Thirty years ago, when graffiti was withheld the respect of the subtitle "Art Form," a twelve year-old Vulcan hit the subway cars of New York with his collection of wildly colored paintcans. Over thirty years — and countless walls, trains, and buses — later, the now San Francisco-based graffiti legend has made a smooth transition from street to START SOMA, where the artist-in-residence uses his decades of experience to continue doing what he's done all along — create some of the most significant works of art, both street and otherwise, this side of 1973.

We chatted with Vulcan about his graffiti past and his gallery present, and came out the other side in agreement with the artist: Corporate or communal, gallery or ‘getting up'; art is art, and making it is what truly matters.

Joshspear.com: As one of the earlier writers, what graffiti represents to you is probably somewhat different than what it represents to today’s newest artists. Has any important meaning been lost over the years?

Vulcan: When I was 12 years old in Harlem, I wanted to CREATE. But options were pretty limited - scavenged paint cans and public surfaces were pretty much my only options. Throughout my teens, I painted wherever and whatever I could - buses, subway trains, city walls. I painted my name. I painted giant robots. I planned ‘masterpieces’ in my notebooks at school, and horded paint cans until I had literally hundreds of colors. But I didn’t call what I was doing ‘graffiti’. I was just painting. As I honed my technical skills and found my voice, at some point I was making ART - but it was never a conscious progression. (Read More…)

As a freshmen in college, I remember thinking I knew it all. However, it ended up taking me some time (a year or so) before I learned all of the knowledge I would ever need. Frankly, I was held up by not knowing where the library was for an entire semester. If only I had had posters giving me valuable advice, I could've sped up the process of gathering valuable life-altering information. While the need for informational and inspirational posters have passed me by, the incoming freshmen of University College Falmouth in the UK, could benefit from the gift of well designed advice. Each first year student at the University receives one pretty sweet poster in a series designed by established graduates with the purpose of passing on advice to those who may think they know it all already. Unfortunately, none of the designs are campus maps.

Attention all guitar heroes: do you spend the entirety of your daily grind day dreaming about those legendary rock ‘n’ roll video game moments you're going to create once you get back from the office? Don't you wish you could take your Xbox with you to work and get a few hours of practice, shredding through hot tunes on your coveted heavy metal axe? Well, day dream no more, because now you can wow your co-workers and fellow members of the working class by kicking out the jams all day sans video game console. The folks at Basic Fun have teamed up with the Guitar Hero's creators at Activision and Red Octane to create a portable version of the game on an itty-bitty guitar with a folding neck and LCD screen, allowing you to bust through tunes from Guitar Hero I and II on the subway or in the conference room. For those about rock, we salute you!

Via Chip Chick

Anyone who knows this site (or me) knows I’ve been a big José Parla fan since early 2005 when I first discovered him, and also a collector since the very beginning; I was lucky enough to have a grabbed a few pieces from his first big successful show in Miami a few years back as well. Since that show, his success has been awe-inspiring and his work quickly becoming highly sought after by collectors around the world.

His first show in Italy (and first full scale show in a while) was just announced. The show, entitled Memory Documents, will be at the Genova, Italy gallery Il Trifoglio Nero from March 29th through May 10th. Time to find a good reason to visit for the opening! More information about the exhibit can be found on a PDF off Il Trifoglio Nero’s site here.

Way back in the Summer of 2006, long before we directed you toward the miracle that is Doane Paper, Chad Doane decided to count the ways in which he loved Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke. Rather than picking up a flower and pulling of petals he decided to make a crossword puzzle using his invention that was dedicated to the diminutive musical mastermind. He didn't think anything of it and more or less just scanned it and posted it onto his flickr page. Eight months ago, seemingly out of nowhere, Keith Stephenson contacted the Doane Paper principle to request a new art and design book he was working on. Well eight months have come and gone and Doane's puzzle has hit the printing press along with plenty of other interesting grid and square design work in Squares, Checks and Grids, The third volume in the highly collectible Communicating With Patterns series from Keith Stephenson and Mark Hampshire of multidiscplinary design agency, Absolute Zero Degrees. The book, which pays “visual homage to squares and checks, an inspirational graphic collection of different occurrences of squares and checks from all environments” is available on Amazon and is definitely worth a gander.