Kim Kardashian photoshoot by Estevan Oriol

For more checkout: estevanoriol.com

Find out more at: EstevanOriol.com

The underground artist has found his scrawl space in the mainstream, with his work emblazoned on movie billboards, custom cars and video games. He gives products ’street cred’ and counterculture cool.
By Chris Lee
April 4, 2009
Mister Cartoon eyeballed a blank spot on the giant graffiti mural and rattled his can of spray paint. An aerosol hiss filled the air. With a few fluid swipes of his beefy arm, an image began to take shape: a cluster of storm clouds massing above a Windex blue hot rod.

“If I knew the cops were coming to bust me, I could probably finish this whole thing in an hour,” the street artist joked.

Cartoon is standing atop a ladder in front of a 14-by-48 canvas in his cavernous warehouse studio in an industrial cul-de-sac just past L.A.’s skid row. His work in progress would hardly qualify as vandalism. The billboard was commissioned by Universal Studios to publicize the latest entry in its street-racing movie franchise, “Fast & Furious.”

The burly Cartoon, with a shaved head and gang-inspired tattoos creeping down his forearms and up his neck, has become one of corporate America’s hottest image makers. He’s in demand to imbue products — even celebrities — with “street cred” and counterculture cool.

Cartoon (born Mark Machado, but call him that at your risk), 39, readily admits he perfected his craft practicing public defacement as an outlaw tagger. He’s a big shot in lowrider circles — the artist has 11 prize-worthy customized show cars. His ability to create visuals encompassing Chicano gang and lowrider culture, ’70s New York graffiti and Japanimation has made Cartoon a sought-after tattoo artist, car customizer, illustrator and fashion designer.

“It’s definitely a rush seeing your art on a billboard,” Cartoon said. “Working with design agencies, designing concept cars — it’s a long way from my dad telling me to get a real job.”

Cartoon’s graphic designs, illustrations and artwork have also been used to add visual punch to a crazy quilt of pop cultural offerings:

He rendered the gang scrawl seen throughout the bestselling video game “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.” He designed clothing for companies including Levi Strauss, Stussy, Vans and Supreme. He designed a customized T-Mobile Sidekick. He did detail work for a concept car for Scion. In 2005, Nike hired Cartoon to create limited editions of its Air Force 1 and Cortez shoes.

“The mainstream is coming around to his aesthetic, not the other way around,” said movie producer Brian Grazer, who is planning a film based on Cartoon’s life. “He doesn’t change. He’s still hard-core. He’s a gatekeeper to that world.”

Aaron Rose, an authority on underground art and co-director of the street art documentary “Beautiful Losers,” has showcased Cartoon’s creations in three exhibitions. He said the artist’s identification with the corporate establishment has helped distinguish him from the scrum of street artists trying to go legit.

“The corporate apparel brands embracing him and promoting his work was a big step in rising out of the underground,” Rose said. “Nike is a big stage. Suddenly he’s got 5 million more fans. It gave Cartoon cult celebrity status.”

Mister Cartoon grew up in San Pedro, the son of working-class parents who operated a printing shop. As a youngster, he fell in with a crowd he describes as “knuckleheads and sickos,” but he stops just short of admitting gang membership.

“I have been affected by gang culture up close and personally from a young age,” Cartoon said. “My parents would go to work and I’d run the streets. I could have been locked up or killed.”

When he was a teen, his style was heavily influenced by the abstract, brightly colored graffiti — usually letters — found on New York subways. When he was 17, authorities charged him with $30,000 worth of vandalism. The artist — who augmented his tagger alias Cartoon with “Mister” in a bid to be seen as grown up — was prosecuted as a minor. He avoided going to juvenile hall by pleading guilty.

He says he was put on probation and fined $3,000 — in that era, juvenile graffiti vandals were responsible for repaying one-tenth of the damages they caused. Cartoon said he paid the sum almost immediately by accepting one of his earliest commissions: a mural for a boxing gym.

“I used graffiti to pay my graffiti debt,” Cartoon said, chuckling.

But within months, the tagging lifestyle had lost its allure for the artist.

Through a fluke, a photographer for Car and Driver magazine asked him to make a gang-graffiti backdrop for a photo shoot, resulting in Cartoon’s first portfolio-worthy tear sheet.

