Never

I wrote a very short blog post about Never when I first started this page and he has quickly become one of my favorite artists, not just from Atlanta, but worldwide. I previously mentioned that Never AKA Mr. Never Satisfied got his name from his friends who would tell him he was always overcritical of everything he did. Never started drawing comic book characters around the time he was 7 years old. When he hit the teenage years of punk rock and skating he gave up drawing. While skateboarding he would take notice to the graffiti near skate spots. Never started painting graffiti around 2000 after permanently injuring his knee skateboarding. When he couldn’t skate he decided to put that energy into graffiti. He compares painting a blank wall behind a dumpster to thinking of all the tricks a skateboarder can do on a handrail. He sometimes would write Troubled if he was in a particularly bad mood. These days he paints to get out of the house and keep himself sane. Never’s key influences are everything that goes wrong in his life. Whenever something bad happens he channels it out onto a wall. Never is known for his owls which he first sketched in a hospital room in Atlanta one night when he got a staph infection while recovering from knee surgery. The $1.28 tag on his pieces refers to how he sells himself short. He says he puts a lot of effort into his work and has never really gotten much out of it besides self-gratification. Over the last few years he has become interested in typography. He finds it challenging because it is the opposite of graffiti lettering. Graffiti is more about flow, while typography is about structure. He began to feel that his graffiti was getting as redundant as his owls so he would draw out the phrases that popped into his head.

Krog St Tunnel – painted over

Collaboration with Wane – Knumbskull tribute

Karl Addison

Through his travels to Italy, Israel, Japan and currently Berlin, Karl Addison‘s overarching theme is people and they spaces they occupy and interact with. Karl was born in Denver and raised in Phoenix before moving to LA, then Seattle and currently Berlin. After 19 years in hot Phoenix, Arizona Karl moved to LA for a graphics job with Whole Market. It was in Seattle that Karl began putting his work on the street. Rather than having leftover pieces from art shows hidden around his studio he would put them on street signs, telephone poles and electrical boxes.  After losing his house in Seattle, Karl wanted to find out if he could live in another country so he moved to Berlin, which he feels is one of the top cities for urban art. He says street art in Berlin rarely gets buffed or taken down.

Karl was in Atlanta to paint a mural for Art on the Beltline. The mural almost didn’t happen as it was originally supposed to be part of Murder Kroger’s transformation to “Beltline Kroger” (which will never happen). While on the plane from Berlin Kroger backed out because they weren’t ready to commit to a mural. Miso on Edgewood then offered up their wall. When Karl got there and sprayed some paint it wiped right off as the wall had been covered with anti vandal spray. Finally he got a wall on the Beltline at Ponce de Leon. I won’t state the name of the business because unfortunately without asking Karl or anyone involved with the mural they chose to turn a minimalist mural into a sign. With Karl’s most recent projects he wants us to value tiny lines, details, and to appreciate a world view and start extolling the minute details of our own. He features characters that are distinct from the surrounding community, thereby resulting in an intermingling of cultures within the space where the mural is based. The tiny lines communicate the innate relationship between individual within the larger composition of the community. This mural features 2 characters. On the Left is Jess who works at a Museum in London. On the right is Beta who is one of Karl’s neighbors in Berlin. The mural is supposed to share their stories with Atlanta.

Fortunately I have some of the few pictures of the mural before the sign was painted right in the middle of it. Unfortunately, my phone had died and I was using an old phone with an even worse camera than the one I already had.

Day 1 background using ladders, rollers and finally we got a sprayer to save the day.Night 2 on a makeshift scaffold. Karl did a lot of the painting at night because it was so hot. In this picture you can also see some of the tiny line details.Finished the lower half of Jess first before getting a small single person lift.Finished Mural before the sign was added. You can see Beta well and the hands near where the white fades to pink. Can’t see Jess so well in this picture, but she’s down there!

Hadley Breckenridge

Living Walls 2014 Conference is officially over. All the events went off amazingly well with a packed main event at the goat farm Saturday night. By my count there are over 20 new walls. I’ll start posting about Living Walls artists later this week. For now here is a map of all the new walls.

Hadley Breckenridge is an Atlanta artist. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Photojournalism from the University of Southern Mississippi in 2002 and Master of Fine Arts in Photography from Georgia State University. She has worked with all formats of photography. Her mural on the SW Beltline trail titled The Highball Artist is a minimalist mural with intense color that covers part of both sides and the inside of the Lucille Ave bridge and tunnel. Highball artist is railroad slang for train engineer known for running the train fast. The design of the mural painted in 2012 is to imply the speed of the train has come out through the tunnel spilling color down on one side of the tunnel and exploding out the other. The mural is meant to be an experience about movement, perspective, time, scale, space, and simple elements of color.

