What do you get when you cross old cigarette vending machines with the art world? Art-o-Mat! Art-o-Mat uses these old vending machines to display and sell small affordable art works.
The inspiration for Art-o-mat® came to artist Clark Whittington while observing a friend who had a Pavlovian reaction to the crinkle of cellophane. When the friend heard someone opening a snack from a vending machine, he had the uncontrollable urge to buy a snack as well.
In June 1997, Clark was set to have a solo art show at a local cafe, Penny Universitie in Winston-Salem, N.C. He used a recently-banned cigarette machine to create the first Art-o-mat® and it was exhibited along with 12 of his paintings. The machine sold Polaroid black & white photographs mounted on blocks for $1.00 each.
The show was scheduled to be dismantled in July 1997. However, owner Cynthia Giles loved the machine and asked that it stay permanently. At that point, it was clear that involvement from other artists would be needed if the project was going to continue. Cynthia introduced Clark to a handful of other local artists and the group Artists in Cellophane (AIC) was formed.
The machine remains unaltered and now resides in Delurk Gallery in Winston-Salem, NC.
AIC is the sponsoring organization of Art-o-mat®. The mission of AIC is to encourage art consumption by combining the worlds of art and commerce in an innovative form. AIC believes that art should be progressive, yet personal and approachable. What better way to do this, than with a heavy, cold, steel machine?
Bravo to Hyperallergic which celebrates a great street art initiative in Los Angeles resulting in a fascinating and glorious exhibition. Makes me want to travel there to see it!
The Craziest Art in Los Angeles May Be Underground
An exhibition at Superchief Gallery explores the work of Operation Under, a collective of artists using subterranean tunnels as their canvas.
LOS ANGELES — Just after dawn on a recent weekday morning, at the edge of a nondescript parking lot somewhere in LA County, I met three members of Operation Under (OU), a clandestine collective of graffiti artists, painters, photographers, nature devotees, and urban anthropologists. We donned rubber boots and hi-vis safety vests, walked past a “No Trespassing” sign, hopped a low fence, and entered a drainage tunnel.
We set off in the pitch blackness, a path illuminated only by flashlights. Examples of old stoner graffiti were visible near the entrance but quickly faded further in, replaced by scuttling roaches, swooping bats, nesting birds, and other subterranean flora and fauna.
“One of the things is we don’t leave breadcrumbs all the way to the entrance,” OU member Evan Skrederstu told me, sloshing through a shallow stream of slimy water that flowed down the center of the path.
Half an hour later, the tunnel opened up into a small chamber containing two works by OU: Skrederstu’s trompe l’oeil painting of a wild-eyed woman appearing to break through the concrete wall and a portrait of a Mexican hairless Xoloitzcuintli dog by Tank One. We ventured further, crouching down as the tunnel got smaller, until Skrederstu stopped abruptly. In the distance, gleaming eyes stared back: a family of raccoons. “I’m not trying to mess with that,” he said, retreating and returning to the outside world just as most people were getting ready to start their day.
Underground tunnel artwork by Evan Skrederstu (photo Matt Stromberg/Hyperallergic)
The tunnel was one of over 100 that Operation Under has explored and created art in over the past seven years. Now, the exhibition Life Underground at Superchief Gallery just south of Downtown LA brings the group’s mysterious workings to the surface, featuring original artwork by dozens of OU participants alongside photo and video documentation of their exploits. The walls are covered salon-style in painted banners, a recurring motif in their work that conjures a sense of old-world exploration, akin to planting a flag, and the back of the gallery has been turned into a kind of stage-set of a tunnel, complete with a family of curious raccoons, one of whom wields a paint roller. A makeshift tattoo studio behind a faux concrete wall occupies one corner, as illusionistically painted green water trickles from a fabricated pipe. This Saturday, August 24, Superchief will host a panel discussion with Skrederstu; author Susan Phillips; LA graffiti legend Chaz Bojorquez; and other scholars from the worlds of street art, ecology, biology, and beyond.
Installation view of Life Underground at Superchief Gallery LA (photo courtesy Superchief Gallery LA)
OU members wear many hats, and count tattoo artists and scenic painters among their ranks, contributing a sense of technical polish to their work below and above ground. The subject matter in the show reflects the eclecticism of the collective, including elaborate text-based graffiti tags, Aztec imagery, fantastical creatures, references to the natural world, and cartoons. Unsurprisingly, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, pop culture’s most beloved underground dwellers, make a couple of appearances.