“Some guy pulled up to San Pedro High School and said, ‘Hey, who’s the best graffiti artist in school? I’ve got a job for him doing a magazine cover,’ ” Cartoon recalled.

Obsessed with car culture, he began airbrushing T-shirts at custom car shows and gradually picked up pointers on painting murals on car doors and hoods. At age 20, he landed a job as an illustrator at Hustler magazine and soon parlayed his work doing ribald cartoons there into a sideline designing album covers for Southland hip-hop artists.

At a record release party in 1992, he met Estevan Oriol, manager of the stoner rap trio Cypress Hill. They became friends around the time Cartoon was getting a lot of tattoos. Oriol convinced Cartoon that tattoo art would be a natural progression from the kind of art he already was doing. The manager hired Cartoon to create an album cover for Cypress Hill and brought him on tour with the hard-partying group.

“I let him sketch on me,” Oriol said. “I showed the guys from Cypress Hill and made them get tattoos. When we’d go on tour with Goodie Mob or OutKast, I’d say, ‘Get tattooed by my boy.’ ”

Photos: Mister Cartoon
The tattoo that finally earned him a reputation, though, was created for Eminem. In 1999, less than five years after his maiden efforts with a homemade tattoo gun, Cartoon rendered a city scene on the rap superstar’s upper left arm. Thanks to Eminem’s towering cultural presence at that time, Cartoon’s business achieved a critical mass. He hit the mainstream.

Cartoon has since etched his stark black designs (working in the style of prison tattoo artists, he never uses colored ink) onto a Who’s Who of pop stars and pro basketball players, including Utah Jazz forward Carlos Boozer. His minimum fee is $1,000 per session. (”If you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it,” Cartoon likes to say.) Although he refuses to be pinned down on the dollar amount, a large-scale tattoo like the “50″ that he inked over most of rapper 50 Cent’s back and shoulders reportedly costs about $20,000.

It was in 2002 while shooting the movie “8 Mile,” recalled Grazer, Imagine Entertainment co-chief, that he heard about Cartoon from Eminem. He traveled to the artist’s studio and, on the basis of a strong first impression, Grazer signed a deal to produce the artist’s biopic, tentatively titled “Ink.” He also hired Cartoon to executive-produce another Imagine feature, “Lowrider.”

“He had this giant underground following,” Grazer said. “I like his tattoo stuff, the car stuff, his detailing. He’s original and smart. His story is interesting.”

Nike, however, balked when Cartoon proposed designing collections for the company in 2004. “It took a year to convince Nike. Proposals. Meeting after meeting. ‘Cartoon? He’s a tattoo guy. What does he know about fashion?’ ” he recalled hearing from Nike representatives. “I didn’t take it as an insult. I was just working. Multitasking. I thought: ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.’ ”

The artist persisted, and now his limited-edition sneakers — a model he designed in collaboration with Lance Armstrong is due out in July — regularly sell for hundreds of dollars above suggested retail.

Nike says it now counts Cartoon’s limited-edition redesigns of its Air Force 1 sneakers (such as the model he emblazoned with a skeleton, spider webs and “L.A.”) among “the most coveted releases in our history.”

In keeping with his image as a hero to the lowrider set, Cartoon drove his heavily customized ‘64 Chevy Impala from skid row to the Sunset Strip for the unveiling of the “Fast & Furious” billboard late last month.

Once there, the artist hit switches to make the car’s front end bounce up and down on hydraulic springs before photographers, reporters and cameramen assembled for the event.

Michael Moses, executive vice president of Universal Pictures’ marketing and publicity, said the studio hired Cartoon — whom he described as “the foremost graffiti artist of our city” — to create the billboard in an effort to reconnect the “Fast & Furious” franchise with its street culture origins.

The studio gave Cartoon an unusual degree of independence to depict key scenes and vehicles from the movie, personalized with his signature visuals: There were mucho macho muscle cars, an idealized femme fatale, a Mexican Dia de Los Muertos skeleton and the movie’s name emblazoned in gothic gangster font.

Neither the artist nor the studio would comment on the price tag for the mural. Local graffiti artists Revok and Toomer assisted Cartoon in painting it.

