Directed & Filmed by: Candice House and Brian Smith
Edited & Produced by: Vincent Aricco and Michael Matassa
Sound design by: Jimmy Guthrie
Special thanks to: Hense, Ironlak, Mai Phung, Lexi Aricco, Sever, Michael Ouweleen, Johnny Colt
Find out more at: hensethename.com and knowngallery.com/hense
Peep out the new TheSeventhLetter.com site just launched today! Special thanks to Didier Cohen.
Sound Advice 27 – Revok’s Quiet Storm
Side A
01 Don’t Explain - Nina Simone
02 This Night Has Opened My Eyes - The Smiths
03 Unmade Bed - Sonic Youth
04 The Flame - The Black Keys
05 Don’t Let Me Down - The Beatles
06 I Don’t Know Why - The Rolling Stones
07 Guess I’m Doing Fine - Beck
08 Babe, You Turn Me On - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
09 Harvest Moon - Neil Young
10 The Funeral - Band of Horses
11 A Blueprint Of Something Never Finished - The Six Part Seven
12 The Tourist - Radiohead
13 Lord - Sleepy Sun
14 Rockets - Cat Power
15 Castles Made of Sand - The Jimi Hendrix Experience
16 Simple Man - Lynyrd Skynard
17 Echoes - Pink Floyd
18 Black Magic - Portugal The Man
19 Jump In The Pool - Friendly Fires
20 Close To Me - The Cure
Side B
21 Man’s Temptation - Isaac Hayes
22 Startstruck - Santogold
23 Only You - Portishead
24 Call My Name - Prince
25 Since I Had You - Marvin Gaye
26 If you Want Me To Stay - Sly and the Family Stone
27 My Lover’s Prayer - Otis Redding
28 Sugar - Lenny Kravitz
29 Love is Stronger Than Pride - Sade
30 How Can You Mend a Broken Heart - Al Green
31 Love TKO - Teddy Pendergrass
32 Her Ghost - Jon Brion
33 Looking for Another Pure Love - Stevie Wonder
34 Just Like a Woman - Joe Cocker
35 Voyage To Atlantis - The Isley Brothers
36 Purrfect - Funky Porcini
37 Tea Leaf Dancers - Flying Lotus
38 All That You Give - Cinematic Orchestra
39 Ball & Chain - Anthony Hamilton
40 Until You Come Back To Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do) - Aretha Franklin
41 I Cover The Waterfront - Billie Holliday
42 A Love Supreme - Alice Coltrane
Find out more at: TheWorldsBestEver.com
Find out more at: knowngallery.com/risky
Photos by Kohshin Finley
Salt Lake Building Gets Mural Makeover
November 16, 2009, By Anne Forester,
SALT LAKE CITY -- Over the weekend two artists began spray painting the side of an old downtown Salt Lake City building. It's not vandalism, but a work of art. When it's done, a religious mural will grace the side of the building.
The side of the building at 160 E. 200 South is getting a face-lift. The wall was once covered by the old Gutherie sign, now something new covers the aged bricks.
"In the beginning a lot of people don't know what we're doing. Are we doing vandalism? Graffiti? They see the spray paint," says artist Retna.
Two artists, El Mac and Retna, are creating a mural of the Virgin Mary in their own style.
"It's kind of done in a modern way. Hopefully people--a lot of people--can enjoy it from all different backgrounds," Retna says.
It takes more than 80 cans of spray and acrylic paint to bring to life the artists' detailed vision. Surrounding the Virgin Mary are words in Latin.
"It's actually the Hail Mary, but it's just done in the Latin version, so it says Ava Maria," Retna explains.
The two artists haven't always created religious artwork; one artist started off a little bit differently.
"[I] started off doing graffiti, tagging, all the stuff you do as a rebellious youth," Retna says.
He says he always kept his eye on doing something more than just graffiti. He wanted to do work that had meaning.
The owner of Fice Gallery and Urban Boutique, Cory Bullough, hopes the mural will be a landmark piece for the city.
"Pretty much everybody who walks by stops for a couple minutes and tells us that it's looking good. It's not even halfway there, so it's coming along," Bullough says.
The artists say it's their way of giving back. They hope people in Salt Lake don't find it controversial, but instead enjoy the mural.
Saber recently participated in Organizing For America’s Health Care Reform Video Challenge, a contest to create a 30 second video ad in support of reforming America’s health care system. His entry depicted him painting an interpretation of the American flag being overwhelmed by the language of his personal struggle with our country’s system of medical care. “Basically the video is a visual metaphor of my battle with epilepsy.”
Saber’s entry, subsequently featured as one of the top 20 finalists, attracted a lot of negative attention by right-wing conservative media for what they called its defacing of the American flag. According to Saber “It was never my intention to insult or disrespect anyone. The decision to paint the flag was to show it as a living, breathing, changing organism, that represents me as an American trying to manage this lifelong disease without heath care”
Fox “opin-u-tainment” Network aired portions of the video, even reediting it so that it appears the video ends with the flag being painted all black, which was indeed not the case, for in Saber’s version the flag comes back to life.
We call Fox “opin-u-tainment” for several reasons. First because we think it was disingenuous to reedit the video (come on guys, it’s was only 30 seconds long!). And secondly because we were under the impression that a “fair and balanced” news network would not have devoted that much time, money, and energy to any news story without contacting the individual in question for their statement. The conservative media’s coverage of Saber’s video entry would lead people to believe Sabers intentions were ego and/or politically driven, instead of the truth, that they are grounded in the frustration, pain, and fear of having no access to a Dr. or hospital.
