Street Art

Belin, Famed Spanish Street Artist, Exhibits at Kat Von D's Gallery This Weekend

See also: *5 Artsy Things to Do in L.A. This Week *Los Angeles' War on Street Artists At the back of Kat Von D's High Voltage Tattoo shop, 20 distinct spray-painted faces stare back at you. This detailed mural wraps around the wall space in the parking lot, the shock of red hair on Von D's head sta ... More >>

WonderCon's Hip-Hop and Comics Event Might Be the Best Convention Panel We've Ever Seen

In Nineteen Eighty Five, the comic book series by James Reitano, a group of teens come of age as hip-hop hits Santa Cruz. Their lives are shaped by the a then-budding youth culture revolving around DJs, MCs, street artists and break dancers. Technically, the story is fiction, but it's inspired by Re ... More >>

Manny Castro Makes Giant Doughnut Sculptures Free Doughnuts Tonight at DTLA Art Walk

L.A. graffiti artist Manny Castro made a name for himself by addressing fast food trends with his spray can. In August of last year, he was under investigation for vandalism after he tagged the words "tastes like hate" on a Torrance Chick-fil-A in response to the fast food chain's stance on same-sex ... More >>

Stencil Artist Logan Hicks Returns to L.A. With a Three-Day Show at LACE

Street Art Champions Underdog Odysseus Bostick in Tough L.A. City Council Election

Los Angeles City Council candidate Odysseus Bostick is facing an extremely difficult election against frontrunner and longtime Councilman Bill Rosendahl aide Mike Bonin, but Bostick has been the beneficiary of some cool street art. Recently, two murals have popped up in the Westside in Council Dist ... More >>

How the City of Gardena Turns Every Piece of Graffiti Into a Felony Crime

In this week's cover story, "Los Angeles' War on Street Artists," we reveal that the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, with the help of city and county prosecutors, figured out how to try all graffiti artists as gangsters in court. In short: For the last five years or so, the sheriff has been treat ... More >>

Manny Castro: Artist Behind Chick-Fil-A Torrance Vandalism Goes Free For Now

So the Chick-fil-A graffiti artist turned out to be Manny Castro, the self-proclaimed "Robin Hood of street art." After "Tastes Like Hate" was found artfully rendered on the side of a Torrance Chick-fil-A last week, Castro came forward via the Huffington Post to take credit. So far, however, cops, ... More >>

Carmen Trutanich Clowned in Poster as Anti-Street Art 'Mister Meaner'

Carmen Trutanich and the street art community aren't exactly BFFs. The L.A. City Attorney has targeted out-of-compliance murals, famous outdoor art-makers and graffiti taggers, sometimes with the zeal of a capital murder prosecutor. One auteur said last year that Trutanich's campaign against stree ... More >>

Mural Ordinance: Read the Final Draft of L.A.'s Long-Awaited Street-Art Legislation

Thanks to the L.A. mural ordinance -- under construction since last October, and creatively promoted by street-art coverboys like Shepard Fairey and Saber -- attending City Hall meetings became cool again in 2011-12. Even Tanner Blackman, the Department of City Planning employee who's led the publi ... More >>

New Project Hopes to Turn Building Façades Into Virtual Murals You Can See on Your iPhone

Los Angeles isn't known as a city with great public spaces. It's a city that traditionally has been beholden to private interests, back-room development deals and, of course, the car. Not coincidentally, it's also a city that has been hostile to street art, until it recently began conflating murals ... More >>

Zes on His Journey From Graffiti to the Gallery

Zes, aka Zeser, aka Zes AWR/MSK, is a Los Angeles graffiti artist with a feral stare that you might only notice in serial killers or creative geniuses. He's been one of L.A.'s most prolific taggers for many years. If you look up every now and again, you may have noticed his burners in back alleys or ... More >>

Morgan Spurlock, Art Curator? His 'New Blood' Show Opens at Thinkspace

Morgan Spurlock is best known for his documentary Supersize Me, but is also a prolific creator of other works, such as his reality TV show A Day in the Life. When I spoke to him on a recent Friday morning, Spurlock was wrapping up a busy week of press junkets for his new documentary Comic-Con Episod ... More >>

L.A. Mural Ordinance Hopes to Lift Ban on Street Art: Public-Comment Draft in Full

NoHo Communications GroupNorth Hollywood resident Barbara Black was fined $336 for hiring students to decorate this fence.​For months, the L.A. Department of City Planning has been teasing street artists with announcements of a new ordinance that would lift the current ban on all pre-approved ... More >>

