Wednesday, February 6, 2008

I've been feelin all emo since I wheatpasted you.

Okay, so here is my first post. I am gonna show you guys the wheatpaste I did with Sydney Vicious's help, and show you the new one I am working on. I am also gonna tell you guys about my ideas for some new posters I have and hope you can help be come to a consensus on which project I should embark on.

First: Leyla - Wheatpaste - Week 1

I decided that I want to try to do a wheatpaste or stencil a week, and post it around town somewhere. I am currently working on my Tegan and Sara multilayer stencil project (more details on that later), so I decided wheat pastes would be a lot easier for now.
This wheat paste is called Leyla. I modeled her body off of a God's Girl by the same name, and I think she is pretty fantastic. We (Me and Sydney Vicious) posted it on a metal box before you get onto a major highway. I chose this spot, because I get to see her everyday as I drive by.


Originally she was all kinds of bright pinks and purples, which I chose because it matched the whimsical motif of the image, but it happened to rain before the wheat paste dried having an amazing effect on the cheap washable markers I used (Hey, I am not gonna use my prismacolors on something that large). That is what gave her that amazing splashy grungy look.


As you can see she is quite "hardcore".

What the fuck does it mean? Well, unlike most people I will tell you straight up what I was thinking when I create a piece, that is if it is something I can explain. With this piece I was basically trying to exorcise some demons that I have about leaving ideas unexplored. If you are a creative individual like myself, you will know what I am talking about here. I always have great ideas, but I never write them down or follow up on them. This just kind of makes me sad at the sheer number of awesome ideas that i have missed out on or haven't followed through with (ala Paper Paris, Zazie's stop animation film), and it makes me regret having not accomplished those ideas. So I pasted this on my drive so I will always be reminded to follow up with my ideas and not let them continue to pass me by or sit on them like an egg waiting to hatch.

Yes, there is a reason that she has no face, and that reason is because I wanted anyone to be able to associate with her. That is also why I left her skin the color of the paper. She has no face, no race, and really no identifiable sex (I mean unless you count those heels). I am not trying to be pretentious or have a superiority complex, but sometimes I feel street art caters to one particular sub-culture or race. Thus I want to make things that anyone can relate too. Whether it be my creatures or my portraits I want people to be able to see them as people and not by the color of their skin or their gender.

I miss Leyla.


Preview of Week 2 - Wheat paste - Otis


Otis is a creature I created last night. He is a blob of sorts created from cigarette smoke. I like him. I decided to show him to you before I post him because you can see his coloration. When I make my next post there is no telling what he will look like after the weather and other conditions have had at him. I will give you all the meanings and stuff for him in my next post.

Ideas for the future:
Okay so I want to do a series of posters. I have two ideas (I will eventually do both but I need to pick one to start with):
(a) My first idea is I want to do portrait posters of nine different girls (16 x 20), and all of them would have some how inspired me. The pros of this project are is that I get to work on my portraiture of my already favorite subjects. The cons are I don't really know if they want their portraits pasted all over my town, but three of them are famous so I don't think they would mind.

(b)My second idea is to do a bunch of self portraits. The pros of this are that i get to work on drawing the thing I am worst at drawing. The cons are that I am posting pictures of myself on the walls of my town. I think this is a bad idea but it has such potential as does the other one.

So give me some feed back. I will decide next week, which one I want to do. That is all for today. More posts when Tegan and Sara are done, or Otis goes up. My next two wheat paste posters are: (1) a girl with a tulip growing from her head and (2) a poster based on the lyrics "You say I am overdramatic, but you are the one with the scars up and down your arm" (Ten points to the person who knows the band.)

4 comments:

Andrew Rockway said...

Walt, ur artin'. Do the influential girl compilation.

Walt said...

Thanks Andy.

Alex said...

Dude fucking awesome. I love this. You're tru punx to the max. I have a question for you about putting stuff up. Are you afraid of being seen or caught? Like did you paste it up at night or did you go like in blazing daylight in the afternoon?

Walt said...

No I am not afraid of being caught anymore. With wheatpaste you can just take it down if you are caught right away, but I still do it at night because it makes it feel cooler. If I need to I will post one in broad daylight but most of the time night time works best. I mean there aren't as many car and I don't have to worry so much about cops. Alex, you didn't pick a choice. A or B.