By Kenna Shapiro
Banksy is infamous, but he isn’t the only street artist to have used San Francisco as his canvas.
Underground art is our identity, tattooed onto our collective subconcious as a fiercely alternative city. So it is fitting that we can’t walk a block without seeing our reflections in the everyday art around us.
Every inch of our visually decorated environment is an altar to what we love, where we came from, and what we stand for.
Above: Mural by Eine, across from my apartment. Photo by Spencer Keeton Cunningham.
Left: Red hearts by Anna Rivero Rossi dangle from telephone wires in every neighborhood, including mine. Sneakers over wires are full of urban myths about drug deals and gangs, so Rossi uses the language of the streets to display love wherever needed.
Below: Another favorite mural within walking radius of my apartment is this collaborative project by artists of 1:AM Gallery. This three-headed monster is rumored to feed on fearful emotions in the neighborhood.
Street art isn’t about face-time, fame, or personal gain.
It’s communal.
There is no cover charge, no admission ticket, no membership fee. And probably no fancy wine reception, unless you brown-bag a Jameson. (We won’t tell.)
In a world of social castes and censorship, street art is truly free, and it is for everyone.
Enter Roberto Gonzalez. At first glance, one might not assume that the UC Berkeley graduate in a peacoat enjoying jazz at the bohemian Revolution Cafe is a graffiti artist. Born in El Salvador, Gonzalez works for a non-profit organization, is an Aztec dancer, and has a bicycle named Betsy that he bought from a crackhead in the Tenderloin. His public murals are bold illustrations of indigenous Mesoamerican histories. His work is found on busy street corners and buildings all over the Mission district, including the famed Clarion Alley.
The art is legal and done with permission, although that hasn’t stopped police from questioning him when toting his spray-cans in broad daylight. Like any good citizen, Gonzalez attends community meetings and plays by the rules. But that doesn’t mean some people won’t be offended. One mural, retelling the history of the Spanish conquest from an indigenous perspective, was painted over with a Virgin Mary. “You can’t change history,” says the artist, who has a zen-like acceptance of the temporary nature of murals, much like history itself.
Street artists love their communities. And the community generally loves them back. (One of Gonzalez’s murals was so admired that it was physically ‘peeled off by hipsters’ who wanted to enjoy it on their apartment wall.) With this kind of extreme fan-base, graffiti artists are obviously doing something right.
Having attended museums everywhere from Europe to the Middle East, I can safely say that every city has elaborate institutions dedicated to shiny priceless art hidden under glass with a security guard looking over your shoulder in case the mist from your breath corrupts the value of the art. But if you want to really understand the soul of a place, take a walk outside.
Sometimes you don’t go looking for art. Sometimes the art comes looking for you.
I would like to begin by first giving a brief background on who I am, and more importantly what I am, this will help explain where my conceptions of localogy come from. I am an architect, well not really. I have a degree in architecture and am close to finishing up the requirements for my professional license. I have lived in many different places in the world, places both unique and distinct. Having spent my childhood in the midwest of the North American continent, I consider that region my roots. I have also lived in New York, spent roughly half a year in Italy, and lived in Ireland for three years. Currently I am back in the midwest dwelling in Cleveland, Ohio. But more important than who I am is what I am. I am a human, or better, an animal. I roam this earth like other animals, and similarly dwell with the earth. I have two legs, two arms, two eyes, and a mind that all work in unison together with the environment around me. I dwell.
Ensō is the Japanese word for circle, it is most commonly associated with Buddhist painting. The painter makes the circle in one stroke, the brush only leaving the parchment or canvas when the circle is completed. And yet the very point of the Ensō is to accept that there is no beginning and no end, thus no credence to perfection there is only our continual progression moving outward in all directions. Our life journeys take us varied and often unexpected places, it is the experiences and knowledge that we pick up along the way through both thick and thin that make life worth living in the first place.
Still reeling from such an amazing experience at Ink Knife Studios in the Hobbes I’ve been thinking about the coming year, and how we often make resolutions that fall to the wayside, often simply out of habit or tradition. So I figured maybe we would try something a little different this time, but only if you’re game. Motuv’s main focus before I leave is dedicated to the equivalent exchange of value, to give a skill, idea or product of what you love in return for the same from another. But it’s just as vital to focus on the self in order to share those very things you value in the first place. So I call anyone who is willing to spend a Sunday in January either doing, learning, or sharing something you love either in private study or with others. It could be something you already know how to do, or somethign you’ve always wanted to, be it a painting, a good book, how to throw a pizza, organize a soup kitchen or just stitch up your pants. And then to send some photos or writing about it to: dreamdofollowthrough@gmail Thanks to you all who constantly choose right action and value each day, it will be those small positive actions that when accumulated that do and will change the world. |
Well it’s that time of year, though I’m not much for the the holiday itself but I do find value in the underlying message if you tear away the consumerism and the advertising. To exchange markers of value some made, some found with those you care about. What better pursuit, so the gang here at Motuv wants to invite you to the first leg of the last tour in Kansas city beginning with our good friends at the Kansas city center for ink and paper arts. Nestled in the basement of the Hobbes building is a treasure trove of wonders, from expert calligraphy to beautiful letterpress machines, hell they’ve even got a screen printing collective.
