Outside The Lines, Too

Since the launch of her first publication in 2013, earning her the title of New York Times bestselling author, LA-based art enthusiast Souris Hong has been busy rallying yet another stellar line-up of creative masterminds for the sequel of her celebrated colouring book Outside The Lines (October 2013). 

Dig out your crayons and markers again – though shame on you for ever putting them away – because Outside The Lines, Too drops with over 100 fresh line drawings commissioned by international contemporary talent, ranging from artists, graphic designers and illustrators to photographers, street artists and filmmakers. CLAW MONEY, devngosha, Jack Black, Kevin Lyons, Charles and Ray Eames, POKETO and ThankYouX are a handful of innovative new contributors that make up the diverse scope of styles and context in this alternative colouring book. 

These Are the Ways We Stay Connected (detail) - Seonna Hong

Whether it's Dalek’s optical lines or the playful doodles of NIARK1, there is something for everyone and anyone with a mission to rid all 256 pages from its monochrome state. Evolving from the original title, the latest publication now features individually perforated pages for when you want to exhibit your very own unique artwork collaboration - not to mention useful for those times when kids of all ages just don’t want to share. 

MANY - Ryan Seslow

Young and old(er) will unite over this uber hip paperback bursting with potential technicolour and conceptual imagination as well as thrive on an unconscious education in the exploration of art and design from emerging and established artists from around the world – a critical ingredient to Hong’s success to date and vision for the accessibility of contemporary art beyond conventional audiences to a greater, more unassuming readership. 

Ollie & Grind, Part 3 - Leonardo Bravo

Outside The Lines Too will mark a West coast book launch at MOCA Los Angeles this weekend, Saturday 3 rd October at 3pm – visit MOCA Stores for full details.

For more on Art, Culture & Lifestyle visit jonathanvelardi.com

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Outside The Lines

If you've been inspired by Banksy’s current New York residency Better Out Than In, this new publication may be right up your street. Outside the Lines: An Artist’s Colouring Book for Giant Imaginations features over 100 black and white drawings by international creative talent that include Keith Haring, Ryan McGinness, Shepard Fairey and AIKO. Curated by LA-based author Souris Hong-Porretta, Outside the Lines is much more than a colouring book - offering a narrative of art education without the use of words - and will introduce emerging and established artistic practice across high and low culture to kids big and small.  

This post marks my first contribution to the blogging team at creative emporium Ohh Deer - check out their zany site for a variety of gifts and products designed by illustrators from around the world. I'm looking forward to writing future contributions for Ohh Deer on arts, culture and lifestyle – follow @JMVELARDI for all the latest updates from the blog and beyond.

Read my full article on Outside the Lines for Ohh Deer here.

Image courtesy of Pengiun
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Pages in Time

The polar opposite of stability must be the laborious act of moving home. When you have drugged your possessions as many times as I have, as if by magic that cardboard box suddenly transforms itself into a perfectly acceptable chest of drawers or side table and one surrenders, with little will left, to the cardboard-house-lifestyle that you have only just avoided or crossed over the street from when walking back home, albeit yours is under a roof. 
I have realised there are items that make the last-in and first-out from my mobile side table - a habitual hierarchy of sorts; my most cherished photo frames, a fedora that was gifted to me when I used to live in Chicago (if it’s made it this far, a house move is not going to stand in its crease-free way) a pair of highball glasses and a gin bottle (moving is thirsty work) and lastly, my Keith Haring tome. This is no paperback and as someone who is known for their packing etiquette – heavy items at the bottom – I find myself keeping this weighty publication for last and first out. Is it the grinning triclops on the cover? The graffiti characters that dance around the page edges? The instant gratification of turning through the five hundred-plus pages of the artist’s colourful career? Put simply, it’s everything and much more. It lives on top of my old school trunk and as I work at my desk on my computer, all three eyes on the cover burn a hole in the side of my head and invite me for much needed distraction into a world of prolific artistic expression - the deep end of the inspiration pool for anyone interested in the birth of public art, street culture and graphic allegory that was pioneered by Haring in the late-twentieth century.

Keith Haring - Rizzoli, 2008

Today sees the opening of the first exhibition that explores the artist’s early career in Keith Haring: 1978-1982 at the Brooklyn Museum. With over three hundred objects and works on paper, experimental videos and a rare presentation of Haring’s personal sketchbooks and journals, which encapsulate the everyday life that inspired the artist, the exhibition guarantees to be an exciting journey into the art scene, subcultures and politics of New York City in the early Eighties through the eyes of an energised nineteen year old artist. Haring’s focus on bringing his recognisable style out of his studio and onto the streets is an important shift in viewing art as well as its accessibility to a wider commercial audience which is of particular interest in respect to my own art practice. What has to be one of the best uses of social media to date, in conjunction with the exhibition, The Keith Haring Foundation has created a Tumblr site and is posting pages from the artist’s journals every day up to the closing of the show. Lists, photographs and sketches make up the intimate visuals that inspired a young Haring who was at the beginning of creating a vocabulary of signs and codes that he was later to become famous for. Like anyone who knows they have a good thing going for them, Haring writes in his Secret Code Book No. 138QT,

 “DANGER: keep out of reach of enemy agents and spies!!”