Operation Under officially began on January 1, 2017. According to ESK31, the group’s “de facto leader,” he and fellow artist Ser@la were painting in a tunnel they had previously wandered into as kids growing up in LA. “He was gonna write ‘Operation Underground’ but he ran out of room, so he wrote ‘Operation Under’ and put a ‘#1’ next to it,” ESK31 explained. This was the first of many “missions” in tunnels all over LA County (with a few ventures out in Texas, Hawaii, and even Ecuador), each sequentially numbered, that the loose collective has since completed. “It didn’t start with grand initiative,” ESK31 said. “It turned into what it became organically.”
Detail of raccoon murals by Christopher Brand in Life Underground (photo Matt Stromberg/Hyperallergic)
Angelenos have been leaving their marks on overlooked sites of urban infrastructure for decades — on tunnels, bridges, and train yards and along the concretized channel of the LA River.
“These forms of historical graffiti — by children, partying teens, workers, gang writing — slowly got covered by modern graffiti, tagging. Then when they got into rollers, they decimated historical writing,” explained Susan Phillips, who explored this history in her 2019 book The City Beneath: A Century of Los Angeles Graffiti. OU is certainly not the first group of LA artists to use underground spaces as their canvas; however, their novel approach unites their disparate tunnel paintings into one sprawling collective conceptual artwork.
Donning rubber boots and hi-vis safety vests, members of Operation Under use underground tunnels as their canvas. (image courtesy Superchief Gallery LA)
Murals by Operation Under (photo by Bill Dunleavy, courtesy Superchief Gallery LA)
In response to the ephemeral nature of street art, OU was driven to create work that would stand the test of time. Working in the tunnels is a way to avoid erasure by both civic authorities and fellow artists eager to claim a coveted spot, as well as protect artwork from the harmful rays of the sun.
“They got frustrated with how much work you do just to end up getting buffed,” said Superchief co-founder Bill Dunleavy, who spent two years working with OU on the show.
“There’s never a need to go over someone in a tunnel (beef excluded),” longtime OU member ADZE added. “If you keep walking, you’ll eventually find plenty of nice blank walls to paint on.”
Although some members use spray paint, most OU artists work with brushes and acrylic paint, a more stable medium that holds up better in the dank environment. It also serves as a cover if confronted by authorities. “When you’ve got spray cans, you’re a vandal” in the eyes of police, said an OU member who goes by Sick.
Operation Under was driven to create work that would stand the test of time. (photo by Bill Dunleavy, courtesy Superchief Gallery LA)
Although the secret, secluded locations might seem to preclude the wide visibility that graffiti artists above ground strive for, OU members view documentation as a way to disseminate their work. “Photography is our form of visibility. It is a way to control how our work is represented,” said Sick, noting that it is also a way to control how their work is monetized. They have published four books chronicling the project.
Despite the technically illicit nature of their prohibited excursions, there is a certain element of youthful whimsy and infectious curiosity inherent in OU’s project. “It’s a little like time travel meets juvenile exploration, secret club activity meets urban history,” Phillips said.
“We live in a pretty regulated society,” Skrederstu added. “OU makes these little openings into a part of it that people don’t talk about, that you didn’t even know existed.”
Installation view of Life Underground at Superchief Gallery LA (photo Matt Stromberg/Hyperallergic)
Installation view of Life Underground at Superchief Gallery LA (photo Matt Stromberg/Hyperallergic)
I have been an advocate for street art for many, many years partly because I saw it as an anti-establishment form of expression, forgoing galleries and museums and bringing some pretty amazing talent directly to the people without any effete curation.
So what am I to think when I see the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC offering Sprayground - a Pop Up store at the museum that offers what appears to be fashion and accessories with spray paint street art graffiti designs "while supplies last"?
Well, what I think is that street art has now been co-opted by the very institutions that tried to suppress it and has effectively "jumped the shark" meaning that it is over as a revolutionary form of expression.
I don't mind museums showcasing street art - the Miami based Museum of Graffiti is a great example of how we can celebrate that art form without diminishing it. But the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Really??
Once seen as a real estate blight, graffiti has become part of the urban fabric in many US cities. In Atlanta, street art is omnipresent in some of the trendiest neighborhoods. And places like the heavily-sprayed Krog Street Tunnel, near the BeltLine, are not only embraced by residents; they’re safe spaces for anyone with a spray can — even as graffiti remains illegal in most of the city.
It’s the result of years of behind-the-scenes work by Atlanta’s style writers to push for their culture’s preservation and decriminalization. Today they are driving forces in the conversation about public art. Read more by Brentin Mock today on CityLab: Graffiti Can Be a Neighborhood Asset, If Cities Embrace It
This great article in the Washington Post covers what I just read about in an art-related website. I am all for this type of thing and would encourage it on all dormant gentrification projects. I wish I could go to LA and see this masterpiece! Bravo!