Spencer Murrill

So I was doing a really good job updating this pretty often and then Living Walls Conference started. Week 1 just ended and it’s been amazing. A few of the murals are already done. Make sure to come out to some of the events happening Wednesday until Saturday this week.

Spencer Murrill is an Atlanta artist with a degree in sculpture from Georgia State University. He spent the majority of his childhood building and performing with puppets. He says that he has a fascination with objects that are energetic, tactile and irreverent that drives his work. Spencer became interested in doing graffiti in his mid 20s from riding Marta around the city. His most recent mural was painted in 2013 and was his second mural for Art on the Beltline. It can be seen on Monroe Dr near 10th St. The intention is to move and progress as people on the Beltline move alongside it. It was designed to appeal to both children and adults and welcome people to the Beltline. The first was done on the back of the Turner Studios warehouse near Two Urban Licks and is no longer there. He also had a piece in Living Walls 2010 at Eyedrum.

Spatial Tension – Monroe Dr

Spencer also won a contest for his bike rack design to be placed in front of the Georgia State University Student Center and can be see on Gilmer St.

This PBR mural is at Pig-N-Chik BBQ on Briarcliff Rd

Santiago Menendez-Gil

Santiago Menendez-Gil was born in Mexico City and currently lives and works in Atlanta. He received his BFA in Drawing and Painting from Georgia State University in 2010. He has participated in numerous group shows as well as a few public art displays. In 2012 he did his first project for Art on the Beltline in which he installed 32 steel posts that were painted to resemble a giant row of crayons. More recently he painted You Won’t Step on Me! along the SW Beltline trail. The mural is designed to inspire a feeling of self-power. Very few people are willing to tell to tell the huge corporations, government bodies, their bosses or bullies that they’ve had enough. When the foot in the mural comes down, it will step on the nail and trip because of the attached rope. Santiago hopes the mural will inspire someone to stand up for something they believe in and make a change.

Southwest Beltline Trail at Ralph David Abernathy

Sever

Sever is a graffiti artist originally from LA but now living in Atlanta. Sever, a member of MSK crew, is one of the most infamous modern street artists and some would consider him in the same league as Banksy.  Sever’s work lies between two worlds; one of witty, ironic comics and one of traditional graffiti. He was one of the widest ranges of work around. He has become known for his use of unique characters as well as characters from pop culture such as Captain America, Family Guy and Ronald McDonald. These murals are Sever’s honest thoughts on current society. His work can be found all over Atlanta, from trainyards, to public murals on the Beltline, to slaps posted on bridges and handstyles on abandoned buildings. One interesting note about Sever is that the recent R. Land murals that have popped up around town on Fellini’s restaurants and in Little 5 Points were actually painted by Sever. Below you can see some of his more recent murals as well as some graffiti that ranges back at least as far as 2001.

Little 5 Points Mural – no longer there

Beltline The Loss Prevention Murals

Ralph Mcgill – “Dusted”

North Avenue

Cabbagetown – Steel Fabric

South Broad Street – Elevate 2013

Graffiti

Stickers – Jackson St Bridge – covered up now

Castleberry Hill – Collaboration with Pose – You can also see a video of this being painted here.

Collaboration with Totem – Moreland and Seaboard Ave

John Lewis mural – The Loss Prevention – Jesse Hill Jr. Dr

R. Land murals – The Loss Prevention

Grant Park mural – The Loss Prevention

Darwin – Cabbagetown – can see progress shots as well

 

Willow St

Updates

These are some new pictures I’ve taken of artists who I’ve already written about. You can click their name to link to the post about them.

Doodles This piece was the first ever Living Walls mural. It is on what is now the SW Beltline trail. If you search for pictures of when he was painting this piece back in 2010 you can see how overgrown the area was before the Beltline came in and removed all the growth where the tracks you used to be.

This is a collaborative piece between Doodles and Swampy painted for the first Living Walls Conference in 2010. It is on what used to be Eyedrum.

Swampy on Memorial Drive on what used to be the new Atlanta Dairies building in Reynoldstown.

 

Paper Frank and Peter Ferrari recently added to the piece they did on the back of City of Ink Tattoo. You can see what they added in the first picture and the whole thing in the second picture. Peter Ferrari currently has a gallery show at Kai Lin Art in West Midtown with Sam Parker and Larry Jens Anderson. It runs through June 6.

Paper Frank also worked on this container as a collaboration for Forward Warrior. I’m not sure who else worked on this piece with him.

