My friend, director Mark Ford, recently completed this fantastic documentary that examines the connections between music and the LA Riots. Entitled Uprising: Hip Hop & The LA Riots, the film features compelling rare footage and interviews.

JRF for Obey Clothing/Artist Series

JRF x OBEY from OBEY CLOTHING on Vimeo.

Jason Jessee 1988

Because the Minutemen, Santa Cruz, Jim Phillips and Jason Jessee were a lethal combo.

From PiL: First Issue

Lydon's anthem that cast aside the Pistols' legacy and declared a more interesting and more sophisticated group, Public Image Limited.

From 1979.

Six Stair Super 8 Scraps

Great stuff from the boys at Six Stair, who've also been doing the Grosso/Loveletters series for Off The Wall TV.

Eames: The Architect and The Painter

The missus and I ventured out to an early Sunday morning Laemmle screening of The Architect and The Painter a few weeks ago. It's a new feature length documentary on Charles and Ray Eames, and I highly recommend it.

Thankfully for you, PBS has recently posted the entire film over on their site. Check it out here.

Bill Daniel

Bill Daniel is a pretty interesting guy. He's most well known for his documentary, Who is Bozo Texino?, which is an amazing film about a nearly-extinct slice of American subculture.

Daniel has also spent years wandering the country, doing still photography, hand-crafting silver gelatin prints, making zines and generally doing good stuff. Check him out.

REFERENCE LIBRARY 2012

Kicking off 2012 with a few selected pieces of references and mood board grabs from my digital desktop.

Tellason Denim

I'm a fan of Tellason denim for obvious reasons...they're made in the USA and use high-quality materials. Pete and Tony are also passionate about their product, which is always key.

I wear Tellason almost exclusively for all of my artistic endeavors (painting/wheatpasting/stenciling/collaging/screenprinting) as well as many of my domestic assignments (gardening, splitting firewood, cleaning gutters, etc).

Go Faster: The Graphic Design of Racing Cars

Chris Burden: Metropolis II Coming to LACMA

Can't wait to see this monumental work from Chris Burden at LACMA...

A short doc about a kinetic sculpture that took four years to build. We had the honor of spending three days in Chris Burden's studio filming this sculpture before it was moved to the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art (LACMA) where it is being reinstalled.
The installation opens fall 2011.
Chris Burden is one of our favorite artists of all time. For more about him and his work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Burden
http://www.gagosian.com/artists/chris-burden/

Directed by Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman
Edited by Max Joseph
Cinemtography by Schulman, Joost & Van Neistat
Music by Tortoise (Ten-Day interval) & Mahogany (Windmill International A)

Special Thanks to Zak Cook and everyone at the Burden studio...Tortoise, Mahogany, Jaclyn Slimm & Andrew Prinz

.

D*Face Pool Paint Attack

On the subject of drawing lines, English artist D*Face recently teamed up with a few skateboarders, including Screaming Lord Salba, to transform an ordinary backyard pool into a curved canvas of cured concrete. Using some aerosol paint, a remotely-operated trigger and some ingenuity, each board was modified into a kinetic paint brush.

The result? A three dimensional, Spirograph-esque collaboration between the artist, the skaters and the pool...

ESPO/Stephen Powers for Ogilvy Mathers

ESPO (aka Stephen Powers) was recently commissioned by legendary advertising agency, Ogilvy Mathers, to flex his lettering skill on the interior of the companies corporate headquarters.

I dig Powers' vibe; his homage to vernacular typography, his use of humor and wit, and his always immaculate craftsmanship.

REFERENCE LIBRARY/Taliban Don't Surf

A few pieces of digital ephemera that serve the story of the upcoming Taliban Don't Surf print, available June 30, 2011, exclusively at 1xRun.com.

Boys of Bonneville

From the Price Museum of Speed comes this great trailer for Boys of Bonneville: Racing on a Ribbon of Salt. Beautiful footage of beautiful machines from the earliest days of speed runs: Ab Jenkins, the Mormon Meteor.