Obama Throws Shepard Fairey And His Iconic 'Hope' Poster Under The Bus in Search of New Paradigm For 2012: No More 'Sexy' Time

Shepard Fairey / APObama says no more 'Hope.'​What a difference three years make: President Obama has graying hair, Osama Bid Laden and Moammar Gadhafi are dead, and people are, to quote the Facebook meme, now blaming "the black guy" for George W. Bush's Great Recession. Times have changed ... More >>

Shepard Fairey, L.A. Street Artist, Designs Party Invite for Occupy Wall Street

theoccupationparty.comA West Coast legend does his part.​Yup. This just happened. Right after receiving the victorious news from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg that Occupy Wall Street doesn't have to move out of Zuccotti Park after all, protest organizers learned they'd been blessed with a S ... More >>

Revok Mural in L.A. Arts District Accidentally Plastered Over by 'Peace in Congo' Campaign

Oops. No rude intentions here, just kind of air-headed ones: It appears an L.A. peace activist group named Falling Whistles just plastered their gritty street-art campaign all over the wrong wall. Well, the right wall according to the building manager, who saw no harm in donating it...

Scarlett Lacey's Secret Paintings in 'Concealed/Revealed' Show: How a Blacklight Turns Landscapes Into Boobs

Courtesy of Scarlett LaceyScarlet with one of her paintings. The paintings transform from landscapes to nudes when the blacklight turns on.​ On a recent hot and sticky afternoon in Los Angeles, an artist and a reporter met in a building on the edge of Skid Row. They were on a mission to view s ... More >>

Art With Dude Appeal: Rock Carvings On Grimes Canyon Road

L.J. Williamson​ "Best Art I Saw All Week" is a new feature of the blog in which one of our contributors writes about one particular L.A. artwork he or she saw in a museum, in a gallery, on the streets or anywhere else. If you see a work that you like, feel free to submit your own a post by up ... More >>

DJ Turntables Become Art in Pop-Up Gallery Outside MOCA's 'Art in the Streets'

Lea LionBMX guru Bob Haro's customized CD player​ Thanks to the rise of hip hop, the turntable transcended its status as an electronic device, emerged as the instrument of our time -- and gained a whole lotta respect in the process. Recently an exhibit titled "Art Mix" paid homage to the turnt ... More >>

Heroes & Villains, Tatiana Wills and Roman Cho's New Book of Badass Photos of Street Artists, Graphic Novelists, and Everyone in Between

Wills/ChoNatalia Fabia, painter​ Check out our slideshow of photos from the book: "Heroes & Villains: Los Angeles Painters, Street Artists and Graphic Novelists" In looking at the portraiture that encompasses the sublime new coffee table book Heroes & Villains by Tatiana Wills and Roman Ch ... More >>

Patrick Range McDonald Named Best Print Journalist of the Year by L.A. Press Club; LA Weekly Takes Home 5 More Awards

Patrick Range McDonald: awesome, officially.​In case you're wondering why the L.A. blogroll looks kind of groggy this morning: A couple hundred Los Angeles journalists took last night off, putting on their Sunday best for the Press Club Awards, a schmancy round of self-congratulations and free ... More >>

Reactions to 'Art in the Streets' Cancellation at Brooklyn Museum Range From Angry to Victorious

Art in the Streets, The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, photos by Gregory Bojorquez, courtesy of MOCA​ The Brooklyn Museum's announcement that it had canceled its New York stop of MOCA's "Art in the Streets" exhibit for lack of funding brought a flurry of questions: Was it really about funding, o ... More >>

Topanga Canyon Studio Tour Yields Stunning Scenery, Cool Glassware, Pretty Good Paintings and Sanctioned Street Art

Carol ChehE. Kim Bolanowski shows off her brand new glass-blowing furnace and oven, built by her husband​ Just as Topanga Canyon lies on the outskirts of Los Angeles, the art that is shown there tends to exist outside of the dominant art dialogue that takes place in the city's museums, art sp ... More >>

Best Highbrow Arts Blog: The Fox Is Black

Best Lowbrow Arts Blog: Supahcute

OG Slick, the Link Between MOCA's 'Art in the Streets' and Gears of War 3

dissizit.comOG Slick canvas created for Gears of War 3​ What do MOCA's "Art in the Streets" and Gears of War 3 have in common? OG Slick. Slick, the L.A.-based street artist who has been painting for, he estimates, about 25 years and is part of MOCA's current show, designed the 2010 Gears of W ... More >>

