Jim McHugh: Just One More : graffiti

Showing posts with label graffiti. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Photographing ROW DTLA: The Southern Pacific Architectural Landmark

DesignLA the Los Angeles Times new Sunday magazine, created by Michael Wollaeger, former managing editor of Architectural Digest. Michael possesses a great knowledge of architecture, interior design, the art community, and our shared endless curiosity about things LA.

Built in the era of the streetcars - now across the street from where the buses sleep

Graffiti mural by my friends, RETNA and figurative artist Ricardo Estrada

Looking up towards downtown Los Angeles from Alameda, across Central Ave, from the old railroad produce yards

Massive buildings, millions of square feet - impossible to imagine until you are standing there

Young and happening, great energy - dogs to work.

Previously home to American Apparel

New shops, furniture, fashion and design. New media - game design, video companies

Monday, December 19, 2016

LA Neighborhoods - Street legends


Left: " Los- Mulholland Radio Tower " Joe Prime Reza/Jim McHugh 24" x 20" signed and numbered- edition of 150 unframed. Right: "213- Washington and Crenshaw" David Cavazo Big Sleeps / Jim McHugh 24" x 20" signed and numbered- edition of 150 - Each print $150 + shipping

As shown above, Courtyard Editions is issuing two high quality, archival photographic prints, priced with the desire to make art works from the "LA Neighborhoods" project available to everyone. So many so people have asked about acquiring prints from the work that we have been doing together over the past few years. These are two very beautiful images that represent our unique look at LA.

A single section of the panorama used as the supporting layer of the collage for "213 - Washington Blvd." Polaroid T55

A 9 ft. canvas of Washington Blvd. - hand styles by Sleeps and Prime - INNOVA Digital

Artists Joe "Prime" Reza and David Cavazo, aka "Big Sleeps," are such legends, born of this disappearing LA era. These prints are a true fusion of photographic imagery and territorial street hand-styles. The imagery investigates LA and the secret, hidden sub-culture of graffiti writing, hand styles. "213 Washington Blvd. and Crenshaw " reflects a neighborhood abandoned to immigrants and people of color in post WWII Los Angeles that is now rapidly gentrifying. For those unaware, 213 was the original and for a long time, only area code in LA.

An early legend among street writers, now Joe "Prime" Reza is a painter who's works are held in the permanent collection of the Getty Museum and are exhibited in galleries world wide, Prime's newest works can be seen through Jan. 17, 2017 at the LA Louver Gallery, Venice, CA. in the exhibition "ROLLCALL" curated by Gajin Fujita.


Shooting in Prime's studio for the exhibition AFTERMATH - 2016 - photo: Patrick House

Big Sleeps signing "Washington and Crenshaw"

Big Sleeps is truly a survivor of the streets that nearly swallowed him whole, streets that remain bound by intricate, spray-painted letter styles which act as a true code of survival called "the placa." Cavazo's paintings can also be viewed thru January 17 at LA Louver Gallery, Venice, CA. in their "Rollcall" exhibition.

Studio van near Central Ave. in South Central LA on the very rainy night when we signed our prints

Big Sleeps - Prime - Jim McHugh at Prime's studio, Dec. 14, 2016

Purchase "213- Washington Blvd"

Purchase "LOS - Mulholland Drive- Radio Tower"

The McHugh Studio 323 466 2890 - jim@jimmchugh.com

The LA Neighborhoods project has been developed with the support of INNOVA Digital Art, supplying the newest archival technologies and digital surfaces for maximum image integrity.

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Experience 11: Scratch – El Segundo Museum of Art

LA Artists & The Getty Research Institute - Graffiti Black Book

Artists Defer & BIG Sleeps at SCRATCH opening - El Segundo Museum of Art - ESMoA

Jim McHugh - 8x10 Deardorff camera -

Portrait of "KING CRE8" made with IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT 8x10 instant film

Experience 11: Scratch (Jun 8 until Sept 21, 2014)

Many of LA’s most influential graffiti and tattoo artists have covered the walls and floors of ESMoA to publicly launch their 21st century encounter with an artistic tradition: the Getty Black Book.

Opening Night - 06-06-14

KCRW's Edward Goldman and ESMoA Director Eva Sweeney with artists Fishe and Miner during the installation

Hear KCRW art critic Edward Goldman discuss this exhibition in his popular Los Angeles art series "Art Talk: (audio)

In 2013 more than 150 of LA’s leading graffiti artists responded to a 16th century manuscript from the vaults of the Getty Research Institute called a liber amicorum (book of friends) by contributing works on paper to be bound into a single book and created the Getty Graffiti Black Book. Street artists have used black books for decades to create a visual memory of drafts and to serve as a vehicle for the exchange of ideas. The extraordinary competition that occasionally arises among such artists can also lead to respect as rivals invite each other to “hit” their black books with original works. The contributing artists decided to give the Getty Black Book the title, LA Liber Amicorum, to capture the spirit of its transformation of rival ‘writing-crews’ into a Los Angeles Book of Friends.

Now, ESMoA and the Getty Research Institute have invited Getty Black Book artists Axis, Cre8, Defer, Eyeone, Fishe, and Miner to co-curate those crews of creative friends from the LA graffiti art community and turn the art laboratory of ESMoA into an open black book. Graffiti and tattoo artists will transform the space into a cathedral of urban art for the first presentation of the LA Liber Amicorum to the public with SCRATCH.

Graffito is old Italian slang for “a little mark,” and graphein in Ancient Greek meant “scratch, draw, paint” long before it meant “to write.” Graffiti artists craft letterforms, draft perspective, and merge line, color, and form with the same techniques employed by Renaissance masters like Albrecht Dürer.

Axis, Prime, Fishe, Getty Research Institute curator of rare books, David Brafman, CRE8, Phantom, Eyeone and Patrick Martinez

The first edition of Dürer’s landmark book on perspective was just one of the many rare books that the artists viewed at the Getty Research Institute in the process of creating the LA Liber Amicorum. Some of those jewels in the history of calligraphy, engraving, and emblematic symbolism from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, as well as sixteenth-century painted friendship-books that inspired the project, will be installed in the space surrounded by the graffiti-writers’ art. iPads will be mounted, so visitors can ‘e-flip’ through the books and not only share the artists’ own creative experience and response to the impact of viewing these rare books, but also continually co-curate the space by choosing which page-openings will be in dialogue with the art on the walls and floor.

Rare manuscripts on view

Getty Research Institute curator of rare books, David Brafman

The SCRATCH art experience is curated by GRI Rare Books Curator, David Brafman.

"The viewer can see the inspiration of these rare books on form, shape, and lettering, and see these street artists are part of a long tradition of writing and creativity."