Client: Benderson Development Company, Fashion Outlets of Niagara Falls USA
Size & Medium: 28’ x 141’, acrylic on prepared masonry

Central Piece - Close-up

• Eric Grohe

Ever wondered how plain facades can be transformed into three dimensional Trompe-L’oeil paintings ? The answer can be found in viewing Eric Grohe’s paintings. Working much like the street artists reviewed in my previous entries, Eric transforms the drab urban landscape by creating exceptional wall paintings on the sides of buildings - inside and out. The thing that sets Eric’s murals apart from “most” other street artists is their subjects and execution - they make a flat wall look like it has three dimensional space and form. Therefore, in most cases, can be considered realistic illusions, much like the work of street artist Julian Beevers.

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This Caravan was painted during the preparations of the “Graffiti Stories”-Exhibition in Sète

“Whole Car” painting

These fantastic paintings are from the Graffiti Stories events happening right now in two locations in France. The Show runs till the 13th of January, 2008, in the MIAM in Séte (Musée des arts Modestes) and the Abbaye d’Auberives near Dijon. The exhibition there will run June 30th, 2007 to September 19th, 2007.

Artists include Alëxone—Paris; Esmaeil Bahrani—Téhéran; Dzus—Kaohsiung; David Ellis—New York; Maya Hayuk—New York; Jonone—Paris; Nunca—Sao Paulo; Reach—Taipei; Zonenkinder—Mainz. All walls in the museum have been painted by the artists.

The Caravan piece (top) painted during the preparations of the “Graffiti Stories” is amongst my favorites from the showing so far. There is, however, plenty of talent to be seen throughout the Zonenkinder collective, see here: www.zonenkindercollective.de.vu.

We are entering into an incredibly productive phase of urban street art, where talented artists like Brazilian Claudio Ethos are creating stunning and dramatic artworks. Ethos’ artworks contain sharp social commentary obviously inspired from the “sprawling metropolis” of Sao Paulo - the new “shrine to graffiti”. While many street artists today prefer the stencil method, Ethos prefers to paint using freehand style to create these unique figurative paintings. They would indeed enrich the surrounding of any living space.

You can find most of Claudio’s work at ekosystem.org. Unfortunately, street art is usually short lived, gone within days or certainly weeks after it is completed. The only permanent record of these works are photographs. Here are [28] more photos for the record, capturing ethos’ spectacular ephemeral pieces… more…

• Graffiti Database

Graffiti Database is a French site which presents a variety of photographs by some talented graffiti artists. You will find on this site various photographs of graffiti classified by topics, including: Frescos, Characters, Fronts etc. A really interesting voyage of discovered urban art! Click the link to visit.

CGTextures - strives to be the worlds best texture site. It’s more than time consuming creating textures without good photo materials. Making textures after all should be about creativity, not about spending hours looking for the right image on the internet. If you agree, then visit CGTextures, it’s an excellent texture resource.

• Aeiko

Aeiko prenounced eye’co is the creative identity of Pete Harrison, a talented British designer. His portfolio joins together the whole of his work in web and print, exquisitely. Since graduating in Medialab arts in 2005, Aeiko has quickly evolved into one of UK’s top up and coming designers, working with many high end clients in the fields of graphic design, web and interactive media, including: Dolci & Gabbana, Intel, Peugeot, Microsoft, BMW, Vinyl abuse, amongst others.

Visiting his portfolio you will notice Pete’s no novice when it comes to working in flash, illustrator and Photoshop. He is one of those designers who works (alot) with the photograph and a whole lot of fine vector subjectivity. It is really no surprise his online presence has expanded over the last several years, being featured in variety of magazines, books and on websites including a feature in Computer Arts magazine as one in ten internationally recognized new designers in the year 2006.

Aeiko’s currently working for a London design company as associate interactive designer while developing his clothing label Funkrush on the side. Pete is also the founder of the excellent Desktopography and a very active member of Depthcore too. He continues to push the boundaries of creativity (and productivity), while inspiring others and impressing the design industry with his abilities. In the world of design, Aeiko’s portfolio is sublime brilliance in all respects. Here’s [20] more examples for your viewing pleasure… more…