Thanks to the work of The Keith Haring Foundation, the late artist’s work is as provocative and relevant today as it was during his lifetime and continues to work on a number of contemporary collaborations and projects from the worlds of design and fashion - most recently Garage Magazine x Haring, Comme des Garçons Original x Haring and Colette x Case Scenario x Haring to name only a few - that attests to the graphic expression of the everyday into a symbolic legacy, page by page.  

Keith Haring

Written by Jeffrey Deitch and Julia Gruen

Edited by Suzanne Geiss

Published by Rizzoli, 2008

Keith Haring: 1978-1982

16th March - 8th July 2012
Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn, New York
11238-6052

Images courtesy of The Keith Haring Foundation

Making The Invisible Visible

This week will mark International Human Rights Day on 10th December. With the turbulent events that are currently making headline news across the Arab states, this annual event encourages a letter writing marathon to demand that the rights of individuals are respected around the world in the hope of making real changes to people who suffer human rights abuses in their daily lives. In conjunction with International Human Rights Day Amnesty International has collaborated with German street art collective Mentalgassi and advertising agency Weiden+Kennedy to highlight several cases from this year's marathon in a public art campaign, Making the Invisible Visible. A series of portraits of individuals whose human rights have been denied or abused have been created into lenticular installations that have been postered onto urban surfaces in six European cities to produce a simple yet effective campaign-in-motion as passersby engage with the images from specific angles. 

Check out this brilliant video campaign from Amnesty International shot in London and look out for the installations in your neighbourhood...

Visit Amnesty International for more information about this project and details on what you can do for International Human Rights Day this year. 

What's French For "Edgy"?

Renowned as the luxury capital of the world and equally famed for its graffiti culture, France embodies both #highlife and #lowlife of the everyday - where a fresh baguette for a Euro from the corner bakery can rival any accompaniment with a vintage bottle of Pétrus and therefore no surprise that high and low culture cross rues – 24 rue Faubourg Saint-Honoré to be precise, as Hermès has teamed up with banlieue graffiti artist Cyril ‘Kongo’ Phan for the luxury House’s latest carré collaboration for its Autumn/Winter 2011 collection.

Hermès X Kongo Graff carré, 2011

The collaboration supports Kongo’s International Festival of Graffiti, of which the artist co-founded, as well as the graffiti artists’ collective Kosmopolis that will tour eight countries and provide opportunities for street artists to paint public murals in every city, all subsequently supported by proceeds from the Hermès X Kongo Graff carré that are now available at all Hermès boutiques.

Louis Vuitton X Stephen Sprouse, 2009

Several coloruways in Kongo’s bold trademark tag designs have been produced onto the House’s finest silk scarves and while collaborations are not unfamiliar territory (Daniel Buren – Souvenirs For All Seasons October 2010), critics have been musing as to whether Hermès has sacrificed its subtle, sophisticated and timeless identity by working with a street artist to produce such loud and urban designs – words rarely associated with the cashmere furnishings and clemence leather trimmings usually associated with the brand. While the cause behind the collaboration is in tune with Hermès’s international support for the arts, direct comparison can be made with LVHM rival Louis Vuitton who collaborated with the late Eighties American artist Stephen Sprouse in 2009 that saw neon graffiti emblazoned on the label’s fashion and leather collections. Perhaps a message from one House to another amidst the stealth tactics that saw LVHM acquire a stake in the family-owned Hermès company over the last twelve months? If so, Hermès has chosen to take to the streets en force with Kongo’s colourful tags and accents that result in an exciting and unique direction for the classic luxury brand, succumbing to recent trends of extreme partnerships and dare I say it, edgy, making the then-contemporary Sprouse collaboration passé.

Look out for the new season’s window displays of graffiti murals composed of Hermès’s signature orange boxes and visit the World of Hermès for more information about the Graff carré and updates on the Kosmopolis tour.

When Bart met Banksy

Happy Monday everyone! More from my weekend coming up but before that, here's some comic relief to get us back into the weekly groove. It was only inevitable that Bart Simpson would run into art vandal extraordinaire Banksy on the streets of Springfield one of these days and this is what happened when they did. Using the opening sequence of The Simpsons as his surface, Banksy directs an altered version of this now classic hallmark, painting a dark and satirical view of the corporate machine that has become this world famous animated television series now in its twenty-second season. Throw in few tags on the streets of Springfield, a sprinkle of Banksy's trademark rats and Bart's 'I must not write all over the walls' detention scene and you have the perfect recipe of art and culture that reflects no longer solely American culture but a Western lifestyle that feeds the supply and demand markets while fuelling an underground anarchy. So if this is all a bit too deep on a Monday morning, sit back, roll the titles and imagine what Homer would say about all of this...