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]