The Comeback

The fall of the leaves is here. The naked trees, eagerly waiting for the snow to come, brought my mind to a passion I evolved my mind with. Winter with all of its’ perfect imperfections just waiting to strike, was calling me to get back to my notebooks...

 So I did. And believe me or not, the mind was way superior than suspected and had already presented me something interesting, making my comeback even more pleasuring. Three months of absence did not go by without anything stencil-ish happening, I’ve got stories, pictures and ideas to present. Believe me  – bomb trips, money-grubbing and spontaneous subconscious ideas is everything I could ever wanted.

 First things first. On August 15th I promised you guys to get myself bombing. We did, I cooked up a blog and it’s all there. This enrushment of returning myself to my stencils got three blog posts posted in a short bit of time, so you might’ve missed something – here’s the links.

The tips/tricks to pasting

The trip

The summer was nearing it’s end, bringing us towards another tradition of [bli:p]’s – the pre-study enbombment, which was our trips of earlier years, marking the night from the 31th of August to 1st of September with a few stencils in the streets. The date got swapped around a bit due to stuff happening around and we ended up having our scrolls set up at the 6th of September. A little bit about the trip – We had planned to do this very local thing, marking the street I live in with about 30 wheatpastes, making our way down it, then turning onto a larger 4-lane „highway” and bombing some banners and ad spaces. Little to tell about it, I was a bit scared at the beginning, as it wasn’t really night and the spots were really ambitious. We [bli:p]’ed out some JCDECAUX’s as we did with the 22th trip, and I hit a few street signs along the way. We had stand-arts, depth’s, [bli:p]’s, and boring’s with us, making the 4-lane part pretty exciting – funny thing is there were cars driving past us constantly and we couldn’t see shit, cause obviously they had turned on their lights. Lookouts didn’t do shit, so it was pretty much blind luck. But, as I continuously gained confidence everything seemed possible, so we ended up bombing a banner on a highway arc from the above, a collage of [bli:p]’s onto a ‘prosport’ sign and a hell of a lot of stand-arts rolling onto some random locations around the town. When I had finally felt into my [bli:p] and was able to post anywhere I wanted, I ran out of wheatpastes. Just my luck, I guess. The things I really liked in this trip was the amazing combination of athletics and graffiti, used in the city streets – I challenged myself to do some pretty daring things as climbing up a electrical post and slapping my paste at the fifth meter of it, just climbing some electrical boxes and dangerously enough getting on those ad spaces along the highway lanes. That’s what I tend to love in this movement – the amazing ability not only to paste something illegal and to get away with it, but to climb things you’d never climb in broad daylight. Getting upon high-spots and making your way UP (heh, both meanings intended) feels rewarding as hell.

 Obviously after that we had the study-year kicking in and the new (Or rather the returned) schedule fixing into my daytime. But – where many people seem to find despair and boringness, I searched for the exciting parts of the study life. And believe me or not – I found it. Mondays are the literature/art days – it’s the day when you’ve had a whole week to produce the giant body of work needed for both of these magnificent ways of thinking, but mostly the day when you present something rushed in the last day or two. Our art teacher is a great lady – she made us think and conquer our laziness, she boosted my works to something extraordinary in a very short span of time. It was great to make artworks for the class – five hours of different way of thinking can never be boring. It has always been this way, I’ve made a lot of great pieces in the process and I believe the teacher have put some effort in creating [bli:p] too. But to the case – the 18th of November is coming onto us, so we had to make a poster, which would present the Latvian independence day and the things it meant to us. And this was a tough cookie. I won’t be getting into the details of the process, just the final piece and a short explanation I inscripted in the back of the digitally produces piece.

Basically, the poster shows a Lielvardes belt – one of the few ethnic treasures of the Latvian society, blurred in the background, having the 18/11 standing in the middle sharp and untouched. This may be hard for a foreigner to understand, but our country has been ravaged by wars and occupations a lot of times. Our independence lied in our fathers and grandfathers and this means it hasn't had a long life yet. The people of Latvia, torn apart by economics and people of other nationalities were seeking a better life in other countries, leaving Latvia to it’s pending doom. As dark as this seems, it’s true. When, if not now, will the people understand the ethnic value of their past and nationality? When will the people understand that the only string left for a better future is the commemoration of our past? And how will the national tree of Latvia grow with almost destroyed and forgotten roots?

