http://chicago.timeout.com/articles/pitchfork-music-festival/87272/bitchpork-festival-2010

I had a holler in Time Out Chicago as one of the acts to see. they said I wouldn’t ever be in a Starbucks compilation. Wait till they hear my Xmas song “Turkey Dance”, a follow up to the “Ham Dance”.  Hee hee.

I am playing Bitchpork on Sunday, July 18.
Pizza Dog is also playing!

Here are our slots:

A 7:40 Pizzadog
O 8:00 daniel lutz (our ex-roomie plays outside)
A 8:20 Pooper

All Aboard Future

For their new album, These Are Powers have collaborated with twelve young artists to conceptualise a bright and hopeful vision for the future.

Text by Kat George   |   Published 04 February 2009

These Are Powers are raising a call to arms for people everywhere to dive into the unknown void that is the future head first, and why not? Their new album, All Aboard Future, teaches that all we have to fear is fear itself, and that we can’t avoid the inevitable. All Aboard Future is a realization that instead of cowering in the present, we should leap forth and embrace the looming question mark that dangles on the horizon with wholehearted enthusiasm. For the new album, These Are Powers asked twelve artists to interpret the theme in each of their respective mediums. Band members Anna, Pat and Bill talk to Dazed Digital about the concept and the result…

Dazed Digital: What is the concept behind ‘All Aboard Future’?
These Are Powers: A rejection of fear about the future. The possibility, potential and rising of a positive and dynamic New Age.

DD: What inspired you to commission artists to interpret the album title?
TAP: We feel fortunate to be in These Are Powers, which is a creative collective that attracts other like-minded people.  We wanted to have a communal project that allowed for fluidity and range of interpretation, like a conversation.

DD: How did you choose the artists involved?
TAP: Since Bill joined the band, we have enjoyed calling both Brooklyn and Chicago home, so naturally a lot of who we asked were from these cities. But if we had more time, I think we would have included more international contributors such as Shouwang, from Beijing.

DD: Why is the intersection of different art mediums so important to ‘All Aboard Future’?
TAP: They are all equally inspiring to us in creating music, and it’s in the intersections of different media that a lot of amazing work is happening. We don’t view These Are Powers like a rock band where maybe each member is defined by the instrument they play. We are constantly expanding and developing our roles as musicians, performers, and artists.

DD: What does ‘All Aboard Future’ sound like?
TAP: The power of people and art turning personal and collective dreams into transformative visions.

DD: What does ‘All Aboard Future’ mean to you?
TAP: The collapse of old systems, sustainable new communities, hope.

We also asked the collaborating artists, mostly based in Brooklyn and Chicago (with the exception of Shou Wang, founder of the NoBeijing scene in China, who we were unfortunately unable to contact ) the searing question “What does All Aboard Future” mean to you:

Holly Stevenson:  All aboard future to me, is a cheer, a positive and inclusive call, to look at the future and go there. All your dreams are in the future, so don’t doddle (all this with a slightly sci-fi novel undertone).

Cody Critcheloe: This is what “All Aboard Future” means to me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qFq03QAn3w

Pooper: ”All Aboard Future” is the altering of people’s perception that the future is dismal or negative… People are looking to seek the truth!  And the truth is that their own destiny, their own thoughts, positive or negative are coming to fruition and that people can achieve their dearest dreams… “All Aboard Future is the mantra”, the positive chant that These Are Powers imprints on it’s listeners Subconscious Minds to change their negative patterns into positive ones.

Alex Valentine: ”All Aboard Future” means collective involvement.  We’re all in this together for better or worse.  Everyone’s aboard.  That’s an exciting proposition for artists or anyone to be aware of.  It leads to imaginative and speculative thinking.  What will the future look like, sound like?  What kind of vehicles will we build to take us there?  Will the future be pliable and open or rigid and closed off?

Jessica Hopper: Your question barely conjures an answer.  I gave them a story I already had that was about fear of the future.

