Enue, Tatiana Suarez, Askew and Jaes mural collaboration.

In June 2010, Jaes invited a handful of his friends to paint a school yard in New York. Amongst those were Enue and Askew, both of the Ironlak Team and also Miami born/Brooklyn based artist Tatiana Suarez who he met out at Primary Flight last year. This is video was shot by Askew.

Germs

Germs’ latest mixed media print, Purgatory Mary, (see above top) is a fine art giclee foundation with 4 silkscreen colors laid on top including a high gloss coating and 3 hand painted separations.

He is a genuinely positive and gifted artist who seems to be channeling the great spirits of surrealist predecessors, while simultaneously slapping our eyeballs in the face with his infamous allusions to the LA/Chicano culture. He is known for his Luchador masks brought to life by their protruding tentacles and floating amoebas that playfully flirt with their viewers’ imaginations. Each painting is admirable and a true labor of love.

Germs was born and raised in South Central LA amidst the violence and chaos of gang culture that left an indelible mark on him creatively. In his own words "I am Jaime Zacarias, the youngest of three. My two siblings have moved out of our house and left my father and me to live together in Los Angeles. My mother passed away a few years back and it has been a challenge to live without her because she was my guidance and the number one fan of my artwork. I was born and raised in south central Los Angeles' gang infested neighborhoods. I have seen lots of violence and drug abuse along with ignorance and many individuals who drop out of school. Los Angeles has presented me with good and bad experiences that have shaped my life and views. I continue to live in Los Angeles, with a supportive friend and my father."

"My artwork is truly spontaneous and unplanned. I trust my instincts and when I want to create something, the image appears. Because most of my work is unplanned, it is difficult to say when it is finished, so I go by feelings and instinct to guide me to a finished product. Since elements of my work include spontaneity and randomness, my finished product may be simple or insanely complicated. It is as if I do not think about what I am doing until I do it. My thought process and hand-to-paper process flow simultaneously. I use narrative imagery, graffiti art and found surfaces. I work in an audience-friendly style that allows the viewer to experience the piece."

Roid and Horfe in London

Roid & Horfe from Topsafe London on Vimeo.

Painted in June this year.

Eine

'So it's been a weird day today," says a recent posting on Ben Eine's website. "David Cameron has given one of my paintings to President Obama." Weird indeed. You wake up one morning as a street artist known to few outside the aficionados of Britain's urban art scene, and go to bed as the man whose work the new prime minister, for his first official visit to Washington, chose to present to the president of the United States." (see TWENTYFIRSTCENTURYCITY above).

Eine (real name Ben Flynn) 39, is best known in and around Shoreditch in the East End of London, where he has worked for several years with his close friend, the elusive Banksy. "They're the best of mates, old friends," says Lindsay Alkin, manager of the Artrepublic gallery in Brighton, which also sells the artist's work. "Banksy would do one side of the street and Ben the other, and Ben did all Banksy's screenprints. He's one of the founders of the whole street-art movement. But this is really going to broaden his audience: we've had a great deal of interest this morning. And we've sold one of his originals."

Eine last came to the media's attention when he persuaded the shopkeepers of Middlesex Street in Spitalfields to allow him to paint the entire alphabet, in his trademark vibrant, cheerful colours, on their closed security shutters. Elsewhere in London, his letters spell out whole words – "Exciting" or "Scary" or "Vandalism" – on walls and buildings, or just stand on their own: a solitary "e" or "a" adorning a shopfront or telecomm box. There's a Googlemap of his London work, but similar typographical totems can also be seen in Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles and Paris, as well as Newcastle and Hastings, where he now lives.

"For me, it's mostly about having stuff on the street," Eine says. "You're walking down the street, you do it every day, and suddenly there's something that wasn't there yesterday: something bright and cheerful and different. It might stay there for a year; maybe it will disappear. But you know, I have a family, I have a mortgage, I have to make a living. So I do the screenprints too."

Cornbread - Legend

The tale of Cornbread is the tale of a troubled middle
child from a God-fearing Brewerytown family who got the attention he
craved on the streets.

McCray accomplished it by spraying his tag – CORNBREAD, with a
swoosh at the end and a crown over the B – along every bus, trolley and
subway route in the city and, in one of his most daring feats, on the
flank of an elephant at the zoo

As a kid, Darryl McCray started writing "Cornbread loves Cynthia" all over his Philadelphia school to get the attention of a girl he liked.

Cornbread helped define the role of the modern day Graffiti writer; a major part of that role was fame. For Cornbread what began with a few tags, soon turned into a full time mission, getting up to so much that he gave himself the crown.

Cornbread's exploits were chronicled by the black press. At times journalists would mention an idea that would strike Cornbread. An idea, for example, that it would be amazing if somebody tagged the Jackson Five jet as it landed in Philly. As a result, Cornbread would do it, and the press would publish it. By the late 60's a sub-culture had started in Philadelphia, it had its own distinct style: long letters with platforms on the bottom.

Cornbread stopped writing in 1972.

Invasion of San Diego

For the upcoming group show "Viva la Revolución : A Dialogue with the Urban Landscape" which will open on July 17th at MCASD in San Diego, French artist,Invader has just done an invasion of San Diego.

He has also produced The Space Invader Walk, a huge and virtual piece which will be presented in the museum as a movie. Watch the trailer above.

Stinkfish

Stinkfish is a street artist based in Bogota, Colombia. He has collaborated in several collectives and currently he's working with Bastardilla with a collective called Hogar. These pictures come from Bogota and recent work in Oaxaca southern Mexico.

Danny Lyon - DOCUMERICA

Danny Lyon, born March 16, 1942 is a self-taught American photographer and filmmaker. He is also credited as an accomplished writer to accompany his photographs. He studied history at the University of Chicago, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1963.

Lyon’s early documentary career was established and defined by his gritty photographer-as-participant approach. His first book, The Movement (1964), evolved from his experiences as a staff photographer for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee during the Civil Rights Movement. In the Bikeriders series(1968) Lyon rode and lived with the bikers he photographed. Lyon’s work belies the standard detachment of documentary humanism and objectivism in favor of a more complicated subjective involvement.

Danny Lyon’s photojournalistic style is marked by its staunch pursuit of the unembellished moment. “You put a camera in my hand, I want to get close to people,” he said. “Not just physically close, emotionally close, all of it. It’s part of the process."

DOCUMERICA was a program sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency to photographically document subjects of environmental concern in America from about 1972 to 1977. Lyon photographed America's inner city, it's ghettos and it's slums showing the lives and humanity of the young people who resided there.

After years of continued critical success, books and exhibitions Lyon now takes things easier. Although he's still working, he fishes quite a bit these days, in the Chama Valley in New Mexico and in Maine, where he has a cabin.