The night will bring presentations from the amazing and evocative Sarah Sutherland on making cookies based on the different types of rendered fats, a basic rundown of roller-derby by a couple great roller girls themselves cuz really what’s winter without some good natured beat-down? And a quick tutorial on letterpress complete with a handmade card for everyone who shows up. Bring in the season based on right action and the equivalent exchange of value, and have some damn fun while you’re at it.
This is also a pot-luck event so please bring some food and enjoy some good company, and as always this is a nonalcoholic event. Anyone unclear on how to get there just message me. Hope to see you there! D
1427 W 9th St [Basement of the Hobbes Building] 6:30pm until 10:00pm
RSVP Here: http://www.facebook.com/events/177997182294440/
Join as this holiday season at Ink Knife studios in the basement of the Hobbes building for a night of DIY madness!
After a long time of design and development, motuv.org is here! In the spirit of the movement, this site and the art behind it has been (and will continue to be) made possible by the work of volunteers. This site is meant to be a resource for all of you, the people that make MOTUV what it is, so we want your feedback about how to make it better, however we can. Motuv.org will be an ongoing project, a natural extension of the movement, where new projects will come online along the way, so there is always plenty to do. If you have design or development experience and want to lend a hand with the site or promotional campaigns, please contact Dane or myself at dreamdofollowthrough@gmail.com. Welcome!
I’m sitting in an airport terminal in Phoenix as I type this, having missed my connecting flight because of our “security” practices. It actually took me nearly an hour and a half to get through the checkpoint, there are so many signs and screens it’s a wonder anyone knows what’s going on at all and so as fate would have it I missed my flight. My head is pounding, sleep seems like an old friend I haven’t talked to in a long while and life couldn’t be better. The environment is collapsing under the weight of the self inducing feedback we have forced upon it, the economic crisis in Europe and America grows more morose and asinine every day, and our proof to fix it in case you’ve forgotten goes something like this: time as money + growth = progress = prosperity. To be justified in living you must simultaneously be expanding so if you’re not working towards a “better” life than you deserve to be left behind. Meanwhile life moves towards perpetually more specialized mediums, it can feel like to do anything you need to learn a whole new language and even then you never know if you’re doing it “correctly”. It’s funny I find in dialog people are either over generalizing or over specifying and the medium in which true exchange can happen is often never reached. In short the world is a batshit crazy place to be, and you should be getting ready to “go London” on those helping to make it that way, right? Well in a way, but honestly not so much. We’ll play a game it’s like the ones in those scholastic magazine you had as a kid where you have to look at the picture or read the paragraph and find the thing that doesn’t fit. Well it’s the fact that amidst all that negative I said “life couldn’t be better” but chances are you didn’t pick up on it imbedded in all that bad news.
It is with this that I gladly welcome you to the launch of our site and our work in general. The purpose of Motuv is to imbue individually and communally a sense of respite, clarity and then positive right action not only to fight for ground against the negative but to keep that ground within and to truly foster the creation of healthy, joy filled work that roots itself comprehensively in an organismic ethos. Whether by building neighborhood gardens, or having community dinners, or taking time to focus on things that need to be dealt with inside oneself, or just taking the time to slow down and appreciate the life one has and all that underlies the conveniences it is so easy to take for granted. The point is that life IS truly wonderful, that even with all the chaos rocking the world we must bear in mind that all things have been chaotic in all times and that chaos is relative. It goes hand in hand with our American notion of life as superpower, that all those cultures and peoples we don’t see and will maybe never know directly or indirectly must sacrifice in order for us to enjoy many of those very comforts. Alpha just like Omega is a relative term, it describes through contextual means that which gives one dominance or authority but not all cultures or peoples hold the same things sacred. How do we define affluence? We do so through time and as referenced earlier we equate that time with money and thus power. But when you get right down to it, our whole “pursuit” has been one of happiness and when money is no longer based on honorable and equivalent exchange but hoarding privilege and using denial as a justifier can one really even call that happiness? In many indigenous cultures around the world time isn’t even that relevant, for it moves in circles instead of lines. Time is simply what passes while one is lucky enough to enjoy the company of loved ones and pursue one’s work as not only what one can learn, but more importantly what one can give back. This site’s main focus is hopefully on how each of us can remind ourselves and our communities that this life is a reciprocitous one, between people, animals, plants, AND places. Take some time to browse our projects, and help us create systems that render old ones obsolete instead of rebellions that repeat our past mistakes.
And most of all remember, life is a gift, and it is good.