For the record, Saber is a registered Independent and not part of the Democratic Party. He isn’t even on the OFA’s mailing list. It was his fiancée who is on that list and was contacted when the contest was announced. The bottom line for Saber’s decision to become involved is simple: “Like many of my fellow Americans I don’t want to have to declare bankruptcy on the back of my medical debt, and more importantly I don’t want to die young because I have no care. I don’t understand why as it stands, this country is only concerned about the state of your health if you are under18 or over 65. What about the rest of us? And why isn’t every citizen 65 or older fighting for us all to be able to share in that security?”
*On Nov 17 2009 the winner, was announced. We would like to send our congratulations to the producer of that clip.
“The American flag is a very powerful symbol of unity. It’s time to come together and fight for those of us who are too sick to fight for themselves.” –SABER
The Hungarian painter Endre Szasz, who has died aged 77, was known for his surrealist-symbolic style and his astounding technique, which earned him a reputation as a Paganini of fine art. This was memorably illustrated in 1984 in Amman, when the paintings he was due to exhibit failed to turn up. Undeterred, he painted them again overnight, and the exhibition was opened by Jordan's Queen Noor the next day.
Szasz's initial reputation was as an illustrator, and for many years this work was his livelihood. His first commissions came in the early 1950s, when he was running a successful artists' collective, producing anything from propaganda material to film posters. During the next decades, he illustrated several hundred books, including those of Chekhov, Gorky and Emily Bronte, as well as those of his fellow Hungarians, the poet Sandor Weores and the 19th-century playwright Imre Madach.
In 1959, he won the book illustrators' gold medal at the Leipzig Fair, and his etchings for Omar Khayyam's Ruba'iyat were included in the 1964 British Museum exhibition and catalogue, The Thirty Most Beautiful Books Of The Twentieth Century. The following year, he was awarded the Munkacsy Mihaly prize in Hungary.
Born into a Transylvanian Hungarian family in Csikszereda (now Miercurea Ciuc in Romania), Szasz started to draw after recovering from meningitis, contracted at the age of four. Sketching became his passion, and at 15 - thanks to the patronage of the painter András Bordy - he held his first exhibition in Marosvasarhely. By 1946, he had moved to Hungary and, after more than three years at the Academy of Fine Arts, he started work in the arts section of the Hungarian-Soviet Society.
He was, however, soon jailed for "illegal possession of firearms", a standard pretext for political arrests following the communist takeover of 1948. After a short spell in prison, he was allowed to work in a machine tool factory near Budapest, before taking up with the artists' collective.
Szasz's career as a painter developed in 1970, when the Hungarian authorities allowed him to take up a contract with a Canadian art gallery. After four years in Toronto, he moved to Los Angeles, where he stayed until the early 1980s. He had numerous exhibitions in Canada and the United States - where his paintings fetched high prices - and also befriended the surrealist painter Salvador Dali, with whom he shared an agent.
His most characteristic and haunting work was the series of paintings he did in the late-1960s for a large calendar depicting 12 women, each representing a virtue or vice. Animal symbols perch on the top of each woman, with Courage topped by a lion, Wrath by four snakes and Luxury by the head of a wild boar.
Szasz returned to Hungary in 1982, and helped to found the arts studio of the Porcelain factory at Hollohaza. For several years, he painted, mostly on porcelain, and designed furniture. After this, he lived for a while in Sopron, finally buying an old manor house near Kaposvár, in the south of the country, where he enjoyed life as reportedly the sole owner of a Rolls-Royce in communist Hungary.
During his retirement at Várda, he produced 25 drawings, portraits of living Hungarian poets which are to be published this December in a anthology of contemporary Hungarian poetry in English translation. His honours included the officers' cross and the middle cross of the Hungarian Republic.
He married four times and is survived by his wife and companion of 20 years, Katalin.
· Endre Szasz, painter and graphic artist, born January 7 1926; died August 18 2003
Eric Haze announces New Abstracts and Icons, a major solo exhibition in New York City of new paintings, drawings, and sculpture. It is the artist’s largest exhibition to date.
Deeply rooted in the graphic arts, Haze has established a vocabulary of personal symbolism with a repertoire representing departures of an abstract and minimalist nature. For New Abstracts and Icons Haze recontextualizes the aesthetic congruences of geometry, symmetry, and repetition through his iconographic lens. "This show represents a clear window into the process I have dedicated myself to over the last three years, with a deeper exploration of the minimalist and pop styles that have always informed my work,” says Haze.
Recognized worldwide for more than three decades for his design work and artistic productions in a multitude of mediums, the 21st century has seen Haze return to his fine art roots. His work in acrylic, ink and charcoal culminated with a solo exhibition in 2008 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Hong Kong.
In New Abstracts and Icons, bold iconography and his natural line quality are free of any predictable design or past imagery. Haze is intent to convey his overall message in the purest and most organic terms possible through the combination of stark color contrasts and clean lines. The result is an overtly minimalist composition. The viewer does not have to sift through metaphors and signifiers; instead, Haze bravely reveals his personality and identity in stripped down, simple form. Through these new works chaos is calmed and harmony is nurtured.
New Abstracts and Icons will be the first event held at Level 2, a newly built-to-suit 2500-square foot gallery space on 812 Broadway and 11th Street. Cocktails and hors d'oeuvres will be served at the opening reception with world class DJs A-Trak and Neil Armstrong providing the audio. The public opening runs from 8-10 pm. Exhibition hours will be 12-6 pm, Monday through Friday, and 1-7 pm, Saturday and Sunday.
More background on Eric Haze, plus extensive archives of his past works can also be seen at: www.interhaze.com.
Source: Juxtapoz.com
SubscribeStay informed of new updates by subscribing to the RSS Feed