Here is the article since it may be behind a paywall. I have a subscription.
It’s been about five years since Actual was a regular on the Los Angeles graffiti scene. He said he got on the “straight and narrow” when his daughter was born. But when graffitists started converging on an abandoned development in the city, he thought: “Am I going to be that guy that just said, ‘Oh yeah, I saw it happen. That was cool’ — or am I going to be that dude that was a part of it?”
The sky-high graffiti covering dozens of floors of the Oceanwide Plaza development in downtown L.A., a $1 billion project that was abandoned in 2019, has captured the world’s attention. It’s created eye candy for Instagram. It’s become fodder for conversations about urban blight and foreign investment. And despite graffiti’s undeniable rise to the mainstream, it’s reignited an old debate over whether it is art or vandalism.
To the graffitists participating and the experts watching, the “bombing” — as it’s called in the graffiti world — is more than a stunt or a crime. In a culture where visibility rules, the painted skyscrapers have become a landmark, literally taking the art form to a higher level. For them, it’s a historic moment.
Actual couldn’t pass it up. On his first attempt to enter the complex, he got caught and ran out. On his second, he saw security chasing a group of graffitists and tried to enter from the other direction. Another guard was waiting. Then, on his third try, he squeezed in through a hole in a fence that was covered by a construction sign. When he got into one of the towers, heart pounding, the real challenge began: “It was a big climb,” said Actual, who, like other graffitists mentioned in this story, spoke on the condition that he be identified by his tag name to discuss the illegal artwork. He wanted to paint higher than others, but by the time he reached the 36th floor, “I couldn’t walk; all my leg muscles were just shot.” So he scoped out a spot and got to work. “It was like a trance,” he said. “You’re so high up that it’s not until you come back down that you deal with the world again.”
The effort wasn’t wasted. Susan Phillips, author of “The City Beneath: A Century of Los Angeles Graffiti” and a professor at Pitzer College in California, said in an email that it was “perhaps the most legendary roll call in the history of Los Angeles.” Roger Gastman, a longtime graffiti curator and historian, said there’s been “a boom in street work the last few years unlike anything I have seen since the 1990s,” and the buildings show “that graffiti is bigger than ever.”
The reaction was, of course, not entirely positive. The Central City Association of Los Angeles released a statement saying it was “disturbed by the images of the vandalism” and calling for the city to “address this blighted property before it becomes a further nuisance.” The LAPD said Wednesday that it had arrested four suspects and was investigating “numerous crimes.”
In a social media statement last week, it said that additional security measures would be “implemented immediately” and that the graffiti will be removed. The department did not reply to a request for further information. In California, vandalism is punishable with jail time as well as fines. On Tuesday, Michael Delahaut, who lives across the street, said he was watching police raid the buildings. To the 54-year-old, who has been in the L.A. graffiti scene since the 1980s, the creation outside his window was no nuisance — it was more like waking up and finding a masterpiece had been installed in his living room. “It would’ve taken hundreds of writers, tens of thousands of cans. It’s amazing,” he said. “I’ve been able to witness a lot of graffiti movement moments, but this might be the biggest.”
The opportunity was created by a “perfect storm” of factors, Delahaut said. Buildings in the luxury complex, put up by Chinese firm Oceanwide Holdings, reached as high as 55 stories before the company put the project on hold in 2019 because of financial troubles, the Los Angeles Times reported. In December, the security company responsible for the property sued the developer, saying it had stopped paying. Oceanwide Holdings did not respond to a request for comment. After the first night that pieces started going up, Delahaut said, he expected security to ramp up. It didn’t. By the next night, “it was clearly a scene,” he said.
Delahaut watched with the fascination of a curator. He admired the typography, kept a record of the artists’ progress — noting that he might need it for a later exhibition — and likened the work to the classic style captured on the cover of Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant’s canonical 1988 book, “Subway Art.” (He also compared it to a smaller project on a building in Miami last year.) As a former graffitist himself, he couldn’t help but think through the logistics: “The process of getting into the building, climbing up the stairs and figuring out how much you got to carry,” Delahaut said. “Graffiti is so much more than the act itself.” Some have looked at the graffiti as a symbol for the state of Los Angeles.
Phillips, the author and professor, said that in a place increasingly molded by private money, the work is a “powerful commentary about who gets to shape what.” Stefano Bloch, a cultural geographer at the University of Arizona who studies graffiti, called it “an exposé on the failure of oversized development,” made “in vibrant colors that force us to look up.”
