Little mention’s been made in the mainstrem media about the fact that OBAMA hosted a substantial night of music at the White House last week to commemorate the the Civil Rights Movement, that included BOB DYLAN performing “The Times They Are-a Changin” for a house full of bitterly warring politicians…

We’re big fans of artist JOE STEVENS‘ “Vans And The Places Where They Were” project:

“Vans and the places where they were documents surviving custom and conversion vans across the West and examines the dialogue which exists between a van’s design aesthetic and that of its surrounding environment. The project began in 1996 and currently consists of hundreds of images shot on 120 film.

Over the course of the project the vans themselves have become more and more of a rarity. The reasons are as simple as rust and changing tastes; and as complex as government “cash for clunkers” initiatives encouraging more fuel-efficient transportation. Notably, at the same time these vans have been disappearing from our roads – film photography as a visual medium has also begun it’s slow death. Consequently the goal of the project is to one day shoot the last remaining van on the final frame of photographic film in existence. Then the project will be finished.

Joe Stevens is a filmmaker and photographer whose work has appeared in the Hammer Museum of Los Angeles and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In the past year his work has been featured in Creative Review, Fast Company, Intersection and the Guardian. His 2008 film Made In Queens, which was produced by MTV2 Films, profiles a teenage gang from Trinidad who blast 15,000 watts of music from the enormous custom homemade stereos jury-rigged onto their rusty bmx bikes. The film, which premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, has become a cult hit and is currently touring festivals worldwide.”

Parisian art fans need to hit up ADDICT GALERIE before March 4th to catch sight of graffiti/street art legend CRASH’s current show, “Tin Machine.” Born in the Bronx1961, John “CRASH” Matos is one of the pioneers of graffiti writing who started developing his distinctive style on the trains of New York at the age of 13. Alongside his contemporaries like Futura, Zephyr, Lee, and Lady Pink, CRASH successfully transitioned from walls and trains to the fine art world in the ‘80s with exhibits at Sidney Janis Gallery and Real Art Ways, next to Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. His fine art career has continued uninterrupted with the artist breaking his graphic colorblocked style into more free-form abstract compositions in recent years, a development readily visible in this Paris show which features heavily fragmented chunks of his trademark imagery. HAVE A LOOK: Read the rest of this entry »

The flying tomato SHAUN WHITE pulled off double OLYMPIC gold in Snowboarding yesterday and capped it off by pulling off an impossible “Tomahawk” on the victory lap. Watch it HERE…

Menace 2 Society: NYC Police led this 12-year-old girl out of her classroom in handcuffs for doodling on her desktop…

Increasingly, harsh zero tolerance policies towards graffiti and other offenses in US schools are seeing grade school-aged children being treated with harsh adult-style police discipline inside the actual classroom. This problem was exemplified when, incredibly, a 12-year-old NYC girl with a spotless record was physically arrested in her classroom for doodling on her desktop this month:

GIRL’S ARREST FOR DOODLING RAISES CONCERNS ABOUT ZERO TOLERANCE
By Stephanie Chen, CNN February 18, 2010

(CNN) — There was no profanity, no hate. Just the words, “I love my friends Abby and Faith. Lex was here 2/1/10 ” scrawled on the classroom desk with a green marker.

Alexa Gonzalez, an outgoing 12-year-old who likes to dance and draw, expected a lecture or maybe detention for her doodles earlier this month. Instead, the principal of the Junior High School in Forest Hills, New York, called police, and the seventh-grader was taken across the street to the police precinct.

Alexa’s hands were cuffed behind her back, and tears gushed as she was escorted from school in front of teachers and — the worst audience of all for a preadolescent girl — her classmates.

“They put the handcuffs on me, and I couldn’t believe it,” Alexa recalled. “I didn’t want them to see me being handcuffed, thinking I’m a bad person.” Click HERE to continue reading at CNN…

A derelict 200-year-old pub in Liverpool, England, bearing one of BANKSY’s largest existing guerilla murals has just changed hands at auction today for £114,000. One of the artist’s largest existing pieces, the massive rat was painted illegally under cover of darkness in 2004 during the city’s Biennial festival and has since been declared a landmark by the city and granted protected status. Now, in a twist that Sir Banks himself probably couldn’t imagine, the image must be preserved by the new owners going forward with renovations…

“Better Together” for Match.com from FriendsWithYou on Vimeo.

The newest bit of animation from our buddies FriendsWithYou…

MGMT goes psychedelic surfing with Ausgang…

Our old friend, psychedelic artist ANTHONY AUSGANG has been keeping a pretty low profile in recent years, so it was music to our ears when electro rockers MGMT released the cover art for the upcoming album, “Congratulations” featuring the ever trippy imagery of AA. The LP drops March 13th, it’s just too bad you won’t be getting a nice 12″ cover with this art on it to stare at…