Gaia and Nanook who are probably best known around Atlanta for The Sunrise on Edgewood piece in O4W also did this piece in the Decatur Square called The Mockingbird and The Cherokee in 2011.

 

Nanook has also done a few similar pieces around town individually. This mural is at The Goat Farm.

Sadly, a friend took me to this last one and I’m not even sure I could find my way back if I tried. I believe it is in Kirkwood.

 

As Gaia put it in a blog post, when you get enough street artists together in one city for a conference “some unsanctioned work is bound to go up.” Here’s one of the unsanctioned pieces Gaia or Nanook worked on while they were here in 2011.

People hear of The Beltline Bears pretty often when discussing Beltline art, but those who frequent the Eastside Trail probably thing this is a reference to the Blackcattips piece under the Highland Avenue bridge. The Southwest Beltline trail actually has a wall completely painted with Blackcattips bear faces and they each have little sayings. If you haven’t been to the Southwest Beltline, you should check it out.

And this Blackcattips bear face is on the ground in a parking lot in East Atlanta.

A lot of the artists I write about got their start doing graffiti before they became nationally recognized for their work. This is a piece by Hense that has been on the CSX tracks off Piedmont Avenue for over 10 years.

I assume this one is from around the same time period as the lettering is very similar. It’s on the roof of the Off Campus Bookstore at Georgia State University.

And 2 more higher up pieces. This is the roof of a building in downtown.

And another building in SW Atlanta

Last but not least, I found this dumpster that Know Hope drew his signature Doves on when he was here for Living Walls 2011.

 

 

Brandon Sadler

Brandon Sadler is an Atlanta artist known for his use of Chinese calligraphy and other Asian art forms in his work. He is a multidisciplinary artist whose interests have formed from his involvement with graffiti. Brandon has a degree in fine art from Atlanta College of Art. While he is most renowned for his public work as part of the Atlanta Beltline and Living Walls he has also had work collected by the High Museum of Art. Through non-profit organizations such as One Love Generation Brandon has created and taught classes at both Savannah College of Art and Design and Morehouse College.

The first mural on Irwin Street was the largest mural Sadler had done at the time and I believe it still is at 100′ long by 10′ high. The koi fish are symbols of peace and prosperity and the lotus represents enlightenment and divinity. They are floating through waves of gold. It is meant to carry viewers down the street as if they were the waves themselves.

This second piece was done for the Living Walls Conference 2013 on North Avenue.

A third mural was done for the Beltline’s Art on the Beltline project in 2013. This piece is part of the Art on the Beltline Permanent collection and is under the Virginia Ave bridge. There was a lot of drama surrounding this piece as it covered up a mural that was done by Sever for the Beltline. Early on in the Beltline’s art project they asked sever to paint the wall but didn’t have any money to pay him at that time so he did it as a favor. the mural was of a Mickey Mouse type hand (seen below) with Sever written in large letters next to it. As the Beltline was constructed they decided they didn’t like so much that he put his name on it. In addition, because they never paid him they felt like it was not a commissioned piece and had Brandon do a new mural in its place. I was told that the Japanese looking characters are just for looks and don’t actually mean anything, but I’d have to check with someone who knows Japanese to be sure. EDIT: The “Japanese” characters are actually American letters made to look Japanese.

 (not my picture)

Lastly, this is a painting that Sadler did for Bottle Rocket in Castleberry Hill. There are 3 like it out front of the restaurant.

Stucky

Stucky was in town a few weeks ago for The Stacks Lofts Open House and Artist Tour. Stucky is a really a mixed media gallery artist from Ohio who took part in some street art while he was in town. He has been in galleries and exhibitions around the world from Georgia Southern University Museum to the Lyon France Museum of Art. His work is done directly on the piece itself with any sketching staying visible. His work is colorful and uses multiple layers. He is currently working on a series painted on NYC subway maps that represent the layers of people and cultures that make up the city.

Beltline Bridge under Highland Ave

Wylie Street

Boulevard

Jaz, Inti, Agostino – Beltline building – 210 Chester Ave

All of three of these pieces are part of the Living Walls Conference 2013. The first is by Jaz. You can read more about him in my post about his piece on the side of Soundtable. Something that I noticed about this piece is that he signed it way up in the top left of the building. He also signed the piece on Soundtable in the top right away from the actual art.

This next piece right next to the one by Jaz is by INTI. INTI is from a native Chilean living in France. His pieces often focus on traditional characters of Latin culture wearing costumes and masks adorned with symbolic attributes such as skulls or balls.

The third piece on this building is by Agostino Iacurci. Agostino lives in Italy and is known for bright multi-layered images using flat shapes. His murals primarily focus on characters.

You can read more about the building itself here.