Here be more dragons!

Back in September 2015, after I’d only been in Wales a couple of months, I blogged about the dragons that could be seen all around the city, on lamp posts, in sculpture, as street art, in coats of arms and, of course, on the country’s flag. I promised more and failed to deliver … shame on me! So, as today is St David’s Day, it seems an appropriate time to bring you more Welsh dragons …

The dragon on the left is in Cardiff Castle, the weathervane dragon is on a house in Llandaff

Sculptural decorations at the University of Wales’s Glamorgan and Bute buildings

From a headstone at Llandaff Cemetery

The turret decoration on top of the University of Wales's Main Building

Wisconsin: WOW: the Walls of Wittenberg

Wittenberg is a tiny village of just over 1000 people in Shawano County, Wisconsin, a sleepy little place, with not much happening and, judging by the few folks I saw during my short visit, it has its fair share of country hicks. Yet it has one major claim to fame: the walls of many of the buildings in the town centre are covered in large colourful murals.

According to a local signboard, the idea behind WOW, the Walls of Wittenberg, is to ‘bring out the beauty and unique character of the Wittenberg area in a way that revitalizes the downtown, honors the area’s history and attracts visitors.’

The first mural (above) was started on 30 August 2005 and took around six months to complete. Painted by artist Ram Rojas, it is entitled ‘Foundation of Faith’, and its intention is to depict the faith exhibited by those who settled in the Wittenberg area and the faiths of its current inhabitants.

Since that group of paintings was finished, at least 22 more murals have been completed around the town, at the school and on the walls of businesses, and a small Art Park (see below) has also been added.

My friend Trudey taking photos in the Art Park

The subjects of the murals include aspects of the town’s history (like an old-time hardware store), display details of the work of the businesses whose buildings they adorn, show community members past and present, and pay tribute to the courage of the local volunteer firefighters and emergency paramedics.

In 2013, a mural tribute to the Green Bay Packers was added to the growing list. Not surprising in a state that seems more than a little obsessed with their local football team!

I applaud whoever came up with the original concept. The murals bring colour and vibrancy to an otherwise quite ordinary town, and hopefully also bring in revenue from those who visit to see the murals. One tip though to the folks of Wittenberg – make sure your shops and cafes are open to take advantage of the visitors!

We would certainly have grabbed something to eat at the bakery if it had been open. (Spot the hungry blogger!)

Auckland street art: All Fresco 2015

This time last year I blogged about Auckland’s vibrant street art festival, All Fresco 2014, a superb initiative by the K Road Business Association, which is working hard to cultivate the fringe culture and creativity that Auckland’s Karangahape Road is famous for. All Fresco’s aim is ‘to inject colour into our streetscape and activate our shared spaces’, and for the last three years they have achieved that aim brilliantly, with artworks of vibrant colour and inventive design.

Unfortunately, my return to New Zealand was a couple of weeks too late to see the live events at All Fresco 2015 but, last week, I took myself on a photowalk to check out the ten new additions to Auckland’s inner-city’s street art. The new sites are marked on the map below – I highly recommend you check them out.

 

1. Askew One  

This massive explosion of colour adorns a wall of the Mercury Lane carpark, facing onto Canada Street and the motorway. Askew One’s expertise in graphic design and photography, in graffiti and in conventional painting has made him a leading exponent of street art in the Pacific region. The environmental and economic issues facing the smaller island nations within Oceania are important to Askew One and he tries to raise the profile of these issues in his artwork. 

2. Berst  

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to photograph this artwork as it has been painted over due to a ‘miscommunication with the billboard company’, according to a Facebook post on the All Fresco page.

Twenty-nine-year-old Berst is a student at the University of Auckland, with a Masters degree in Education already under his belt and a PhD underway. According to the All Fresco publicity material his art ‘explores the abstraction of letter shapes through colour and large scale painting but he also creates illustrative works influenced by Maori mythology’. I wish I’d seen his creation.