REFERENCE LIBRARY

....a great one from Jim Thiebaud's Instagram via his Twitter feed; Black Flag setlist.

The History of American Graffiti

New on my bookshelf this week is the recently released The History of American Graffiti, a comprehensive survey compiled by Roger Gastman and Caleb Neelon. It's a hefty, 400 page hardcover that represents years of extensive research, rare photos, ephemera and interviews. Gastman and Neelon were interviewed about the book on the PBS NewsHour, and you can watch that segment here.

Gastman writes: "On April 5, HarperCollins released our book The History of American Graffiti, which traces graffiti's evolution from its early freight-train days to it's big-city boom on the streets of New York and Philadelphia and to its modern-day influences. The book features behind-the-scenes stories and profiles gleaned from more than four years' worth of interviews with more than 1,000 photographs. If that's not enough reason to purchase the book, here's what a few more people had to say:

Roger Gastman and Caleb Neelon have written the definitive history of the origins of the graffiti styles that emerged in Philadelphia, New York, and Los Angeles in the early 1970s and inspired young artists around the world. - Jeffrey Deitch, director, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art

The History of American Graffiti is the first truly comprehensive history of graffiti's secretive, illegal culture. - Shepard Fairey, artist

On a side note, I designed the above endpapers for the book using Gastman's vast personal collection of anti-graffiti pamphlets, propaganda and ephemera as source material.

DC x Ken Block x Gymkhana Three Drip Poster

The folks at DC Shoes recently brought me back to help with the Ken Block x Gymkhana Three Drip Poster, a limited edition, offset lithograph, individually signed by Ken Block. For the above short, I created the primary set design and dressing, as well serving as an associate producer and consultant.

The release celebrates Ken's amazing and highly successful Gymkhana Three Video:

Special thanks to Tobin Yelland at DC Shoes and good luck to Ken Block and Alex Gelsomino's 2011 World Rally Championship/Monster Energy/Ford Fiesta throughout the 2011 WRC season.

All photos courtesy of DC Shoes©2011.

DC Initials Campaign

Late last year, DC Shoes and skateboarder/director Steve Berra (The Berrics) brought me in to assist/consult with some set design for the DC Shoes Initials Campaign spots. We shot each session on the backlot of California Skateparks, where Joe Ciaglia and his always ready-and-willing crew built each of the obstacles (in between constructing courses for the Street League). It was great to work with Berra, all of the crew and skaters and everyone else I met on set.

Unfortunately, the largest of the all of the collaged and wheat pasted murals that I designed and executed, (which was a loose, visual timeline of the entire DC Shoes brand), didn't make it into any of the final segments.

And for the record, watching Chris Cole skate was nothing less than jaw-dropping. He was a true professional, silently putting forth any effort necessary to yield the best possible takes. Below are the rest of the finished spots featuring Josh Kalis, Matt Miller, and Evan Smith.

Thanks: Steve Berra, Tim Dowlin and everyone else at the Berrics; each of the skateboarders we worked with; Mike Hersey, Stephen Lynd and all of production artists; thanks to Tobin Yelland at DC Shoes and Joe Ciaglia at California Skateparks. We all put in some long hours to make these spots come to life.

JRF x Morgan Spurlock x The Greatest Stencil Ever Made

Last year, I got a phone call from director Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) who was in search of some assistance for his latest project, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. He quickly pitched the concept of the doc (a film about advertising and product placement that was entirely underwritten by advertising and product placement) and needed few tips on the whole self promotion/guerilla marketing tactic schtick. I obliged with a pro bono illustration and a stencil, as well as a brief tutorial on the dangers and dissemination of such materials. Spurlock and his production crew also spent a few hours in my studio documenting and discussing the process, from which a few seconds are shown in the final cut of the film.

Another artist than lent their creative services to the project include the super-talented, master adbuster, Ron English, who created an intentionally crass Last Supper. English is prominently featured in the end credits as The Greatest Living Artist, much to the delight of the audience I was in.

Thanks Morgan and congrats on an entertaining and provocative film!!!