 The month of September came with another delightful, yet interesting thing. My first payed job was due to take place. I guess you remember the flat we crashed in at the night of 22th. Well, the girl who loved the wheatpastes had her father's birthday coming on, so she thought of a tee-design of a stenciled portrait, which would be presented as a unique present. A few phone calls, the thought flew around from friend to friend and finally arrived to me. Delightful. Basically, the concept was easy enough - I get a portrait sent to me digitally, I photoshop it, make a stencil out of it and then get the present made on-spot at the flat I've referred to multiple times now. It was very, very early and it was a Sunday. Bloody cold too, the first day of autumn I really felt, I seem to recall. The stencil was with me, the cans we're in the bag, everything was going flawless. I finally get payed for my efforts, this must be how winnin' is done. Jokes aside, the job went down pretty great. Almost no underspray, I loved the tee myself and so did the mate. A little bit of professional business, a little bit of laughing and a bit of discussing the wheatpaste collage I still want to get on the girl's wall, and it was finished. Digi-mockup not looking even as half as great as the real thing, but this should give you the idea.   

 I believe that's the best portrait stencil I've ever done, mainly because of the huge body of work put into the partial-tresholding. Basically stenciled the lad's face from pieces. Loved it then, still love it now.

 After this remarkable event everything went into a rather boring standstill. A few very, very interesting ideas popped up a few days back, as stated, making my return even more joyful. The text is only the half of the deal, getting us to something very extraordinary this time. Very boring to tell about, very interesting to think about. This is just a completely different way of doing it... And it's exciting as hell.

 And of course - the GCO hasn't slipped anywhere - the comeback returned with the filled notebooks of last summer. Just imagine 30 pages filled with highlighted bits and bobs of business ideas and you'll get the near-by feeling of the Cargoh store. 

But to be honest - I just feel great to think of stencils again. My passion, returned to me, my thoughts, engaged with me, and my dreams, as unreachable as ever. It feels great.

To be back.

[bli:p]

Tips, tricks and other stuff you want to know

As some of you may know – the event scheduled at the 22nd of August actually happened. We went out there, we pasted our stuff, and it looked really great, until those bastards out there tore off almost every single one of them the next morning. The blog is already finished, so no escaping from pasting a review of this very exciting thing we all undergone, but the street pics are coming the long way to me. Until I get them all onto my laptop and take care to sort them ‘n’ stuff, I’ve got a few things to share from the trip I had and the things I learned.

 By the way - I had tried writing something like this a bit earlier this year, but at that time I had no understanding what so ever about a true night trip, as all I had done back then were ‘daylight pieces’, which did take a bit of gut to paste, but not that there was something to learn from it. We’ve gained a bit since that blog was failed, but this time the tips are mostly about wheatpasting, as our perspective on street art changed drastically just this summer. Of course, it’s still a lot about the fear we encounter back at home, when the possibility of somebody catching you and the whole concept of getting out there at night might seem a bit dangerous and unpleasant.

 I don’t know much about your (From the fact that you’re reading this, I understand that you are, if not a street artist yourself, then a person highly interested in the whole process) emotions before the spray, but when I sat back at home for the first time and actually warped my mind around the idea of getting out there,  it did seem a bit scary. The shit you can encounter, the people you may meet, the many possibilities there are of something going wrong can be creepy at start. But the truth is, and this shall be the first tip I’m giving you in this post, that

 ~ At night, the streets are wiped clean of hardly any life forms at all – Maybe I am terribly mistaken and large cities like London or NY are swarming full of life 24/7, but if you venture out in the city here in Latvia at about 3o’ clock, the only people you may meet are, and this is from true personal occurrence, - a bum, a guy with a dog, three drunks at a closed patio cafe’ table and a small community of 4 people discussing something near the doors of their house. That’s it. If we don’t count the cars, four in total, then this can barely be classified as ‘life’ at all. So there is NOTHING to be afraid of, especially if you

 ~ Build a crew or at least have some people around you –  And by this I don’t mean that you can’t go out there alone, most definitely not. 95% of street artists started their way up alone, but by having a crew or even not street-art-related people around you, you feel a lot less nervous. It’s always great to have a lookout for any possible shit and a mate to chat with along the way. That’s just more fun.

 And this gets us to the wheatpasting part of the topic. Let’s drop a few off right now.

 ~ When pasting a poster, glue the surface dearly, and if your piece is not something of a weird shape, like a drawing, place it right onto the stain you’ve created. A thin lick of glue over the poster, and it should stay there forever. – Some people suggest to glue the backside of the poster, but I find it way too annoying. If your wheatpaste is of a warped shape (drawings etc.) this could be done to prevent you from missing the edges, thus making it easier to peel off later, but if your poster is made from a thin paper (copy paper you’d use in your printer), then this step can be skipped with ease.

 ~ When pasting a poster, care to hit higher spots, as they’re way too harder to tear off - To do so, feel free to buy the painters pole for brush extensioning. They come in different lengths, 1.5 metres will be more than enough.

