.
Postprandial slump
it’s my age I’d like to think
pinching doesn’t work
.
by Scooj
2440. Meadow Street, Weston-super-Mare
EEEK! What a wonderful anamorphic spider stencil from JPS in Weston-super-Mare. This piece is one of three small stencils adorning a shop front on Meadow Street. The remarkable thing about JPS’ art in WSM is how incredibly fresh most of it looks, and how few of the pieces are tagged.
The patterns on this spider and the shadows it appears to cast on the wall make this, for me, an outstanding stencil. I am guessing that all the little bristles on the legs were painted by hand, as I don’t think that even JPS would have the patience to cut each of those on the stencil. A seriously classy small piece.
2439. Rear Oxford Street, Weston-super-Mare
I recently took a trip (mainly to give the dog somewhere different to experience) to Weston-super-Mare, and it hadn’t changed much from the last time I visited a couple of years back. What I was able to do however was explore the town for JPS street art, and naturally this is the place to do it.
In my view, JPS doesn’t come to Bristol nearly enough, but WSM is his manor and that is where so much of his work is. I think this piece of a youing skateboarder is reasonably recent, but I have no real way of knowing. I understand that JPS now lives in Bavaria, but I am sure that he returns now and again to his old stomping ground.
This piece, like all of his stencils is beautifully intricate and has been specifically placed to give the impression that the child is skating over the street sign. This is just the first of many posts I will be bringing to Natural Adventures over the coming days/months from WSM featuring JPS, Fawn and PZY.
Charlatan wing
Win at any cost
me first, England first, them last
confidence tricksters
by Scooj
2438. Upfest 2018 (160)
Way back at Upfest 2016, I bee W was the first street artist at a festival that I had the courage to speak to, shortly before I spoke with Dice 67 (who I later went on to conduct my first, and so far only, interview). Turns out that the vast majority of street artists are lovely people and even at festivals make time for a quick chat.
I bee W is a stencil artist whose stencils are often placed on carefully crafted or textured backgrounds and so become part of something bigger than the stencil alone. There is a story here, but I’ll be damned if I know what it is. A lady in a bikini bookended by a pair of seahorses. It is a pretty piece albeit slightly surreal. I have a few more of his pieces lurking in my archives, so I’ll have to dig them out.
That rounds off this series of ten Upfest 2018 catch up posts, but I’ll be doing more over the autumn and winter as there are still so many I haven’t yet posted.
2437. Upfest 2018 (159)
This is a magnificent piece by Deeds, so full of movement. Really stylish and classy. Although I am familiar with the name of the artist, he has been spray painting with stencils since the 1980s, I am not very familiar with his work.
In this piece The stencil of the horse appears to have been done in staggered sections to give it that feeling of movement, and the bright blue strips just seem to emphasise it. In the WIP shot above, you can see that he worked on the piece from the top down on the already prepped red background. A classy piece.
2436. Upfest 2018 (158)
I have already posted a very striking Upfest piece by Brighton-based Mazcan but this one slipped a little under my radar until I recently started sorting through another batch of pieces from last year’s festival.
This is a superb work that looks like it has just dropped off the page of a rather dark comic strip book. There is drama and movement in the way the hair sweeps across the portrait… what is going on here? Her eyes give nothing away. Lovely piece.
2435. Upfest 2018 (157)
It is curious, but in my mind’s eye I thought that I had already posted this piece by Guts, but my foolproof system tells me that I haven’t. So here we have a bright psychadelic piece which would seem to be about consumption. I am definitely a fan of Guts’ work and I think that he comes from the same school of colour use as Loch Ness.
There are plenty of his characteristic motifs, such as the little skulls littering the piece, but a feature I really love, and I know it is not the point of the piece, is the little ‘My Name Is’ sign where he has put his signature. This emblem was adopted by other artists on this set of hoardings at Upfest. Nice one Guts.
Sleeper
.
It is fortunate
Bristol is end of the line
Scooj sleepy sleeper.
.
by Scooj
* On heart-stopping moment of waking up in my destination station.
2434. Upfest 2018 (156)
Deuz is another artist who was at Upfest 2018 who didn’t appear in the Upfest official programme, which is always a bit troublesome for me because I have to do my own research rather than rely on others. Deuz is a French artist who cut his teeth by writing graffiti on the streets of Marseille in the 1990s. He went on to study art and now his work is largely portraits of Africans, his ‘faces’ that were inspired by hip hop culture.
I don’t know who Nina Gabriel is but then again I can’t know everything. I would hazard a guess that she is probably a musician. The nicely worked greyscale piece was in the back yard of the Steam Crane, which since Upfest 2018 looks like it might have changed hands, and these hoardings have since come down, which is a pity.
Natural adventures 