The billboard is Cartoon’s second movie assignment. He established his film publicity bona fides last year with a poster featuring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in the crime drama “Righteous Kill” — an image reminiscent of faded newsprint, a wanted poster and a graffiti stencil.

“He’s real. His whole group is,” said Peter Adee, president of marketing and distribution for Overture Films, who picked Cartoon to design the “Righteous Kill” poster and Oriol to photograph it. “They’re into trying to get to an idea that’s as commercial as possible without selling out. They do mass production of images, but at the same time it’s not homogenization. They stay true to their art and roots.”

Mister Cartoon, a married father of four, traces most of his personal and professional success to the awakening he experienced in 1997 when he made the decision to give up drinking and other “mind-altering substances” he favored after years of touring with Cypress Hill. A friend from the tattoo world, Baby Ray, helped Cartoon improve his tattooing technique but also provided a dose of tough love and spiritual guidance.

“I don’t expect a trophy or a cookie or a pat on the back,” Cartoon said. “I made a decision to change my life and help my family.”

That decision resulted in the clarity to pursue his ambitions. But to hear the artist tell it, making good on those plans is also a matter of following the rules.

“Am I gifted or especially talented?” Cartoon said. “No. I got all this through hard work. Through respecting my old man. From taking direction from people. From painting when everyone else was asleep. I just found something I really love and practiced at it my whole life.”

MR CARTOON | REVOK1.com

Live painting with Augor, Pose, Jaes, Ewok and Enue. Visit 33third.com and Ironlak.com for more information.

33Third Store/Gallery
5111 West Pico Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90019

Find out more at: The Last Laugh

Find out more at: GUERILLA ONE | VINTAGE TATTOO | OBEY GIANT

NEW PRINT

Numbers are very limited so be about it or be without it.

“WE LOVE L.A.” -Collaboration with Krush, Retna, Rime, Revok, Augor, and Ewok.

"Untitled" -Collaboration with Retna, Pose, Revok and Augor.

BUY THEM HERE

CHIAROSCURO

An art show and release party curated by NORM for the
New TSL ARMOR jewelry & THE SEVENTH LETTER clothing collection

opening night Saturday May 2nd, 2009 | 8-11pm

NORM, PUSH, AMANDALYNN, KENTON PARKER, SABER, REVOK, ESTEVAN ORIOL, RISKY, VICTOR REYES, RETNA, YOUNG SAVANNAH, YOUNG KEi, ZESER, POSE, FATE, KEEGAN GIBBS, RIME, STEEL, BERT KRAK, SEVER, KRUSH, DAVID FLORES ATC, WISE

Canvas LA
441 North Fairfax Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90036

RSVP at: info@canvasla.com or info@knowngallery.com

Limited Edition T-shirt release on opening night

�

THE KNIGHT

The text reads:

"SOMOS LOS NINOS DE LA CALLE BAGO QUE QUEREMOS
LA BARRIOS DE EL MUNDO, UN DIA TODOS VAMOS A REGRESAR,
A REGRESAR A RECOGER MI GENTE QUE AMOS PERDIDO AQUI..."

On the right:

"MOTHER MOTHER THERES TO MANY OF YOU CRYING. BROTHER BROTHER THERES TO MANY OF YOU DYING YOU KNOW WEVE GOT TO FIND A WAY TO BRING SOME LOVE."

The Brim on the hat reads:

"FOR ONLY LOVE CAN CONQUER HATE."

THANK YOU: RETNA & THE MAC

Photos by Ron Finley

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nekst doesnt need much of an introduction. Just come to New York and surrounding areas for a day and you will quickly know and understand who he is.

I am working on a project to culminate at the end of this year on my graffiti documentary photographs. These are only some of the photos from this night since I am trying to balance posting photos, while keeping the best ones on ice so they are saved “new” for the show. More info about that to come in the future…

FInd out more at KEEGAN GIBBS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Find out more at:

JerseyJoeArt | BunnyKitty | LordsOfApathy  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hi folks. I'm taking another moment on my soapbox here. This time, I'd like to talk about the Boston trial of Shepard Fairey, and why it is bad for Boston, regardless of whether you hate or love him and his work.