Cody Hudson: “All Aboard Future” means everything right now.

Sarah Wilmer: To me, “All Aboard Future”, is a beautifully strange and positive call to action that refers to possibilities and dynamic ways of being in the world, both light and dark.

Tyler Larson: Let’s see, what it means to me/how it makes me feel- I’ve gotta go with a little mix between a sense of necessity in acquiring a reliable portable water purifier and an increased instinctive desire to acquire more crystals.

Bea Fremderman: I guess, “All Aboard Future” is just a way to say, everything is happening and you better be on board because if you aren’t, then you gotta jump off. It’s kind of like a really intense game of truth or dare. It’s like, we’re playing the game, right? And you can’t do anything about it but prepare for it by picking truth or dare. You know it’s going to be juicy. And hey, you know you’re going to take a risk. Maybe for the better, maybe for the worse. But you know you gotta be able to hang no matter what, cause if you can’t, then you’re just left behind. You know? To me, “All Aboard Future” means ‘are you ready?’ cause there’s no way around it really.

Fay Davis Jeffers: Hope and Action

Hisham Bharoocha: ”All Aboard Future means” we don’t know what the hell is going to happen in the future but let’s get on the train and truck on, make things happen and stay creative.

These Are Powers – All Aboard Future record release party and art show on Friday 13th February 8-10pm with live performance by These Are Powers at 210 Kent Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211

http://www.dazeddigital.com/Music/article/1754/1/All_Aboard_Future

http://streetbonersandtvcarnage.com/streetboners/street-boner-532

I didn’t know what a street boner was.  I figured it out.  Vince Dermody took this picture about a year ago at Rodan at the Gutter Butter/Freegums after party.  Somehow it got in Gavin McInnes’ hands and was posted to the site.  I also don’t really get it.  Can someone explain?

“Framed,” installation view, 2008.
Photo: Mireya Acierto

“Framed” would be noteworthy even if every piece in the show sucked. The majority of the nearly 140 works on display cost less than $100, and nothing is more than $400, a fraction of the lowest prices at most local gallery shows. Yet the participating artists—almost all of whom are Chicagoans—include accomplished professionals, such as Juan Angel Chavez, Mike Genovese and Chris Silva.

Fortunately, the artists in “Framed” pack startling images and ideas into the small wooden frames that give the show its title. (The frames range from 4″ x 6″ to 11″ x 15″; curator Peter Kepha asked the 50-plus artists to create new works for the show or submit existing ones that fit the frames.) Jon Lowenstein’s Slain Lawyer’s Assistant, Guatemala City (2008)—a close-up photograph of a young man lying on an office floor in a pool of blood—intimately conveys the terrifying violence plaguing Guatemala. Violence also overshadows Maria Gaspar’s watercolor of a nude woman brandishing a spear as she stands next to a prone horse. But her work’s abstraction, soft color palette and fine paper yield a different effect on the viewer, suggesting a mythic event.

The other drawings, paintings, collages and photographs in “Framed” tend to be less serious—though several are very strange. Erik DeBat (“RISK”), Blutt and Revise cmw contribute enigmatic works influenced by their street art. Elisa “Pooper” Harkins illustrates a girl’s transformation into a cat. Arielle Bielak puts masks on the subjects of her photographs, which enables her to depict God and the devil sharing a bowl of Lucky Charms. Oscar Arriola photographs a lost-cat flyer, which he strips of any poignancy by replacing the pet’s image with his own cartoon of a grinning feline. And Alta Buden creates a glam portrait with different shades of green glitter. Their fun materials, low-tech techniques and informal subject matter reflect a refreshing spontaneity and willingness to experiment. Maybe nothing here represents great art—but how often can you see (much less buy) really good art for $25?

— Lauren Weinberg

Well, it’s really a girl turning into a fox…a red fox, but that’s o.k. Lauren!

