Inspiration: Yinka Shonibare

If you haven’t heard of Yinka Shonibare, here is your opportunity to briefly read up on him, and quickly do a search about all of his work, thoughts, and what he is about. Yinka, who was born in London in 1962, moved to Lagos, Nigeria (West Africa) when he was three years old. He studied at the Byam Shaw School of Art, London in 1984-9 and completed a BA at Goldsmiths College, London in 1991.What I admire most about him is the fact that he truly considers himself bi-cultural, he stays grounded and true to his culture as you can see by his use of the ankara fabric and more importantly, how he strives to open up debate about the social, cultural and political issues that shape our histories and construct identity. Yinka, who currently lives in London, has gained international attention by exploring issues or race and class through a range of media that includes sculpture, paintind, photography, and installation art. His work addresses a vast of cultural and historical issues.







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Heavy Metal Urban Art: Matthew Small

Matthew Small’s work has strong urban roots. By painting directly onto found pieces of metal, he brings physical elements of the city directly into his work. The subjects of his portraits are also found anonymously on the streets of London. Executed with astonishingly textured brushstrokes, Matt's pieces feel both abstract and incredibly real and vital.

These images were recently taken at Matt's show, “Youngstarrs”, at the Black Rat Press Gallery in London. Of the many stunning pieces throughout the exhibit, the most impressive had to be the large painted car hoods that hung from the ceiling.
~eugene


scoped:
mymodernmet.com https://sites.google.com/site/mayuradocs/PinIt.png

The cARTer Family Reunion Trailer (just some inspiration)

Ill ass artwork for an album cover.



The Carter Family Reunion Coming Soon... from CARTER on Vimeo.


fresh wrest from: FRESHNERD check dude out! https://sites.google.com/site/mayuradocs/PinIt.png

House of Dereon Spring 2009 Campaign

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Electric Heat

They really do bring the heat.
cred:
http://www.electricheat.org https://sites.google.com/site/mayuradocs/PinIt.png

Georg Olden, rocking the status quo (or The real black Don Draper)

Born 1920, Birmingham, Alabama
Deceased 1975, Los Angeles, California

Recognized for his pioneering contributions to the field of television graphics and for leading the way for future African American designers.

In 1945, before Jackie Robinson played Major League baseball, or Marian Anderson sang at the Metropolitan Opera, Georg Olden, the grandson of a slave, took a job with CBS. There, as head of the network’s division of on-air promotions at the dawn of television, Olden pioneered the field of broadcast graphics. Working under CBS’s art director, William Golden, he supervised the identities of programs such as I Love Lucy, Lassie and Gunsmoke; helped produce the vote-tallying scoreboard for the first televised presidential election returns (the 1952 race between Dwight D. Eisenhower and Adlai E. Stevenson); and collaborated with esteemed artists and designers, including David Stone Martin, Ed Benguiat, Alex Steinweiss and Bob Gill.

Olden was widely celebrated in his day. The 1981 reference book 250 Years of Afro-American Art: An Annotated Bibliography notes that between 1951 and 1960—the year Olden left CBS to work in advertising—his name appeared 108 times in Graphis and Art Directors Club annuals. By 1970 he had won seven Clio awards and had even designed the Clio statuette in 1962, a figure inspired by Brancusi’s Bird in Space sculpture. Olden was respected not only for helping to usher TV from a fledgling industry into a golden age, but also for serving as a model for black America. Ebony magazine profiled him several times in the 1950s and ’60s as one who had grasped the opportunities offered by a new communications medium and risen to an executive rank. But it was far from easy. In 1954, Ebony reported that of the 72,400 people employed full-time in television, fewer than 200 were black. The jobs included “print-machine operator” and “wardrobe mistress.” “Acceptance is a matter of talent,” Olden told the magazine in 1963. “In my work I’ve never felt like a Negro. Maybe I’ve been lucky.”

(He and I have something in common, I too sir, have never felt like a negro in my work!)

cred:
http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/medalist-georgolden

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Nike Step

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My personal inspirations: Herb Lubalin

This project was the inspiration for Spike Lee's Jungle Fever poster.



Herbert F. (Herb) Lubalin (1918 – May 24, 1981) was a prominent American graphic designer. He collaborated with Ralph Ginzburg on three of Ginzburg's magazines: Eros, Fact, and Avant Garde, and was responsible for the creative visual beauty of these publications. He designed a typeface, ITC Avant Garde, for the last of these; this distinctive font could be described as a post-modern interpretation of art deco, and its influence can be seen in logos created in the 1990s and 2000s.