 ~ When pasting a poster, seconds are of the essence – What seemed very handy back at home, may turn into a catastrophe out there. Take care to think over your whole strategy before you leave, you might find some unexpected ‘plot-holes’. I learned that the thing that worked the best was to have a plastic bag in one hand, with the gluing equipment in it (Have the glue can opened at all times, and the brush placed by the side of the can. Some choose to carry the brush with them at all times in their hand, but that is a bit daring and suspicious for the few by-passers), and an unbreakable cardboard box with the wheatpastes in it, placed in the bag on the shoulder. That way you can just pop out your wheatpaste with one hand and glue them on with the brush in your other hand Also -

~ Have your posters rolled one by one, only then to place them in a location that can be accessed with ease, but where the scrolls wont get torn or mashed – Never roll your scrolls in one big mess, like you’d scroll 5 large sheets of paper by stacking them one over another. This is the most unhandy thing you can imagine, cause to get out a single poster, you’ll have to unroll all of them, thus having your bag messed up by the second wheatpaste you put up.

~ Wear the shittiest stuff you’ve got when pasting – the first times around your shirt and trousers will be stained with large bits of glue that’ll pretty much make them unusable for any other action. EVER.

~ Get a brush you’ll be able to paste your poster with the minimum of hand movements possible – I bought an 8 inch brush for my 5 inch (at most) posters, and found it very handy - it just took me two swipes to paste a poster. If you’re pasting large format drawings, get the biggest brush you can get, so you won’t spend a hell of a lot time pasting it – I mean wheatpastes were all about the massive development back at home to make the street process as easy as possible, right? I prefer brushes that look a bit like toothbrushes, not the ones that look like you’d use them for an oil painting. The only difference is that the first ones can be mounted onto the before mentioned painters extension pole, thus allowing you to hit greater spots every time.

~ The glue you need can be cooked back at home, but I prefer using some wallpaper glue you can buy at any home depot – It’s a great misconception what many people say about wheatpasting glue. In a lot of forums about 90% of people say that pasting w/pastes with bought glue is possible, but it gets the price up sky high, if you do it regularly. The thing I found was a packet of ‘Metylan’ wallpaper glue, I guess it’s originally ment for indoor wallpapers, but it holds posters outdoors floorlessly and costs just about three bucks. This gets you a staggering number of 10 liters of glue, when mixed in (The packet is of 250 g, yellow and the glue is in dry form. The proportion, when mixing it in, is 1:40) and that, if applied right, should get you about 80 m2 of posted posters. Go to stencilrevolution advice/tips section and search for the under-topic of ‘is wheat really necessary?’ – it’s started by me (/bli:p/) and is all about the glue I like to use. So – I prefer to buy glue as it is not that expensive, but people who like to make shit back at home can always just use the recipe of wheat, water and sugar. The few dangers are that the thing can get burnt, making your whole house smell like shit and that the paste might not hold your posters, if it’s not made with the right proportions.

 ~Running is always an option – from all of the tips I’ve presented, this is the only one I’ve never used myself, as I believe the problem that needs this kind of solution occurs so rarely, but this is a thing worth to remember anyway. Most cops, if they every catch you, will just ask you to take the poster off, but if worse comes to worst it’s, as stated, worth to think about.

 Hope this helps you not to make the same stupid mistakes I made the first time around. If you have some more tips you’d want to share, fell free to drop ‘em off at twitter, facebook or just right here in the comments bar.

Cheers,

[bli:p]

Hey, wait. You really did it?

22nd of August has passed well long ago, but there hasn’t been a single blog since. Documenting the fine trip I experienced and the scrolls I pasted, I present you this awaited personal diary of mine.