Revok: How a Street Artist Ended Up With Higher Bail Amount Than Alleged Rapists, Molesters

bert 23Revok's work.​There's been a lot of chatter in the L.A. art world about the arrest and subsequent six-month jailing of Revok, whose work appears in the just-opened "Art in the Streets" exhibition at MOCA. Fellow artists want to know how he ended up with nearly one-third of a million in ... More >>

Graffiti Crossword: Eine Paints LA Weekly Building

Shannon Cottrell​ The street artist Eine, in town for MOCA's "Art in the Streets" show, was looking for a place to paint, and, well, LA Weekly answered the call. The piece, which occupies the outside of our Sepulveda Blvd.-facing wall, took almost a week to complete, as challenges included pai ... More >>

Graffiti Vandalism Follows 'Art in the Streets' Show at MOCA in Little Tokyo

Jacqueline ChangAn 'Art in the Streets'-inspired mural downtown?​Police have received complaints from downtown dwellers about an increase in vandalism they think is related to MOCA's upcoming "Art in the Streets" show at the Geffen Contemporary. It's not clear to us if residents and business ... More >>

Celebrity Impersonators and Fake Paparazzi Join D*Face for 'Going Nowhere Fast' Opening at Corey Helford Gallery

See more photos in Shannon Cottrell's photo gallery, "D*Face 'Going Nowhere Fast' Opens at Corey Helford Gallery." "The thing is, LA for me is all the irony of my work, but everything I love about where I would want to live," said British street artist D*Face when we interviewed him last week. (Rea ... More >>

D*Face Comes to L.A.: British Street Artist Talks Advertising, Skating and Punk Rock

See more photos in Shannon Cottrell's slideshow, "D*Face in Los Angeles." Saturday night at Corey Helford Gallery in Culver City, "Going Nowhere Fast," the latest show from D*Face, will open. It is the British street artist's first solo show in Los Angeles. He had previously appeared in group shows ... More >>

New Cyrcle Mural At Susy's Meat Market, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's Mug Is Gone

RabiCrycle mural at Susy's Meat Market ​A group of artists called Cyrcle have painted a new mural on the famed wall of Susy's Meat Market in East Hollywood, and this time it's not splattered with red paint.

West Hollywood Spending

West Hollywood 2011 City Council Election: Street Artist Plasters Warhol-inspired 'Vote Mito' Stickers on Santa Monica Boulevard

Unknown artist"Vote Mito" sticker in WeHo, photos by Patrick Range McDonald​In 2008, there was the iconic Obama "Hope" poster by L.A. street artist Shepard Fairey. Three years later, there's the "Vote Mito" stickers (as translated into English) by an unknown, apparently Russian-speaking arti ... More >>

Street Artist JR Does L.A.:Faces pop up on buildings from Venice to downtown

The following story on JR is from the print edition of LA Weekly, out now. See our "JR in L.A." archive for more details and check out our Google map if you want to see JR's work in person. Maybe you've noticed that Los Angeles is a flurry of street art activity lately, with Banksy up for an Oscar ... More >>

TED Award-Winning Street Artist JR Brings 'The Wrinkles of the City' to Los Angeles

Maybe you've noticed that L.A. is a flurry of street art activity lately, with Banksy up for an Oscar and all. However, there is another stealth creative foreigner in line for King of L.A. this week. JR, the 27-year-old Parisian artist/activist brings his method of colossal, office park-sized Xeroxe ... More >>

Francisco Montoya's Alleged Graffiti Tagging Found On Flickr, Ecstasy Found In His Home, LAPD Says

All your yuppie downtown are belong to us.​Here's a cautionary tale for all you aspiring spray-can artistes out there: If you're "throwing up" your beautiful work on someone's property without permission, try not to post photos of your conquests on Flickr. The LAPD on Friday says Francisco Mo ... More >>

Street Art, Travel Posters and Burlesque: Our Favorite Star Wars Finds of 2010

If the fact that we have a Style Council category devoted specifically to Star Wars weren't already an indication, we have a confession to make. A few of us on this arts/pop culture blog team are Star Wars fans. We've been known to spend hours looking at fan art online and chasing down cosplayers at ... More >>

The Social Network Named Best Movie of 2010

The film critics' poll

THE HARDEST BUTTON TO BUTTON

ACTUALLY, ART IS LIKE A BAD METHPHOR

Avant-Cute

WHO REMEMBERS THE MUDD CLUB? OH YEAH, YOU'RE ALL DEAD

Live Artillery