I am completely enamored with this guys work!



These ads were for Ebony magazine.

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Cey Adams Explains The ‘DEFinition’ Of Hip-Hop Art

Cey Adams Explains The ‘DEFinition’ Of Hip-Hop Art
When it comes to the “look” of hip-hop, Cey Adams is definitely a founding father. The Jamaica, Queens native started out bombing trains in graffiti’s heyday, went on to display art alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, designed iconic logos for LL Cool J and the Beastie Boys, and co-founded the design firm behind classic rap album covers like Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet and Biggie’s Ready to Die. So when it came time to compile the visual history of the genre in a book, it was only right that Adams take the helm.

DEFinition: The Art and Design of Hip-Hop by Adams (with Bill Adler) looks back at more than 30 years of hip-hop-influenced art. Organized into seven chapters (graffiti, album covers, advertising, film, cars, kicks and fashion), “DEFinition” is the first book to put together all the various media of hip-hop art. Complex recently spoke with Adams and Adler for an exclusive interview, and got them to tell stories behind a few specific images from the book…

Complex: What was the inspiration for the book?

Cey Adams: We kind of watched hip-hop progress over the years, and watched it go from say clothing manufacturers not caring what we thought—or more importantly, dictating what we should be paying attention to and what we should buy—to giving us the opportunity to actually make those decisions for ourselves. And that’s happened over and over and over again in every field.

Bill Adler: As students of hip-hop scholarship, we haven’t done anything quite like this. There are magazines devoted to sneakers, there have been books about graffiti, but nobody before Cey saw all these disparate expressions as expressions of the same so-called hip-hop sensibility.

Complex: What was your definition of hip-hop for the book? What kind of things did you want to include?

Cey Adams: The definition is endless. There are a couple things we could have included that we didn’t, jewelry for example, but first and foremost for me it’s art and design. I wanted to focus on painting and graffiti and things like that, so that was the base, and everything was an offshoot of that. But there could be so many things that we could have tapped into.

Complex: What makes a piece of art or artist “hip-hop”?

Bill Adler: It’s kind of loose. One of the things the book demonstrates over and over again is that there is no stereotypical hip-hop art. The artists in the book don’t fit comfortably into very many categories. It’s the air you breathe, it’s the food you eat, it’s the clothes you wear…

Cey Adams: It’s the company you keep.
__________________________________

CEY ADAMS BREAKS DOWN THE STORIES BEHIND A FEW OF THE BOOK’S DIVERSE IMAGES:


“Ali vs. Confidence” Cey Adams, 2006

“Adidas commissioned seven artists to create a collection of paintings in honor of Muhammad Ali. Ali is one of my lifelong heroes, so this job was definitely a highlight of my career. Leroy Neiman, Shepard Fairey, and Eric Bailey were among the other artists. They assigned each of us one of the seven different “values” that Ali chose to define himself, as well as a photo of Ali. I was assigned Confidence. After we made the paintings, Adidas used each image on limited-edition tracksuits and sneakers.”



“Nemesis” B.E. Johnson, 1990

“In 1990, Public Enemy was recording Fear of a Black Planet when Chuck D came to us with a sketch on a napkin that showed a black planet eclipsing Planet Earth. We took Chuck’s sketch to B.E. Johnson, a famous NASA artist. Although Johnson was sure that Chuck’s vision was astrophysically impossible, he painted it anyway. Not only is it one of the greatest album covers of all time, it turned out to be one of most popular pieces Johnson’s ever done.”



Def Jam comic book by Michael Bair and Buzz Parker, 1997

“This was a promo item for a bunch of our artists who had albums coming out at the same time. All of them seemed larger than life, so it was natural to portray them as superheroes. I think Michael Bair worked for DC Comics at the time.”

cred:
Complex.com
http://www.complex.com/blogs/2008/10/27/cey-adams-explains-the-definition-of-hip-hop-art/ https://sites.google.com/site/mayuradocs/PinIt.png

phillip toledano photography

High concept gets remembered. Nice lighting.
cred:
phillip toledano https://sites.google.com/site/mayuradocs/PinIt.png

Hand Drawn Hotness

Si Scott does curvy cool type deconstruction that makes him seem to be on some whole other isht. His creations inspired a mini bite-fest movement. I was not immune to the urge to bite the living shit out of his work of the expansive inspiration Si's work has the ability to impart. Let's do something new that's all I'm sayin'.

cred: Si Scott
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