3. Jon Drypnz  

As you can tell from my photo (at left), Jon’s artwork is a little difficult to see clearly, painted as it is on the back side of a K Road building, right next to the motorway and behind a building site, hence the wire netting. The artist has been painting exterior walls like this one for 10 years, and is greatly influenced by his surroundings and his past experiences.

4. Haunt One

This is a massive and wonderfully vivid piece of art (below, left), and Haunt One is a true local, having been brought up in a converted warehouse on K Road that had a perfect view of some of the rather eclectic local advertising signage. There is so much to see in this artwork – each time I look at it I see some new element and, apparently, this is a common theme with Haunt One’s landscapes. Those who are lucky enough to own his paintings continue to discover new details in them years after their initial purchase.

5. Jeremy Shirley  

Not far from Haunt One’s work, on the rear of another tall building, down a driveway that runs off Pitt Street, is Jeremy Shirley’s stunning contribution to All Fresco 2015 (above, right). Shirley’s talents are many and varied: he has been employed as an art tutor in the Department of Corrections and as an exhibition team leader at Waikato Museum in Hamilton. He has been a full-time artist for more than 20 years, and particularly enjoys painting large-scale artworks in open-air sites like this one. I particularly like how well the colours and patterns of his work align with the design and colour of the building his art adorns.

6. Owen Dippie  

This has to be my favourite piece from these ten new All Fresco 2015 works. The realism of this large-scale painting is truly astonishing and it will come as no surprise, I’m sure, that Dippie’s art is internationally renowned. In Tauranga, where he lives, Owen has been commissioned to produce a series of 15 huge artworks to adorn the walls of his city – three have been finished, the fourth will soon be underway. I recommend you take a look at the gallery on his website.

7. Xoë Hall 

Xoë Hall’s work (below) is a vibrant and fun piece that seems truly representative of K Road culture. She has a love for the sparkle of glitter, of ‘pop-surreal idols, drop outs and dreamers’ and loves adorning walls with her glistening murals.

8. Cinzah   

Located on a road-side wall at the K Road end of Ponsonby Road and with a series of frequently occupied car parks in front of it, this work was difficult to photograph so I’m posting two photographs to try to make the details more clear. A versatile New Zealand-based artist, Cinzah ‘Seekayem’ Merkens has exhibited in many countries around the world, including North America and Mexico, Japan, South East Asia and Australasia, and uses his work to examine ‘the interrelationship between man and nature, duality, mythology and story telling’.

9. Tanja Jade   

Sadly, I also missed seeing Tanja Jade’s piece for All Fresco 2015, this time because the artist (also known as Misery) decided to paint over her work in order to paint something she thought would work better. Last year she joined with Tom Tom to paint a huge work, a series of four kids enjoying summer fun in the water that you can still see in Poynton Terrace and, if you follow my blog, you may remember that she featured in one of my pieces about the 2014 Whittaker’s Big Egg Hunt. She is truly a multi-talented artist.

10. Erin Forsyth, Component, Trustme, Gasp

This last work (below) was a group collaboration by Erin Forsyth (her illustrative work has graced the pages of such publications as Lurve, Pulp and Black magazines), by Trustme (as well as street art, Ross Liew’s creative efforts range from streetwear fashion to graphics, and his work has been exhibited in New York), by Gasp  (whose adolescent rebellion led him to graffiti art and, through meeting his fellow artists, into street art as a way to channel his creativity), and by Component (whose artistic mediums include stencil canvas work, prints and tshirts, as well as street art). What a talented tam!

More Auckland street art: All Fresco 2014

BMD's artwork from All Fresco 2013 - see more on BMD below

Earlier this month I blogged about Auckland’s vibrant street art. I have since found out that a couple of the artworks I featured in that blog were part of street art festival, All Fresco 2014, a wonderful initiative from the K Road Business Association to cultivate the creativity and fringe culture Karangahape Road is famous for.

As I hadn't seen all the works produced by the All Fresco artists, last weekend I made it my mission to find and photograph the others. Here, then, is a further celebration of Auckland’s vibrant street art scene, the All Fresco 2014 festival and the amazing artists who took part.

