I have decided to task my son and Arnold's General Manager, Chris with writing a blog post for whatever he wants to write about every Monday. So without further ado here is Chris.....
Hi there, since being tasked to write the blog every Monday I figured I would start with something I love. Anyone who knows me, which most of you probably don't, know that I love Street Art and have since I was a kid. I follow all sorts of Contemporary artists, but I am somewhat obsessed with street art in general. I have been all over the country to photograph it, research it pretty much every day, and own prints from several prominent artists in the genre. I will be calling the series, that will be up every Monday.... Street Art Education
At least for the beginning of this venture, I will be profiling a different street artists of different degrees of fame. Some will have stuff up in Cincinnati and some will not, just whoever I am particularly interested in that day.
Barry, a graduate of the San Franciso Art Institute is by far, one of my favorites and at least partially responsible for the renaissance of Graffit that happened in San Francisco in the 90's. Beyond the ridiculous letter style that he has, I really like the surrealistic faces and heads that he is so well known for. One cool project that he did, he painted portraits of street people on the actual bottles of liqour that they were drinking out of when he approached them. If you have an extra $4,500 laying around, you can buy one of those bottles here. As far as acquiring any of his work, prints or pretty much anything that he is associated with, you have to have some deep pockets and a little luck as he definitely is not known to over saturate the market. It's even hard to find his stuff on the street because it is so sought after that people take it down or find a way to remove it to sell. I guess in Cincinnati we are lucky that it is so high up. Haha. Below are some links, photos and even a video of him painting the face across from the CAC.
Learn more about Barry here
Buy one of his books here
This mural was up in the Los Angeles County Museum Of Art's parking garage. They tore down the building without saving the very valuable mural
A piece he did in San Francisco in the early 90's
Some of the bottles mentioned above
He painted this whole building for Art Basel in Miami. It is a coffee shop now but they kept the art up.
A wall he did for the "Art in the streets" exhibition at the MOCA in Los Angeles
