Mikel Jaso

I keep coming across the work of Barcelona-based Graphic Artist Mikel Jaso. Pretty nice stuff. More here.

Graffiti in BCN

As always, no shortage of incredible art to be found at street level in Barcelona. A few selections from the many world-class paintings I´ve already seen in just a week of ambling around.









This interesting 26-letter piece is one element in a tremendous international project by Claudia Walde in which more than 150 graffiti artists around the world are painting complete alphabets. This piece is from a series of 8 such alphabets on a single wall in Horta, designed and painted by the artists of Arteurbano. Doubtless, more soon.

“Quadraturin”

The apartments here are so small! There's some beauty in all this closeness - one certainly knows one's neighbors in Barcelona - but I could use a little elbow room. Or perhaps some "Quadraturin." Quadraturin comes from Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s Soviet-era short story about a mysterious substance that transforms small spaces (in this case a shared apartment) into large ones. Below is Valeriy Kozhin’s perfectly claustrophobic animated adaptation of the story. “Quadraturin” is collected in Krzhizhanovsky’s collection Memories of the Future.

Bastille Day

by Ron Padgett

The first time I saw Paris
I went to see where the Bastille
had been, and though
I saw the column there
I was too aware that
the Bastille was not there:
I did not know how
to see the emptiness.
People go to see
the missing Twin Towers
and seem to like feeling
the lack of something.
I do not like knowing
that my mother no longer
exists, or the feeling
of knowing. Excuse me
for comparing my mother
to large buildings. Also
for talking about absence.
The red and gray sky
above the rooftops
is darkening and the inhabitants
are hastening home for dinner.
I hope to see you later.

Que me voy

I'm off to my annual sojourn in Barcelona and the Costa Brava. As always, I've got lots of plans to make minimal plans. I will certainly eat much seafood, spend many hours in the sea, and hope to catch up on many pages of neglected reading. Other than that, it's anyone's guess. I will check in from time to time with news and photos, but will hardly make blogging a priority. On behalf of the entire staff, thanks for another year reading Gurldoggie.

This image, of the stunning Antoñita La Singla in Barcelona, is from a 2009 exhibition at the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo of Seville dedicated to flamenco. I found it at the redoubtable Poemas de Rio Wang, where it is one of several stunning images. See it. Ciao!

Pinhole Fireworks

A little late perhaps, but still well worth posting.

Being an American living in Canada, and missing the July 4th fireworks, designer Sean Ohlenkamp decided to make his own with some stop motion pinhole animation.

Transformer

Doc Popular found himself with some time to kill in San Francisco, so he wandered around checking out the tags and street art. Turns out the sidewalks of the city are covered with stencils of Lou Reed from the cover his Transformer album. Doc went ahead and made this sweet animated GIF from 25 photos of the stencils! So nice!



The original photos look like this: