Monster Fresh

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Contest Time! 

Enter to win this free Moonrise Kingdom gift pack, courtesy of Focus Features! Entering is easy, just check out our blog - http://spoke-art.com/blog/2012/11/17/contest-wes-anderson-prize-pack/

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Although he had found a reasonable amount of success as a playwright and through the creation of a favorably received webcast, filmmaker, Morgan Spurlock‘s first major mainstream recognition came in 2004 with his Academy Award-nominated docu-drama Supersize Me.  Instantly spring-boarded into the public eye, Spurlock came across like a less intense, more soluble Michael Moore, starring in his own investigative pieces, and it was clear that this was more than a simple one-off documentary –there would definitely be more to see from the native-West Virginian in the future.  Building off of the Supersize Me concept, which had him eating McDonalds food for 30 days straight, Morgan later hosted, and was often the subject in, the FX program, 30 Days.  Each episode documented an individual enduring a 30-day span of time, immersed in a lifestyle that was in severe contrast to their normal everyday lives (spending time incarcerated, Christians living amongst Muslims, homophobes amongst homosexuals, etc.) to learn about themselves and the lives of others, in a manner that The Real World will never fully accomplish.  Among his other film work is Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?, in which Spurlock heads to dangerous territories in the middle east, searching for the since-murdered founder of Al Qaeda, while filming the real innocent families that are trapped in a war-torn country, and POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Told, a film completely funded by product placement, in which the subject matter is all about product placement and the footage almost entirely consists of him collecting the corporate sponsors to finance the film.  His most recent film project finds him teamed with Marvel Comics legend/Spiderman creator, Stan “The Man” Lee and Josh Whedon (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly) to direct a documentary about Comicon.  This weekend Spurlock steps out of the world of film and into fine art, as he curates a group exhibit at Culver City, California‘s highly renowned contemporary art gallery, Thinkspace. Read the rest of this entry →

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Buenos Aires‘ Juan Pablo Zaramella has been drawing since he was a child and, by the time that he was sixteen years old, he was already a working cartoonist.  He studied to become an animation director at Instituto de Arte Cinematografico de Avellaneda and, after graduation, he began making his own films.  This independent work, in turn, brought him enough recognition to result in getting advertising animation work and in directing commercials for high profile international clients.  From the late 1990s to mid-2000s, Zaramella even held a position as an illustrator/graphist for the most widely distributed magazine in Argentina, Clarín, for which his work garnered several international awards from Society of News Design.  Still, as new positions, responsibilities, and accolades continued to roll in, he has never ceased work on his own personal projects.  In fact, Juan Pablo‘s film shorts have, arguably, become his greatest accomplishments, collectively yielding over 100 awards in their own right, worldwide.  Among these achievements, Zaramella was selected for a 2008 Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors Showcase in Cannes and, in 2010, Annecy International Animation Festival presented a special program, showcasing all of his works.  His most recent animated short, Luminaris, however, may be his most impressive yet. Read the rest of this entry →

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When the Coachella 2012 lineup was announced, I couldn’t deny that I was impressed.  With such a solid collection of artists, I was even considering trying to make it down this year.  Adding a second weekend with the exact same lineup seemed confusing and, in all honesty, a stretch.  How much was that gonna cost them?  What artists are going to be willing to kick it in the general area for another week just to perform to a second crowd of people that will likely already know what to expect?  Radiohead was smart and booked a couple of Mexico City dates during the week to continue on their tour with Other Lives.  The festival did manage to reel in the big names that the kids these days seem to love and plenty of them: The Black Keys, The Shins, Bon Iver, M83, etc.  Most of those bands are or will be on tour, regardless, and the rest of them slowly popped up on the bill of various other festivals – Bon Iver, The Shins, Beirut, Santigold, Wild Flag, Childish Gambino, Beats Antique, The Head and the Heart, tUnE-yArDs, St. Vincent, and Feist will all be at the Sasquatch! Festival this year.  After the reality that I was going to stay home with my lady and my infant child became more and more of a reality and the initial hype wore off, there were only a few acts that I was really disappointed about missing by not attending Coachella; most of which weren’t getting very high billing.  Death Grips and Company flow were at the top of the acts that I personally have been wishing would make their way up here to the Pacific North West, but haven’t shown any plan to fulfill that dream.  fIREHOSE subsequently posted their full tour and already came through here last week.  Amon Tobin would appear with his ridiculously amazing and mindblowing ISAM tour, which is still going strong, and, although it’s definitely worth witnessing again, I already caught it last year.  I would have checked out the Mazzy Star and Cat Power sets, but it’s not like I’m gonna slit my throat over missing them.  The only real big name act that I was disappointed about not seeing was Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg together.  It turns out that I had good reason for such disappointment, as their set included a hologram of a resurrected and rapping Tupac Shakur; a visual effect that easily rivaled that of Tobin’s groundbreaking live show. Read the rest of this entry →

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Yesterday, a Los Angeles filmmaker by the name of Nirvan Mullick posted a short film on his vimeo page and the traffic went haywire.  If you look up Mullick on imdb, the last real filmwork documented for him on the site, came nearly a decade ago.  The most recognizable -perhaps, only recognizable- project on the list is the 2003 Crispin Glover rodent-centric horror film, Willard, in which Mullick was an uncredited animation director for the opening title sequence.  His credits also show that he collected a handful of awards at independent film festivals for his animated short The Box Man (2002), which likely landed him the Willard gig, in the first place.  Otherwise, imdb only features a fairly slim 3-film-deep resume for the director/producer/animator/writer.  It’s not all that Nirvan‘s been involved with -he’s actually working on at least one other highly ambitious project that I know of- but with this new short being the only video posted and no other real activity on his vimeo account at all, it is still remarkable to consider that this new 11-minute movie has already claimed over 350,000 views in such a short period of time.  The only real factors that can truly be credited for such immediate success is the content, the quality, the subject, and the genuineness of the piece, as well as the internet’s ability to spread little independent projects like this out to people who, otherwise, wouldn’t have ever been able to see them 10 years ago. Read the rest of this entry →

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Blunt Graffix - "Dead Rockstars"

Spoke Art x Blunt Graffix: “Dead Rockstars” Curated by Matt Dye Oakland Art Murmer Telegraph: 2318 Telegraph Ave. Oakland, CA 94612

Opening: Friday April 6, 2012 – 6pm to 10pm On view the month of April 30th

As human beings attempting to survive on this ridiculous and trying planet, the impending doom related to our dwindling time here is constantly looming over us.  Even if you aren’t the type to obsess over such inevitabilities, the news media will be sure to remind you and, if they fail to do so, then reality will eventually hit via the news of some passing loved one or even a distant acquaintance.  Don’t know anyone… at all?  Are you a reclusive hermit with no contact with the outside world?  Well, how’s that back doing?  How’s your hair, bones, and skin holding up?  One day it’s gonna be curtains folks and there’s not too much that can be done about it.  While we might all be in the same boat as far as our mortality is concerned, the main factors that differentiate us from each other are our perspectives and just exactly how much time we still have left in our respective hour glasses.  Throughout the progression (and/or regression) of our lives, our perspectives can change, as well as our health.  In fact, our health can have a direct and profound effect on our perspectives and vice versa.  Some people are content with just trying to survive as long as possible, catching the occasional prime-time sitcom, driving like a reckless asshole, or blowing their retail paychecks on a name brand handbag to zing a little momentary buzz through their life force.  Others focus intently on their offspring and/or world issues, hoping to leave the Earth a better place than they entered it, for the benefit of future generations.

The ways that we approach life vary as widely as our individual theories about the purpose and “meaning” behind it, but most of us seem to want to receive at least a minor level of acknowledgement, at one point or another, even if it’s just the acknowledgement that we do, in fact, exist at all.  “How much time/life do I have left in me to pull something big and noticeable off?“  “How much time do I have left to even make a simple yet longstanding impact on the realm that I’m leaving behind?“  For some people, just the idea of their conceptual existence and what that means to them can even be larger than the preservation of their physical existence.  For them, the idea of persisting through time as a powerful memory trumps the idea of simply surviving in their physical form as an unsung nobody.  Dying can make you a star, even if you’re not around to reap the benefits from it.  Some wingnut motherfuckers have even gone as far as firing off weapons in public, picking off random casualties, just so that their names could appear in print and, often times, be quickly forgotten; ironically, overshadowed by the nature of their extreme and misguided obsessions (I don’t know those Columbine kids’ names or remember their faces).  Nothing else epitomizes the live fast, die young, become immortalized on a T-Shirt scenario quite like the dead rockstar and tomorrow our friends at Spokeart will be presenting a new group art exhibit, curated by regular contributor/collaborator Matt Dye of Blunt Graffix, that will pay tribute to these icons, which have often forced us to consider our own mortality, while dreaming about ways in which our own memories might live on forever. Read the rest of this entry →

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We here at Monster Fresh love the late, great Wesley Willis like a god damn milkshake.  We love him like a magic kiss.  Every day when I get up and walk into my living room, I am fortunate enough greeted with one of the typically expansive cityscape line drawings hat he created in his home town of Chicago.  A massive beast of a man, he was a force of a nature and, for anyone that crossed paths with his music, he was more than a difficult artist to forget.  For those of us that met him in person and bumped his skull, at some point during his 40 short years on this planet, it was even more evident that his like would never be witnessed again.  I’ve mentioned it before, but at the time when “Willis died of chronic myelogenous leukemia on August 21st, 2003” “it was the only time that I had ever felt a legitimate sadness and emptiness by the death of a public figure.“  Fortunately, the musician/artist left behind thousands of songs, a plethora of detailed visual works, and endless and priceless personal connections -chronicled in an impressive documentary- for us to remember and re-experience his powerful life force through. Read the rest of this entry →

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THE INTRO:

For those of you who do not know who Lana Del Rey is or simply feel that they may not have the appropriate knowledge of her history in relation to this piece, we have created an additional write-up which we believe should sufficiently fill in any gaps and provide context.  That introduction can be reached through linking HERE.

It’s actually quite lengthy, in it’s own right, so if you do feel that you already have enough of a grasp on the subject and/or that it should not affect your ability to absorb the following content, we encourage to simply continue reading.  Thank you.

On March 10, Lana Del Rey gave a free concert at Easy Street Records in Seattle. The motives were clear. After a disastrous SNL performance, she would perform several brief, low-pressure sets to hone her delivery. And, with a large stable of consultants and voice coaches, Del Rey would advance to the arena circuit by next year. I anticipated swift progress. I was wrong. Read the rest of this entry →

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[CLICK HERE to jump ahead to the main article, written by Adam Forman]

PLEASE NOTE…

This section is only intended to establish a reference point for those unfamiliar with Lana Del Rey and/or her background.  It was initially created as a preface for the article: “Pop Music, Social Development, and Neurology; A Scientific Exploration of Lana Del Ray’s Rise and Fall (and Rise)” by Adam Forman, which delves more immediately into the subject and reflects on where she is now.  This piece is focused more about where she came from.  If you feel that you are already adequately versed on this subject matter, please feel free to click the above link, bypassing this introduction and advancing to the primary content directly.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave under a rock, it’s likely that you’ve read any number of strikingly unoriginal, cookie cutter-articles that lead off with the phrase, “Unless you’ve been living in a cave…” or “Unless you’ve been living under a rock…” before launching into some brief update regarding breakout indie pop vocalist Lana Del Rey.  In fact, even back when I read the very first article that introduced me to the overnight sensation and vocalist behind the smash internet hit “Videogames“, I was already greeted with the implication that I had arrived embarrassingly late to the LDR party.  Of course, the exaggerated content in the post was centered around the idea of a PR team conspiring to bamboozle the taste-makers and internet world by selling them them a pop-star packaged under the guise of a self-made indie starlet. “WE’VE BEEN TRICKED!  WE’VE BEEN DUPED!  IT WAS A SETUP!” were the basic claims.  I wasn’t paying much attention. Read the rest of this entry →