But the artists are split on their motivations. Aqua, a graffitist and fine artist who worked on the high-rise project, said in an email that for those involved, it was all about location. “It is in the heart of the city with high visibility. What a gem!” For Actual, the work gave new voice to the streets. “The money invested in [the buildings] could have done so much for this city,” he said. Now, he said, the graffiti is a reminder: “That’s every single kid in this city just putting their name down, showing they exist and taking the city back.”
New York. London. Paris. Public art tends to cluster in major cities around the world, taking center stage in downtown districts and in major institutions. But a lot of truly incredible art exists on the fringes, and some of it is even made by major artists. For a truly unique experience, you’ve got look off the beaten path, away from museums and towards the oceanfronts, mountains, and remote highways of the world. You never know what could astound you.
From the northern tip of Norway to the wilderness of the Namib Desert, we rounded up 10 major works of public art that are hiding in plain sight in some of the most remote corners of the world.
My Favorite - and I have seen it in person - Salvation Mountain
Leonard Knight
Salvation Mountain (1984–2011)
Leonard Knight, Salvation Mountain (1984–2011). Photo by Sandy Huffaker/Corbis/Getty Images.
WHAT: Leonard Knight (1931–2014) never called himself an artist, but he created an epic piece of multicolored land/folk art in the southern Californian desert. Called Salvation Mountain, it overlooks the Salton Sea, surrounded by vehicles he customized in the same visionary style. Every surface preaches Knight’s gospel of love and faith in Jesus in primary colors. When the first “mountain” he made collapsed, Knight decided it was God’s will, and he started all over again—only on a bigger scale. He did, however, abandon the idea of having a hot air balloon float above the site, as it proved impractical in the harsh desert climate.
WHERE: Salvation Mountain is next to Slab City, and a short drive from Bombay Beach, which boasts its own biennial and thriving art community. All are around a three-hour drive southwest from Los Angeles, and within easy reach of the Coachella Valley.
FUN FACT: The first Salvation Mountain, which Knight began in 1984, was made with unstable building methods and collapsed. So Knight changed locations and started again.
He was there almost from the very beginning in 1970, until the last days of his life. His influence was felt by multiple generations, and his impact on style can be seen in some of the most famous writers in the world.
Michael Tracy was born February 14, 1958, in the Bronx. As a kid he spent three days a week in Manhattan with his Puerto Rican grandfather, and four days with his Irish mother in the Bronx. His father had left the family early on. Tracy roamed the Bronx fearlessly, at night he broke into the Bronx Zoo to play with the animals, and drive the carts around.
As the graffiti movement blossomed around him in the early '70s, he started writing with a group of kids from his school, Sacred Heart. Those kids would turn into some of the most talented writers of the 1970s.
In 1974, he officially named the group Wanted. He quickly turned over the presidency of the crew to his right hand man, Chi-Chi 133.
In 1975, he started a newer group with limited membership called Wild Style. To Tracy, wild style was more than just a style, it was a way of life, as he said in a recent interview. “To me it’s almost like a religion or way of life, but it started as a series of interlocking mechanical letters that we did our pieces with. So people would see a TRACY 168, or a PNUT 2 piece and they’d have a little WS inside them and whether they could read them or not they’d say “Yo, WILD STYLE!“ So it was not only a crew but it was also the type of style we represented.”
To later generations it would always be the title of the Hip-Hop film by Charlie Ahearn.
The bulk of Tracy’s work was done on the trains from 1972 to 1976. His earlier pieces were just outlines of his eponymous tag. By 1973, he started to blossom, adding his innate artistic ability into his works.
In 1974, he painted a perfect rendering of Yosemite Sam on the side of the trains. Cartoons were fairly new at the time, and his rendering was highly sophisticated.
In 1975, he painted a rocket going sideways, the flames shooting out and enveloping his name, taking a great concept and rendering it perfectly. At the same time as doing these elaborate pieces, he continued to blanket the lines with his name, and painted in billboard letters with silver and black in under ten minutes. His speed and efficiency were so great that he could do twenty of these in a night.
Guess who's about to move into Jean-Michel Basquiat's old studio in Manhattan's Bowery neighborhood? It's the film star Angelina Jolie, who will pay a monthly rent of $60,000 for the property. From now on, call it Atelier Jolie.
The Manhattan building that once housed the studio and living quarters of late artist Jean-Michel Basquiat has found a new tenant. Last week, actress and humanitarian Angelina Jolie announced that she had secured 57 Great Jones Street, a two-story structure owned by Andy Warhol for 20 years, for a new creative endeavor platforming underrepresented fashion workers. With 6,600 square feet at her disposal, Jolie is working to create “a community of creativity and inspiration, regardless of socio-economic background” by providing resources and support to an international network of tailors through Atelier Jolie.
