Coming right at you!!! Fresh off Mylius original beach mural comes this outstanding OG collabo between triumvirate NEUTRA, Mylius, and Drew. The detail and contrasting colors between the three murals lights up the Speedway. Which one is your favorite? Have your say. Drop us a line. – RB
Ryan Baum images. All rights reserved.
Hawaiian-bred musician and ukelele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro stopped by our office while in New York on his tour for a brief performance that was amazing and impressive for its musicianship, range and energy. Shimabukuro has pushed the boundaries of how the ukelele can be played and what it can play. His instrumental cover of Queen’s rock classic “Bohemian Rhapsody” is
nothing short of jaw-dropping.
Some pix below of the exterior and entrance to the hip, environmentally-conscious and well-designed Casa Camper Hotel in Barcelona. The hotel is an aesthetic offshoot of the famous Mallorca-based global footwear brand Camper.
A large sticker of Japanese icon Hello Kitty adorns a wall like the graffiti next to it on a Shibuya, Tokyo side street.
We found this skateboard parked in the corner of a high-designed, glass-walled conference room in the offices of a major New York City advertising agency, where we were spending part of an afternoon watching presentations of TV-commercial reels by various directors and visual effects companies. We love the panda bear graphic on the board.
We came across this really cool piece by artist Kelcey Fisher near Windward Circle in Venice, in Los Angeles. The Indian headdress motif has been a recurring image this summer, notably on this season’s Stussy T-Shirts. We like the contrasting iconography. This is the first piece we’ve encountered by Kelcey in L.A. -RB
Ryan Baum images. All rights reserved.
A modern-art classic and an example of the ready-made genre in extreme, French artist Bertrand Lavier’s 1993 “Giulietta (-vue-de-dos)” is a crashed red Alpha Romeo car rescued from a scrapyard. The artwork has a home at the Pompidou Center Museum, the powerhouse modern and contemporary art museum in the Beaubourg neighborhood of Paris.
We travel often here at Global Graphica, and even when we’re in New York City we’re often on the move and often carrying several devices with us. Having small, lightweight, portable gear is important, as we need to be prepared to work wherever we are, whether at a cafe in Tokyo, a shared office in Amsterdam, or in an airplane seat at 35,000 feet in the air. Here’s what our mobile set-up looks like at our HQ in the Lower East Side.
Pix below of fresh street artwork by the Brooklyn-based artist Rae BK. The wheat-paste (or “wheatie”) artwork is above a warehouse doorway on Orchard Street, in New York’s Lower East Side (and literally a stone’s throw from Global Graphica HQ). This is the best, most recent work we’ve seen by Rae.
In the minimalist courtyard adjacent to MACBA, Barcelona’s centerpiece modern and contemporary art museum, there’s large sign — itself a work of art — that displays the made-up word “Ravalejar,” a neologism in the Catalan language. The sign explains the part of speech and usage of “Ravalejar,” which alludes to the edgy, in places gritty, energetic and recently hip Barcelona neighborhood of El Raval. The word is a verb and was proposed to mean something loosely along the lines of “to visit and take in the atmosphere of Raval.” The neighborhood has been the site of major urban renewal efforts by the city in the past couple of decades and has in recent years witnessed rapid gentrification. The establishment and construction of MACBA in Raval itself was one of the first of those major projects starting in the 1990s and helped to lead the neighborhood’s transformation. Near the sign are black-white wheat-pasted photos of local residents in the style of JR.
We’re fans of Apartamento, the international indie shelter and interiors magazine that bills itself as “an everyday lifestyle magazine.” Some readers may recall we’ve posted about previous issues of Apartamento in the past. It’s edited and published with love and a finely woven aesthetic that’s both minimal and warm. The current edition, issue #11, has this wonderful cover which is a detail from the 2003 Anton Henning painting titled “Interieur No.189.”
Here’s a nice piece of photo-based stencil street art by the artist TONA in Amsterdam’s Centrum neighborhood. The artwork is wheat-pasted and shows a small, blonde child holding an aluminum can (perhaps a can of beer?)
Our friend H.I., who lives in Tokyo, has “Imelda Marcos” syndrome when it comes to shoes. He owns more than 300 pairs and has even had custom footwear made for him. When a shoe-designer friend of his offered to make a pair of shoes for him and asked him what he liked, H.I. simply said “I like to wear boots.” The results were these cool, flat “boots for summer,” which are basically an ankle boot with parts of the leather trimmed in such a way that part of the foot is exposed. As these were just a custom prototype, you won’t find these in stores anytime soon. H.I. told us that he had kept these shoes unworn in his collection for four years and only started started wearing them this summer. – MI
Mayumi Ihara images. All rights reserved.
We can see the Ink 148 hotel penthouse from the rooftop deck of our agency’s offices in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen. The penthouse has been aptly dubbed the “Heaven Over Hell’s Kitchen Suite.” From this perch, there’s a stunning view of Midtown Manhattan’s dense mass of skyscrapers. We were thinking the penthouse might be a good place to relocate Global Graphica’s NYC HQ. But then our accountant suggested we should look for more modest accommodations …Much more modest. Sigh … But to dream. For now, we’ll settle for a spot at the rooftop bar and park our laptop there.
