POW! WOW! Long Beach – Mural Photo Coverage, by Julie Faith
POW! WOW! Long Beach has returned for it’s second consecutive year. Artists from around the globe are participating in their week-long event bringing art and culture to the city.
POW! WOW! is a gathering of contemporary artists who engage with the broader community in the process and creation of art. Long Beach began playing host on Monday to an exciting week filled with live mural paintings, art exhibitions, talks and more. Included in the programming is that the Long Beach Museum of Art in collaboration with Thinkspace Gallery and POW! WOW! are hosting the opening of “Vitality and Verve: In the Third Dimension,” on Friday, July 15 from 7 PM to 10 PM.
More details on the overall week-long programming, occurring through Sunday July 17th, can be found here.
Cartwheel Art is a media partner. Contributor Julie Faith began her photo coverage yesterday that included checking out the progress of murals for POW! WOW! Long Beach by Hula, Ernest Zacharevic and Pantonio. She also attended the talk with Martha Cooper and Ernest Zacharevic at Art Theatre of Long Beach. The talk was presented by Imprint and hosted by Eugene Kan of Maekan.
A few of Julie’s photos from yesterday as well as a brief description of each of the artists, provided by POW! WOW! Long Beach, are below.
We will be updating Julie’s coverage on this post, daily, so make sure to check back to see more. Also follow us on instagram.
Mural in process by Hula. Photo by Julie Faith
Hula: Hula is a Hawaii grown artist based in New York City. Self-taught Hula travels the world creating paintings which capture the emotions and interactions between the figures and their environment. With each piece, Hula merges his backgrounds in both street and fine art.
More about Hula here
Mural in process by Ernest Zacharevic. Photo by Julie Faith.
Mural in process by Ernest Zacharevic. Photo by Julie Faith.
Mural in process by Ernest Zacharevic. Photo by Julie Faith.
Mural in process by Ernest Zacharevic. Photo by Julie Faith.
Ernest Zacharevic: Zacharevic sees his work as an experience rather than an object. He takes time to study the audience as much as the subjects of his work. Directing the possible encounters of the people who see his work and the artwork is a game and a challenge that he enjoys.
After years of training as a painter in a very traditional school of arts Zacharevic’s developed a need to shift his focus away from improving painting skills and techniques to exploring the flexibility of medium to match the subject. Now his art practice is a collage of different mediums. Zacharevic always try to focus on the content and the context of his work and not to limit himself by a medium. He puts a lot of research into his work: take photographs, observe architecture, people, landscape and translate this into an artwork.
More about Ernest Zacharevic here
Mural in process by Pantonio (Tuesday). Photo by Julie Faith.
Mural in process by Pantonio (Tuesday). Photo by Julie Faith.
Mural in process by Pantonio (Tuesday). Photo by Julie Faith.
Mural in process by Pantonio (Wednesday). Photo by Julie Faith.
Mural in process by Pantonio (Wednesday). Photo by Julie Faith.
Pantonio: Major artist of the street art scene Lisboan Antonio Correia aka Pantonio (Lisbon, Portugal) has developed a very personal visual vocabulary and a strong graphic style with remarkable amplitude. Pantonio’s animated works of a motionless movement proceed from a peculiar dynamics at the whim of a wave flow.
Inhabited by a fantastic bestiary in almost human eyes, his figurative work are driven flexible lines with fluidity renders the momentum of a disheveled leak, a dash, a mad hunt. Its motive the best known in France, thanks to its intervention in the Tower 13 is the horde of black rabbits failed, symbol of fear, escaping in an uproar, and frenzy as an anthropomorphic metaphor for contemporary society.
After studying Fine Arts and school graphics, Pantonio occurs for the first time in the street when arrived in Lisbon in the 90s. Public art, pop art adapted to the environment, urban art aesthetic notes elementary accessible to all. Space to enter to pass a message. Pontonio often brings a social meaning to his work through which he wishes to echo the crises. The urban area is for him a source of activism. The city generates images, shapes, movements and extension ideas. Combining taste of intrusion, distrust in relation to established programs, interventions relate to both subversion and dissenting poetic.
Pantonio is from the islands of Azores, and his paintings are based on the strength of the black rocks and the sea. Pantonio is one of the most prolific and influential artists of the street art scene in Lisbon. Deeply influenced by the inhabitant of Lisbon culture, his works regularly refer to riches Tagus: sardines, cod, octopus, mermaids, ropes, boats.
Pantonio designs, which adorn the walls of the city, also deliver messages filled with social meaning, as evidenced by this fresco imaging a boat or bar seems maintained by the authorities at the stern while the people carry arms at the bow, ink hand in protest.
The graphic style of Pantonio, easily identifiable thanks to the dominant colors blue and black, further enhances the reputation of this unique artist, who gives generously to the street for our greatest pleasure.
More about Pantonio here
Mural in process by KASHINK (Wednesday). Photo by Julie Faith.
KASHINK: KASHINK is one of the few very active female artists in the French graffiti/street art scene. She lives in Paris, France, and has travelled a lot throughout the world, getting inspiration from many different cultures. She paints huge four eyed characters, with thick lines, vivid colors, in a very distinctive style.
KASHINK is a surprising person: as most female painters represent female figures, she only paints men, preferably fat and hairy, looking like badass yet sensitive gangsters, alien-looking ogers, or shamans from ancient tribes. Some of them are gay, some of them are killers, some others are both. She’s provocative, creative, constantly challenging. She wears a mustache.
More about KASHINK here
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Julie Faith: Julie Faith is an urban art photographer who focuses primarily on graffiti and street art, the very nature of which is fleeting and therefore must be documented. Her passion and joy are in capturing the unexpected, the spontaneous, the magical. She spends countless hours searching for art hidden in plain sight on the streets of LA and beyond. “There is simply nothing better,” Julie says, “than going into a situation unscripted, eyes wide open, camera in hand, and discovering something glorious.” Julie is captivated and inspired by the work of photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson, Vivian Maier, Martha Cooper, HollowDoubt, and the Lady Art Mafia.
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