Stik is probably the most instantly recognisable street artist in the world. His simple stick figures hide a sophistication that is quite baffling really. They appear to convey such strong feelings and emotions, often compassionate. How does he do that?
This is a cheeky little ‘left-over’ from Upfest 2016 by Feoflip when he was in town in July. He has playfully animated a plug and wire, giving it a little personality. He sprayed several of these around the place, and I will try to post about them all. This one is on the wooden panels that create a terraced lawn (a bit of a fancy word for some grass) on the northern side of The Bearpit.
You can tell that Feoflip is not from these parts – we don’t use plugs like that in the UK, we have much more chunky square-pin jobbies that would look more like bull dogs than this rather cute ‘terrier’.
It is not so long ago that I posted a piece by Face F1st, which was in the same place as this one, although this face predates the other. Aaargh! the confusion and disruption of archiving. There is simply too much Bristol street/graffiti art to post in a nice logical sequence. When I go out to take pictures, I might get a dozen or more new pieces. These will be additional to the hundreds I have not yet published. I only get enough time to write about one piece a day, so I have a dilemma…do I publish the most recent piece or just post in a rather more organic way. I have opted for the latter, which is why this older piece by Face F1st has been published after the more recent one. An over-long explanation I fear.
I have long admired the work of Annatomix from the comfort of my PC or mobile phone through Instagram and other digital social media. It was a real pleasure then to see her at work at this year’s Upfest.
Time to post a few more pieces from Upfest 2016. This wonderful fish, in the playground of Ashton Gate School, is by Angerami, an artist from Sao Paolo but who now travels the world for his art. He has a Wikipedia page, but sadly it is in Portuguese (I think), and I don’t know what it says.
The biography for Angerami in the Upfest Programme is as follows:
‘Angerami uses travel as an immersive process in the nature, revealed through art in many different medias. Travelling is a passion, which allows connection with his perception of time, space, spiritual awareness and human presence on earth.’
Go figure that out…translated I guess from another source. He paints fish on walls, and that is good enough for me.
This is a happy piece by The Addicted Doodler and was part of a bigger ASK crew jam back in sunny June of this year. It was one of the most memorable collaborations of the year and In my view utterly brilliant. Other artists included Aspire, Kid Crayon and SPZero76.
I have known about this piece for a while, but just never knew where it was. To my huge excitement and fulfilment I found it recently, while looking for another piece nearby. This is by one of my favourite street artists, Aspire, who is better known for his amazing birds.
I don’t know who the subject of the piece is, but I would guess a prominent local musician or blues artist perhaps. It seems slightly peculiar seeing work by Aspire that is not a bird, but I consider it to be equally good, and I would like to see more of it.
The piece has been here for a while and is slightly worse for wear, but it has persisted and survived untagged…often the mark of a respected artist.
This is a beautiful bit of wildstyle writing from 3Dom. His wildstyle form tends to be quite organic and ethereal, more in the style of Ments, rather than the hard, clean, sharp geometric writing associated with his Bristol peers Deamze, Sokem, Epok and Voyder, to name just a few.
This piece was from a little while ago and has been painted over several times since. It is nice to have a record of it though. It was part of an ASK crew paint jam in March, and his piece here is sandwiched between Voyder on the left and Sled One on the right. Nice work.
Every now and again you come across something quite different. Something that stands out from the crowd. This lovely colourful piece was at the end of one of the pedestrian tunnels at The Bearpit. It is by an artist I know nothing about, and I haven’t seen her work before. Her name is Georgie or Georgieartist as she signs herself and I think she comes from the West of England somewhere.
Her Facebook page demonstrates some of her work and how she creates it, it is well worth a good look. She has strong political convictions and I like that in a street artist, however this piece seems to be simply full of Bristolian joy. I love it. ‘Lush’ is a very Bristolian word which kind of means great or brilliant, but is usually used in the familiar vernacular. ‘That’s gert lush that is’.
This is one of the slightly more bonkers pieces from Upfest this year. Surreal and vivid, it absolutely makes me smile every time I look at it. Unfortunately I never got to see the finished work, but I was pleased to get some pictures of the artist at work.
Natural adventures 