In my previous blog, Mica Still was the artist in the throes of painting her gigantic work on the back wall of the Lim Chhour Centre in Cross Street. Though now based in Wellington, Mica hails from a small coastal town in Oregon, in the USA, which may explain her love for radiant colours and subjects from the natural world. On the left above is her finished artwork. 

On the right, painted on the same building as Mica’s work, stand a series of giant figures by Benjamin Work. Benjamin is a South-Aucklander of Tongan heritage whose commissions include large-scale public murals like this one, as well as postage stamps and wine packaging. A man of diverse talents!

Owen Dippie’s larger-than-life portraits are astounding, and his work is internationally recognised for its realism and artistic merit. This artwork is on the side of a building in Pitt Street but in Tauranga, where he lives, Owen has been commissioned to produce a series of 15 huge artworks to adorn the walls of his city – three have been finished, the fourth will soon be underway. You can see more on his website.

Central Auckland artist Nigel Roberts hasn’t always painted walls legally but, since 2005, he’s mended his ways and followed the straight-and-narrow, at least in his choice of venue. Roberts says he enjoys painting letters with a brush and developing a 3D effect in his work to make the image pop. That’s his signage, ‘Big Bots are Pops’, on the left in this photo of Beresford Square. 

The Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn-lookalike paintings are by Gasp aka Liam Hindsley. He seems to have been painting street art for some years but I haven’t been able to find out much about the man himself.

Founder of the TMD (The Most Dedicated) street art crew Charles Williams combines his talent for bold colour and his love of graffiti with his passion for native New Zealand birds to create stunning artworks like the one above. Wrapping around a corner wall in Poynton Terrace, Charles’s saddleback artwork, entitled Warrior Bird, is simply gorgeous. The multi-coloured circle designs issuing forth from its beak, symbolic of its beautiful song, are by Lady Diva.

Just around the corner from Charles’s big bird is an even bigger artwork, by Misery and Tom Tom. Cascading down the back wall of this building, a series of four kids enjoy some summer fun in the water. Misery is the graffiti street art and fashion label of Australian Tanja Jade Thompson. If you follow my blog, you may remember that she featured in one of my pieces about the 2014 Whittaker’s Big Egg Hunt. Misery often collaborates with Tom Tom on large-scale murals like this one, though Tom Tom is more likely to be found creating smaller artworks – he is a well known Auckland tattooist.

BMD (aka Blake Dunlop) happily admits he likes big walls – and this is one big artwork on one big wall. His four super-size ducks are to be found at the K Road end of Myers Park, and one look at his website will show you that his imagination and his talent are as enormous as the art he produces. He was also responsible for the K Road artwork (shown at top), produced during last year’s All Fresco event.

Last but most definitely not least is the work of Elliot Francis Stewart. He is another member of the TMD group of street artists, and earns a living as an artist and freelance illustrator. His massive contribution to All Fresco 2014 adorns a wall at the K Road end of Ponsonby Road. Apparently, he is amazing to watch working and I just wish I had known the festival was on – I would’ve been there. To make sure I don’t miss out next year, I’m following the event on Facebook and you can too.

Santiago's street art

While I’m on the subject of street art (see my previous blog about some of Auckland’s), I simply must share some images of the best street art I have ever seen, those from my visit to Santiago, Chile in December 2012.

Although I mentioned these incredible artworks and included a couple of photos in one of the blogs I wrote about my visit, I now realise I didn’t do justice to the exuberance and creativity I encountered on almost every street in the area where I was staying.

There is often more to street art in Santiago than simply brightening up the local neighbourhood. It can have a political message as the ‘No mas represion en la Araucna’ message in the above image shows, or it may be used as a form of advertising, as shown below at left – the shop’s sign forms an integral part of the design.

Here then, without further ado, are some of the Chilean artists of Santiago’s incredible works of street art …

At the right is a close-up from the photo on the left.

The photo at right shows more detail of that wall in the left photo.

Though not shown here, this artwork contained a message about protecting the environment
and the rights of Chile's indigenous people.

Although these are two separate images, the artworks fitted together like this, wrapped around a street corner.

The inner-city area where I stayed had a large immigrant population, hence this very Peruvian-looking design