This was adapted from a talk that I gave at the Boston ICA on April 4. A large number of people there asked me to publish it or make it somehow available, so as it is a current event, I'm putting on my site so as to make it available quickly.

I was supposed to give attendees of the talk a basic introduction to Shepard Fairey, but took a detour. We have an unusual circumstance. I want to talk about Shepard Fairey and your money; and to start, I'd like to show you a small bit of a poem by Walt Whitman. Just what you expected in a talk about Shepard Fairey, right? Don't worry, it's short.

I do not ask who you are, that is not important to me, 
You can do nothing and be nothing but what I will infold you.

To cotton-field drudge or cleaner of privies I lean, 
On his right cheek I put the family kiss, 
And in my soul I swear I never will deny him.

On women fit for conception I start bigger and nimbler babes. 
(This day I am jetting the stuff of far more arrogant republics.)

To any one dying, thither I speed and twist the knob of the door. 
Turn the bed-clothes toward the foot of the bed, 
Let the physician and the priest go home.

That was a tiny section from Walt Whitman's famous epic poem, Song of Myself, which was published in his masterwork, Leaves of Grass. In 1882, on its publication, Boston authorities banned the book for indecency. They singled out the section I just quoted, presumably because of its veiled references to kissing a dude. Boston authorities would go on to ban Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles in 1891. In the 20th Century, Boston authorities would go on to ban, or do their best to ban, works by H.L. Mencken, Aldous Huxley, Ernest Hemingway, and even Voltaire's Candide, nearly two hundred years after its publication. Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front was removed, successfully, as well.

These books were all banned because they were in violation of local law. Their works were removed from shelves because they were illegal.

Yet when you all were in grade school, you probably read some of these works in English class. What was once illegal and obscene became something teenagers have to write a book reports on.

So why am I giving you this little American Literature lesson? Because there's an elephant in the room today: Shepard Fairey will on April 14 again appear in Boston court on vandalism charges for works he allegedly installed in Boston streets. While here preparing for his show here inside the walls of the ICA, he did work in a number of Boston locations, including a banner hanging on City Hall, and many less high-profile spaces.

After posing with none other than Boston Mayor Tom Menino under his banner at City Hall, at the public opening of this show, Shepard was arrested on his way into the building. A small number of Boston police, at the urging of a small activist group from Boston's wealthiest neighborhood, dug up an eight year old bench warrant - given for putting a sticker on a sign pole - tailed him, and moved in. Shepard was made to fly back from his Los Angeles home to face an arraignment a week later. He is charged with 29 felony counts.

29 felony counts.

Neither Whitman, Hemingway, Hardy, or Remarque ever felt Boston police handcuffs. They never faced a penalty of decades of jail time. Shepard has, and does, here and today, this very month, right here in our own home town, while his portraits of the sitting United States President loom next to those of our very own nation's founding fathers in the Smithsonian and upstairs here at the Boston ICA. It's a lot more comfortable to talk about the prosecution of artists when it happened in Whitman's time, but here we are.

29 felony counts.

I mention this today because, at least in my original audience at the Boston ICA, you are all here as art and design professionals and fans of art in our city. We're here because this is our passion, but just as important, our livelihood. We make our money through art and design. And we all know what each of us are up against in Boston. We all know the pay cut that each of us takes to stay here for reasons of loyalty to family or birthplace. And we as a group need to spread the word to all who will hear it that this arrest is destructive to the Massachusetts creative economy.

The specifics of Shepard Fairey's case, what he did, and even what we think of him and his work on an individual basis - these are all irrelevant. Whether you adore his work or feel it is overexposed, plagiarized hipster wallpaper is beside the point. I dislike several things he's done, and several of my closest artist friends abhor the guy. But like or hate, it doesn't matter.

What matters is that his arrest is taking money away from Boston. What is relevant is the effect that his arrest and gratuitous prosecution has on every creative professional here by only reinforcing Boston's reputation as a terrible place to do creative business. What matters is the reputation of our city as an artistic base, because reputation, writ large, is the soil in which our collective businesses grow.

