on IFC's terrace look like they belong to the poseur posh clubs next door, but if you look carefully, each table has a small label that says: "For the use of the general public."


lights beneath the sculptures


So I sat back for awhile before my ferry ride home. A private happy hour. I let slide to the floor my bag of half-defrosted frozen vegetables and "export shop" clothing finds for Roy & me, and sipped a frothy berry concoction as lights changed color beneath the trees.

Artists on the loose

Test with new materials: blueprint of Chinese-language newspapers on watercolor paper. Vendors do a double-take each time I buy a paper. "You can read Chinese?!" they ask.

Last weekend I stopped by the exciting, if laboriously-named, Jockey Club Creative Arts Centre. A brand-new artspace for artists and related organizations, it's located in Shek Kip Mei, Kowloon.

This is a pretty common tactic in cities around the world, where artists are employed as gentrifiers for a neighborhood by "bringing culture" to a place they might otherwise not frequent. (as though the place has no existing culture of its own) If this occurs naturally in the free-market system thanks to cheap rents on quasi-legal industrial spaces, artists have to leave the neighborhood once rents rise above their income levels, but in subsidized programs like this one, rents are affordable....until the HK government decides to take the building back. (It appears they plan to take back the historic artists spaces at Cattle Depot Artist Village, as they're no longer taking new tenants and many studios are now vacant.)

Artists of note at the new space were Ruby Woo's display of glass pastries and popsicles (unfortunately her site isn't working at the moment), John McArthur and his Spitting Gecko Studio, and Victor Tai Sheung Shing with his warm teak sculptures.

Traipsing through 9 levels of art gives you an array of examples as to how local artists display their work and make a living (a.k.a. market their work - but of course artists aren't supposed to talk about marketing too much, it reeks of selling out).

The successful late-summer sale by Damien Hirst of his work at Sotheby's has since sparked lots of talk about how artists are pursuing other options for marketing their work, outside the gallery system.

Some choose to make large quantities of stuff, and sell it on eBay. Others have gallery representation in a couple of cities, and sell independently elsewhere. Still others forego the gallery route completely, and build up contacts through their blogs and newsletters.

Hugh MacLeod draws on the backs of business cards, when he's not devising Web 2.0 marketing strategies for companies like Dell and Stormhoek wineries. Now he's making gigantic paintings that teem with energy, just like New York City - or maybe his brain. Read his thoughts on gallery-less marketing here.

Hazel Dooney is an Australian artist who has successfully used her website and blog to promote her work. Her thoughts on a brave new art world, leaving galleries in the dust.

And a long post on artists, galleries & the internet at MyArtSpace.com, if you've got the time for it.

Recently someone said to me, "Oh here in Hong Kong, as a westerner it's so easy to be a big fish in a small pond. In London or Sydney you'd be competing with everyone there."

What she didn't get was that I don't see this life I'm leading as a competition with anyone; other artists are my peers. And that, after having lived in a half-dozen countries, my viewpoint is not limited to the local by any means, unless I choose to focus on it. A professional artist in Kansas City or Kuwait is as worthy of my consideration as are the top sellers in New York or Beijing. I subscribe to three dozen art blogs, published in Europe, America, Asia & Australia. We inform one another and are part of the same worldwide market, regardless of geography.

Borders of states are now porous, thanks to the internet. You can attend a virtual opening in Berlin while living in Brooklyn, and chat with a curator in Chengdu. None of us are stuck simply where we are. How cool is that?!