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Nectar specialist
with a convergent design
ultra-fast wingbeat.
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by Scooj
- Seen on the hill overlooking Barcelona.
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Nectar specialist
with a convergent design
ultra-fast wingbeat.
.
by Scooj
Oooh, I love New York, and so it seems does Invader. Deep in the heart of Little Italy in SoHo this magnificent pixelated mosaic by the great French artist resides above a clam restaurant. The piece was given a helping hand by the LISA (Little Italy Street Art) project.

I have only ever seen a handful of Invader pieces in the flesh, and this one is quite the largest. A magnificent present for those who like to keep their eyes open.

Very close to where we were staying in New York was this large and imposing piece by the fabulous Shepard Fairey. The style is austere and seems to bear a resemblance to totalitarian state propaganda branding or dystopian future movie motifs such as in ‘the hunger games. The sentiment though is for the people.

I rather like this highly designed corporate look, and it certainly is a striking piece that yells out at passers by.
Door 25

I returned from a short break to Barcelona with my daughter last night, and my memory card is heavily laden with doors. Barcelona must surely be one of the great capitals of interesting doors.
In the older part of the city, and indeed throughout much of the rest of the city doors appear to be fair targets for graffiti, and what a lot of it there is. This first set of three doors gives you a feel for what is commonplace in Barcelona…ordinary city doors, covered from top to bottom in graffiti.


I will post more doors from Barcelona over the coming weeks.
by Scooj
More doors at: Thursday Doors – Norm 2.0
Searching the oceans
vermillion, scimitar fins,
moonfish so striking.
by Scooj
Getting back into the groove with some more contemporary work. This is a recent piece by Laic217 on the curved wall in Dean Lane skate park. He did a similar black and white piece here in July last year, just before Upfest.

This time his skeleton character, rather than holding a spray can is shouldering a ghetto blaster (which I recently called a boogie box in a previous post) – booming out the lyrics ‘ice ice baby’ by Vanilla Ice. Seeing this, I just had to go onto YouTube to remind myself of the video, which features a lot of graffiti in it. The video is terribly dated (already) and the song itself so incredibly reliant on a great riff from Queen underpinning the whole thing. It is a catchy tune though.

I don’t think I will ever tire of Laic217’s work – it somehow feels representative of the whole Bristol scene – an overseas artist who has settled here and is really becoming part of Bristol’s new wave which is vibrant and exciting, but sits comfortably alongside the longer established street/graffiti artists. There is room for everyone here.

Photograps taken in St Werburghs tunnel are a real challenge. The colours are yellowed out if you don’t use a flash, and when you do use a flash (a non-sophisticated one like I use) you get horrible reflections obscuring the art. This piece by Fiver (Fiva) looks a bit dreary, but it was far from that in the flesh.

Fiver is an artist I have featured a couple of times this winter, having not seen much from him for quite a long while. This is an old one, full of charm. I believe the character is Donkey Kong of Nintendo fame. A fun piece.
Back to the more recent stuff now. I am not used to seeing writing from NEVERGIVEUP, who is better known for his bunnies and monsters, so this one in Dean Lane comes as a bit of a surprise.

I can’t really make out what the letters say, probably because I haven’t seen much of his writing before and the style is typically unique. He does like to do things his way and is fast establishing himself into the Bristol street art scene.
Screeching green flashes
fly from palm top to palm top
busy nestbuilding.
by Scooj
I write my posts in batches, getting a few done in advance, when I have a moment to do them. This can be tricky while juggling a full-time job, two teenage children, a cat, a dog, a chameleon, an extremely hard-working wife, housework, an allotment, decorating and so on. Life is full, and it would be impossible to find the time to write two posts a day every day. Doing them in batches also carries economies of scale, where I can process a batch of photographs in one go and writing tends to come more freely once you are on a roll.
Why am I mentioning this? Well, by the time I publish this post on a fabulous piece by Kleiner Shames, I will be on a special short break trip in Barcelona with my daughter, and I wanted to say ‘hello from Barcelona’, but to say this I have had to think ahead and I am saying ‘hello from Barcelona’ from the comfort of my study which all feels a bit artificial really, but is helping me to get very excited about our trip.

This is a fine piece of writing from one of my favourite Bristol artists who now lives in London. I have posted many of his works on this blog, and each of them is a winner. Concealed in this splash of colour is the word ‘FOIS’…time in French. Most of his pieces have this word, and at first I thought his street art name was Fois.

This is another one that I have dug out of my archive, because it is simply just too good not to share.
Oh and ‘Hi from Barcelona’ I think I’m having a wonderful time.