When an institution like the ICA hosts a major show by the most famous artist of the moment at the height of his fame; the eyes of the creative world settle on Boston to gauge if it is where they wish to invest. Shows like this are job interviews for the city. They are Boston's chance to show the world what it is are made of, while the world's eyes have settled on it while we play host to a successful, known quantity. Shepard's opening at the Boston ICA brought substantial numbers of visitors of substantial wealth and influence to town - just in my own small personal circle, I entertained visitors from California, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington D.C., Mississippi, Germany, and Turkey, all of whom were well-to-do people who had traveled to Boston specifically for the show, stayed in Boston hotels, shopped at Boston shops, and ate at Boston restaurants. I even sold a few of my own paintings. These are all taxable dollars coming into our economy, but the legal action taken against Shepard sent every one of these well-to-do, well-connected visitors home shaking their heads at what a culturally backward city Boston is. And you can bet that they will tell their well-to-do, well-connected friends as well.

I can cheerlead for my hometown until my face is blue, but outside investment is fickle and squeamish and does not like uncertainty. And Shepard's arrest gave every brand director, location scout, art collector, ad buyer, and trend spotter reason to be wary of doing business in our city - all the while snickering into their hand and shaking their heads at us. People laugh at Boston for being a city of culturally clueless Puritans, and because of that, business that depends on an audience to the contrary, avoids Boston. This arrest has renewed our subscription to this unfortunate perception.

History invariably excoriates those who prosecute art of any stripe. There is no escape from history's mockery. There's no way around it. History will laugh at us. The details of present - day illegality simply dissolve in the mocking laughter of years down the line.

But what do last are the black eyes on the local creative economy. What lasts is the cloud of hostile uncertainty that any business doing anything creative must operate within in Boston. What lasts is a stench of clueless Puritanism that repels outside investment in our creative businesses. What lasts is the long trail left by the motivated and creative people - young adults raised and educated here with the investment of our own tax dollars - who move away, because making a living in the creative fields in this town is revealed to be a false promise.

This is about money - but it isn't about money we in Boston have, or that others in Boston have that we do not. This is about money that passes Boston by on its way to a better home.

Here's a specific example of how: Immediately after his show opening at the Boston ICA, Shepard appeared in Boston court and returned to Los Angeles for one week until he needed to return to Boston for his arraignment. During that week in Los Angeles, Shepard executed a monumental mural on the side of a theater; a mural featuring Lance Armstrong the great cyclist (and well-respected art collector, I might add) in a project developed by the Nike corporation and Lance's cancer research and awareness foundation Livestrong, of those ubiquitous bracelets. It was a massive media event, and a great thing for all parties, with lots of money moving around.

This is how Los Angeles incorporates an artist like Shepard into its economy when it has one week to do so. But if we in Boston were as forward-thinking, every single dollar that moved around in Los Angeles could have been doing so in Boston. You may not know this, but Boston is actually one of the biggest footwear hubs in the world, with Reebok, Converse, Clarks, Puma, New Balance, and Saucony all calling eastern Massachusetts home, at least for their United States headquarters. Nike's role and the visibility they gained could have been one of theirs. And cancer research? Come on. On one side of the Charles, there's Dana Farber and MGH, among dozens, and on the other, there's Novartis and so many biotech giants operating so far outside of my sphere of knowledge that I can't even pretend to know their areas of research. But I do know that we in Boston sure as heck could have put the world's most famous artist of the moment to better civic and commercial use than adding to the B.O. stink in our holding cells. Did you know Shepard is a diabetic? Well, he is. Could we maybe have teased out a connection there to create a project with any of those health care giants to an end that would be more productive to our local economy instead of cuffing Shepard? I'm just brainstorming here, but I bet we could have.

Instead, we have 29 felony charges. Those 29 felony charges are Shepard's to bear and to deal with, and he will. He has good counsel and plenty of money to address those with. But what begins as an attempt to make an example of Shepard as a vandal who met the law only makes an example of Boston as a city to avoid when investing any culture dollar.

Those charges against Shepard are what keep investors in our businesses - people who we will never meet, people far from Boston - renewing their negative impression of our city. It's those charges' black eyes that we all in this room must live with and do business around. And it's the mockery of students future that we all live in; no different than that with which we look back on in Boston's dealings with Whitman and the artists that followed.

For remember, Whitman's work, and that poem in particular - was illegal by the letter of Boston law as well.

Caleb Neelon