 I opened the front door of the garden with a slight creek. Rain was everywhere, making every solid surface at ground level melt into the massive sludge of mud, grass, but mostly water. My scrolls were well packed in the backpack, along with mtn 94 and the stencils, crushing any doubt of possible water damage dealt by the Sky. A few steps until the large brown doors slammed behind me – I was finally inside, just a notch wet of the downpour I had caught on the way from the bus station to here. The balcony hadn’t changed munch since the last time I had made my canvases and stickers here – a few cardboard pieces left on the floor and some color on the ground were the only reminders of the small body of work I had put out that day. Small indeed, when compared to the stuff I had planned for today. In fact let’s count it up. My once wild dream of 100 scrolls was far too ambitious, as for the very first time of wheatpasting it’s impossible to put that many up by any chance. And it was raining. The huge number truncated down to the delightful 5 of each kind, having [bli:p], stand-art, artwork’s the only mirror worth having, You and me, boring’s the new interesting and depth lies within the viewer, summing up 35 scrolls in total. With the rain still daring my patience every time I looked over the ledge, I started working. Scroll by scroll, song by song (Mostly Kasabian – bass harmonized with the weather incredibly) I was moving slowly to the milestone of half, then to the finish, when the white balcony door opened and an awaited face popped out from the corner, greeting me and my work, hung up on the clothes stand just beside of me. One of my partners for today's’ spray was a student of art, able to rate my work with an eye of the experienced. An irreplaceable skill worth having, when hitting spots all over the town (As for this kind of pasting, placement is as important as the messages carried out with them). A little bit of chatting, spraying, song listening and eating – the hours had passed, getting us near the time we ought to get out of the house. It was too dark to see whether it was raining, or not, by I thought I heard some splattering, as I packed everything up (Brush, Glue, Glue can, scrolls, cans and a bit of money for those small road expenses, but no stencils of my pieces, which played back greatly, when the you&me stuff was unpacked) and left the house. It was about 11 o’ clock, and the rain had stopped, making the bus-waiting much more joyful. In a matter of 20 minutes I found myself in the city center, along with my mate. Our task was simple – we need to get to the third member of our artsy crew, get the keys to the flat we’re crashing, go there, wait for the end of the night shift she’s working, meet her up at the flat, get the glue mixed in, pack the bag lightly, leaving only glue, brush and scrolls in it, get the city smashed and then crash at the flat. A few missed buses at that nightly hour and the discouraging rain, who left as fast as it appeared, left us a bit bored and wet, but we made it to the flat safely, passing the few hours with three things - A ‘Saturday’ magazine (Entertaining stuff), de Montesquieu ‘Persian Letters’ (Didn’t get far though, found my joyful mood way too jolly for such rather heavy literature) and a book called ‘The Joys Of Smoking’ (Most definitely creepy thing, Google it up if you dare). In a few hours time our group was complete, as the third and final member of this not-so-much-graffiti-experience crew arrived at the flat. ‘I’m tired, are we doing something or what?’ were one of the first things she said to me. Only one more thing to be done – suddenly everybody was concerned of the state of my preparings, asking me to show the scrolls I had previously made. Lots of unrolling and idea getting actually got one of the ‘artwork’s the mirror’ and ‘bli:p’ up on the girl flats’ walls. To test the skill of gluing, as some might say. (The funny thing is the flat wasn’t the property of any of my mates’ – it was owned by the friend of one of the spray-helpers, Ruth by name. She turned out to like the door piece I had made and just asked me to do the entire collab of every scroll I’ve got on one of the walls. Fun.) After that we finally left. There is so much to say about the trip we had, but let’s not take too much of your time.

 The flats’ location was, if not in the heart of the center of the city, then a few minutes walk from it. First piece we slapped on was the ‘artwork’, a few blocks later another one was pasted on a white column and a [bli:p] slapped over a ‘please do not park your vehicles against the gates’. As later explained, no pictures of these were taken, so the only thing you’ll see, when passing through the area, will be a glue stain with some white, torn paper on it. Exploring the many great spots out there continued, as many pieces of ‘stand-art’, ‘depth’ and ‘[bli:p]’ were pasted all around the area, not leaving the slightest chance of me remembering nor the exact location of each of them, nor the order of me pasting them. I’m just glad we decided to take photo’s ‘on-the-spot’ at one point, as our route back home wasn’t even remotely near to the one we took, when left the house. I guess my favorite was a street sign I transformed, using a bit of agility to get onto the electricity box, then getting on a small ledge over the corner, finally  slapping [bli:p] over the first name, making it a [bli:p] street. Censorship by ones’ looks on the do’s and dont's. How awesome.

 I have pasted the economical creativity blogpost, documenting the [no]fears we experienced, the people passing and the whole concept of the things you might want to think about, when pasting w/pastes, but I guess you’ve already seen it, as getting those precious photos from one of the helpers is taking a hell of a lot time for me.

Next morning we terribly overslept. In fact so hard there was nothing to be rushed for anymore, so I went down for a packet of milk and some corn flakes. Of course, as any criminal, I returned to the 15 scenes of crime again, and found almost every scroll torn off by the early street cleaners and/or angry people. The few ones still up there were some artwork’s and the „high” spots I hit – the both street signs. I guess a movement of hand to tear off the wet poster still classifies as something to be done by the people cleaning everything, but a little agility required to get onto an electricity box is not. I mean – if police is not doing it’s job good enough to get the guys on scene, the street cleaners are top-notch here in Latvia. I can only be proud to have such awesome people around me.

 The pics we got should be inserted here... If there were a lot of them. Our logic of „We’ll be returning the same way, don't worry” got us pretty fucked. Now how sad is that...

Cheers.