John Roesch and Garrett Kelly, the two Meridian Capital Group brokers who negotiated the deal, confirmed to Hyperallergic that Jolie signed an eight-year lease on the historic building that had been on the market for $60,000 a month since last November. Pop artist Andy Warhol bought 57 Great Jones Street, situated in Manhattan’s Noho neighborhood, in 1970 before leasing it to his close friend and fellow artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat, in 1983. Basquiat both lived and made art in the space until his untimely death at age 27 in 1988.
Basquiat, a Brooklyn native of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent, worked prolifically in the space as he continued to contest the boundaries between so-called “high art” and “low art” through his signature street art style that addressed themes of race, class, religion, and mortality. During the 1980s, Basquiat and Warhol shared a very close friendship, operating as collaborators, confidantes, and even creative competitors. Their friendship was widely publicized, but became fractured after their joint exhibition’s poor reception also yielded characterizations of Basquiat being “an art world mascot.” Though the two never formally reconciled, Warhol’s death in 1987 reportedly contributed to Basquiat’s downward spiral alongside his intense rise to fame and mistreatment as a Black man in the arts scene. Basquiat was found dead in the Noho apartment on August 12, 1988, from a heroin overdose.
In 2016, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation installed a plaque honoring Basquiat on the building’s exterior, which had long been tagged by graffiti artists paying tribute to the late visionary. Village Preservation’s Executive Director Andrew Berman described the building as “a uniquely significant part of New York City’s cultural heritage and landscape,” expressing pride in its landmark designation.
“It is our hope that this building will remain intact and in some way accessible to the public forever, in order to allow all who wish to the ability to appreciate its historic significance,” Berman told Hyperallergic.
The building’s first floor is home to an exclusive, invite-only Japanese restaurant called Bohemian. Neither Atelier Jolie nor the restaurant could be reached for inquiries.
Roesch told Hyperallergic that Meridian Retail Leasing negotiated the deal with Jolie for about six months. “We had a ton of offers from reputable operators, but her concept seemed best fit for the building and its history,” he said. Perhaps nodding to Basquiat’s reuse of existing materials for the surfaces of his work, Atelier Jolie pledged a commitment to sustainability through the use of “leftover, quality vintage material and deadstock,” focusing on the production of “quality heirloom garments with personal meaning.”
Steel and other community members will create large-scale works for an exhibition in November.
Ant Steel is not the type to scale walls or stealthily spray-paint street corners under the cover of darkness. Steel asks for permission to paint. Always. He’s not interested in tags or gaudy throwies and tends to paint vibrant, highly realistic works as community projects.
Steel’s more formal approach to graffiti stems from a career in graphic design that involved preparing images for advertisement. If it was a spray job, Steel would go and watch the painters dangle off the side of giant billboards, his feet firmly on the ground. Only more recently has Steel begun creating a different type of public art: a mural of Queen Elizabeth II outside a shopping center, an extensive pro-Ukraine painting on a town wall—and now, a series of works as artist-in-residence at St Albans Cathedral, Britain’s oldest site of continuous Christian worship.
The wall depicting a peregrine falcon Steel painted for St Albans Film Festival. Photo: courtesy Ant Steel.
“Street art has a loud voice and I want it to shout as loud as possible,” Steel told Artnet News. “At the cathedral, I have a remit of running workshops and events. My goal is to be involved within the community.”
To be clear, Steel won’t be transforming the stone walls of St Albans with color, though, in a curious echo, the cathedral is riddled with thousands of carved graffiti marks dating back hundreds of years. Instead, Steel will be creating large-scale works on boards as well as working with children, asylum seekers, refugees and adults to create an exhibition in November, one he believes will “turn some heads.”
Steel’s wall for Ukraine in St Albans. Photo: courtesy Ant Steel.
The Cathedral approached Steel after learning about the workshops he led for the St Albans Film Festival as part of its broader push to attract younger and more diverse audiences. The landmark has been running its artist-in-residence program since 2018.
“The Cathedral has long been a patron of arts and is keen to support local artists,” Kevin Walton, the Cathedral’s Canon Chancellor, told Artnet News. “Ant Steel’s fresh and engaging artistic offer and his dedicated approach to community work matched our vision.”
Walton was also drawn to the idea of a contemporary graffiti artist playing off the marks worked into the Cathedral. “We are consciously building on our long heritage in this place,” Walton said.
See more images from the artist in resident program below:
Ant Steel at work outside St Albans Cathedral. Photo: courtesy Ant Steel.