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In late August of 2009, I picked up Of Montreal’s Hissing Fauna, You are the Destroyer? a couple of days into an ill-fated trip with my wife.  Between losing our ID’s and the fact that I had decided (for the both of us) to skip the planning process for the trip, we had as much chance of having a good time as a dying man at a bar mitzvah.  I had this romantic notion that we would drift for a few days and land wherever the road seemed to be taking us. For almost any Seattleite, this “plan” is actually some weird code for “let’s go to Portland.”  We got to the city pretty late. Without a useable ID between the two of us, we were turned away from almost every hotel in the city.  It’s also worthwhile to mention that, at this poin,t we had only been married for two days.  Eventually, we found a hotel with a tenant so mousy that I managed to intimidate my way into a room.  The complementary soap smelled like fish sauce.  The next morning, we stopped at a record shop before leaving the city, where I was drawn to the stained-glass graphics of the Hissing Fauna, and thought some electro-pop might smooth over this honey-moon-gone-wrong.  This also happens to be a good way to describe Of Montreal’s new album, Paralytic Stalks. Read the rest of this entry →

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It was either the beginning of last year or the end of 2010 when I first began hearing about The Worst Tattoo in Austin competition.  Posts about the event were coming from the Facebook account of an old friend of mine named Devon Tincknell, who I first met back in my Olympia, Washington days.  Devon now lives in Austin where he’s written for the Onion‘s A.V. Club and runs a sex blog called F*BOMB, (also a column of the same name for the University of Texas paper, UWeekly) which is primarily about wieners and vaginas grinding (on each other, as well as on just about anything/everything else).  At the time of those first posts, I’m not sure if it was even a fully developed idea yet.  Apparently, Tincknell had already thought up the basic concept for the contest a couple of years earlier -something he’d originally pitched to the Onion- but it had been put on the back burner.  The greatest part about the idea was that it was eventually realized last year and turned out to be fairly successful.  The second greatest part is that the contest recently just went down for the second consecutive year and is, arguably, becoming even more successful. Read the rest of this entry →

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Tom Haubrick - "Richard | "Rodney" (ink & wash on paper )

Today is the the day that it all goes down.  For the second year in a row, Gallery 1988 in Los Angeles will host it’s much anticipated group exhibit titled “Is This Thing On?” and the opening is tonight (March 9th) from 7 – 10pm.  This year’s show is being deemed “The Weird Year” both for the fact that MC-ing duties will fall on the shoulder of host,”Weird Al” Yankovic and because the gallery will also be showcasing a 9-print set of pieces chronicling highlights throughout the famous parodists career.  100 artists in total will be creating depictions of their favorite comedians and it’s likely that at least a few of them will be in attendance (Artists, definitely. Comedians? Quite possibly).  Last year Zach Galifianakis sent a letter to artist, Mike Mitchell and personally thanked him for the piece that he created of him, while also apologizing for his face.  The show is being co-presented by Funny Or Die. Read the rest of this entry →

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Atlas Sound Neumos Seattle, Wa 2/28/12

Atlas Sound is interesting because it is essentially a counterpoint to Bradford Cox’s other role as frontman of Deerhunter.  On record, the differences between the two projects is slight; and many Atlas Sound songs would dovetail quite well with the more subdued moments on Microcastle and Halcyon Digest, the band’s latest albums.  Yet in a live setting, these nuances are magnified.  As the frontman for Deerhunter, Cox seems to define his music by its relation to, and subversion of, the well-worn tropes of rock music.  I recall a Deerhunter show in 2010 that began with Cox announcing, “We’re just some good ol’ boys from Georgia who like to play rock’n’roll” before launching into a loose, spaced-out effects-laden jam -probably the last thing one might expect “some good ol’ boys” to put out.

At the Atlas Sound show at Neumos the other night, Cox was just as eager to play with the expectations of a “solo” show. Read the rest of this entry →

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ELEANOR FRIEDBERGER The Crocodile Seattle, Wa 2/9/2012

Eleanor Friedberger is an underrated genius.  [You will be reading that word a lot in this review; "genius."]  Most people know Eleanor as one-part of the genius team of the Fiery Furnaces, but she also has her own hermetic freakishly gifted brand of brilliance that is worth casting an admiring eye upon.  The evidence is fully served up in her debut solo album, Last Summer that plays as a 10-song diaristic overview of her life at the time that she wrote it.  Unlike much of the Fiery Furnaces‘ quasi-experimental work, Eleanor’s solo release is super listenable.  It’s full of rock and funk hooks (the “funkiest” example of which carries an upbeat song tailing a meandering trip to get drugs, take drugs, and the thoughts one thinks when on drugs) that sound fresh and new, even though they are working in classic pop territory. 

Last Summer came out in July and Friedberger is currently in the middle of a big-ass US tour to promote it.  When a group of friends and I left the Crocodile after seeing her show there on Feb 9th, the conversation immediately turned towards discussing her as some sort of wunderkind.  We all felt like we had just experienced something sneakily special—there was no bravado, glitz or spectacle surrounding the show (it largely lacked pretense of any kind)—but we were kind of blown away, nevertheless.  Our friend Scotty summed it up perfectly by saying that she has a “shine.”  Here’s the full run down of the shiny-ass night that we had: Read the rest of this entry →

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This Friday marks the second annual “Is This Thing On?” exhibit in Los Angeles, which features 100 of the top contemporary artists in the game depicting their favorite comedians through their respective mediums.  Last year’s show yielded some impressive results and this year shouldn’t prove any different.  Never satisfied with hosting a simple art show, the folks over at Gallery 1988 have arranged for “Weird Al” Yankovic himself to MC/host the opening for the exhibit, which has a full title of “Is This Thing On? 2: The Weird Year” and is co-presented by those zany jokers over at Funny Or Die.  Along with his hosting duties, Yankovic will also be honored with a 9-print set chronicling his career and featuring contributions from a few folks that you may even recognize as artists that we’ve featured on the site over the years.

The opening takes place this Friday March 9th from 7 – 10pm and, as the date approaches, we’ve continued to wait patiently to get glimpses at more and more of the art.  Our accompanying post about the show features our first set of preview images and can be viewed HERE.  As far as the Weird Al pieces, however, we’ve finally got them all available for viewing below.  Along with the images, the following statement was siphoned from the Gallery 1988 blog, which is now delivered via their new tumblr account. Read the rest of this entry →

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When the owners of Los Angeles‘ Gallery 1988 decided to expand by opening a second location in the Venice Beach area, it wasn’t simply a sound corporate venture.  Another space was, more or less, becoming a necessity.  When the original Melrose location opened back in 2004, the idea of an art gallery that focused heavily of themes that were deeply rooted in popular culture might have seemed like a lofty and unrealistic business model for most people.  Even for those of us who couldn’t help but be instantly drawn to support and embrace such a concept, the longevity of an endeavor as untested and daring as that could still sound questionable.  How many different themes can really be pulled off month after month?  How many dead clydesdales were gonna get their ribs cracked under the force of a Vibram sole or have their skulls shattered with a blackjack?  It should have only been a matter of time before powdered milk dust and air were the only thing left to be squeezed from that pop-art udder, right?  Well, 8 years later, founders, Katie Cromwell and Jensen Karp are not only proving any doubters wrong by going stronger than ever, while staying continuously innovative and forward thinking, they’ve also helped to inspire endless other galleries to follow suit by showcasing similar works/artist.

The gallery’s breakout group exhibit Crazy 4 Cult -cohosted annually by director, Kevin Smith- has already run through 5 different installments, with the first 4 being documented with it’s own hardcover book.  While G1988 is equally as passionate about showcasing select highly-level talent, by hosting solo exhibits, and curating incredible one-off exhibits (see our Wet Hot American Summer tribute show coverage HERE), some specific themed group exhibits have been so popular and effective that they demand revisiting.  With each calendar year limited to only 12 months and so many great concepts vying for focus, the new gallery -running separate exhibits simultaneously-  helps to sustains that balance between hosting solos art shows and new experimental group exhibits, while more and more shows claim their spot as annual events.  Whether it is because enough artists want to take a swing at an exhibit that they missed out on, due to reception being so overwhelming, or simply that there is just simply more that could be said, one thing is for sure, the general consensus is that shows like the video game-themed “Multiplayer” exhibit just weren’t over yet and needed to come back for another year.  One such show titled, “Is This Thing On? 2” features 100 different artists depicting some of their favorite comedians and, while the previous show may have been undeniably impressive, this year looks as if it will actually outdo the festivities of last year’s debut. Read the rest of this entry →