Time Out Chicago / Issue 178 : Jul 24–30, 2008
Public art
Concrete canvas
Risking fines and jail time, street artists install pieces that (temporarily) enhance bleak cityscapes.

By Gretchen Kalwinski

FOREST FOR THE TREES Eskimos and assorted creatures gallivant in this piece titled “A Forest Happening” at Co-Prosperity Sphere at 32nd St and Morgan St.
Photo: Pooper

If you traverse Chicago’s North and Northwest Sides with an eagle eye, you’ll soon start seeing art where it doesn’t belong. On mailboxes, parking signs, abandoned buildings and windows, art ranging from a painting in the shape of a kiwi to a sticker proclaiming YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL to a paste-up of a swooping bird brightens the urban landscape.

The artists installing this “guerilla” art (mostly in the warmer months and the dark of night) call themselves street artists and often hide their identities from cops by using nicknames. Most have jobs as designers, art directors or production artists and don’t consider their art vandalism because it’s usually not on private property; they favor surfaces they believe belong to all of us—signs, newspaper boxes, lampposts and construction sites. But don’t confuse their work with gang graffiti or tagging: It’s illegal, but there’s an altruistic mission to their madness.

Beyond coming from different demographics (most gang taggers are teenagers; the artists we talked to are between 28 and 38), street artists aren’t claiming territory—they’re just trying to beautify the city. One anonymous source bristles at the idea of being mistaken for a gangbanger.

“I’ve never met a street artist in a gang,” he says. “Just because you put up art in the streets doesn’t mean you’re a gang member.”

These artists aren’t busting out gang tags, but that doesn’t protect them from the law; they risk arrest if the police catch them in the act, and Graffiti Blasters or thieves often remove their work. So why risk it?

MEMORIAL DAY Artwork at a West Loop intersection honors SOLVE, a beloved street artist who was recently killed.
Photo: Bonus Saves

For some, it’s activism. “It’s a social/political act first and foremost,” says Chris Silva , who was part of “Tragic Beauty,” a 2005 AV-aerie street-art show (in which art made from scraps of furniture and signs was installed, then reassembled around town postshow). “I have used my street work to promote the concept of love. Even if that message is cryptic in a particular piece, there is love in sharing my work with the public.”

Matt Smith isn’t feeling the love. As spokesman for the Department of Streets and Sanitation (which runs Graffiti Blasters), he’s proud to say the city’s removed 66,568 graffiti tags from January 1 through the end of May 2008. He includes street art in this category. “Vandalism is vandalism…. If you leave your permanent mark of expression on the public way, you are committing a crime,” he says. “If you create art someone can look at, [a viewer] might want to put it in their house. But if you put it on their house, we will remove it.”

Some artists say it’s not so cut-and-dried. “A lot of [my art] is put up with screws, tied to fences or leaned against walls,” says “Sighn,” who specializes in paintings and text-based wood-cut installations in Wicker Park/Bucktown. “If removed, it leaves almost no damage.”

Others don’t think getting busted would be a big deal. “I read through the Chicago municipal code about vandalism,” says “the Grocer,” a producecentric artist who creates stickers and acrylic paintings that he affixes to surfaces with matte medium. “[According to the code,] my work is technically ‘postering,’ not ‘graffiti,’ because I’m not painting something on a wall. There’s a fine, but [it’s] nothing like what graffiti [incurs]—only, like, max $200 an incident.”

The beef these and other covert creators have with laws against their art is that advertisers can plaster the city with messages, but artists can’t employ that medium. “I do [street art] because I don’t want to be another person who allows our world to be filled with what advertisers dictate,” explains a female street artist who goes by “Pooper”.

“We’ve done a lot of wheat-pasting [gluing art on paper onto another surface] on top of other ‘fly posters’ [posters installed illegally by advertisers],” an anonymous artist says. “Going over those doesn’t seem like a bad thing.”

–
Link to article here –>
http://www.timeout.com/chicago/articles/art-design/41311/concrete-canvas

The Five-Year Plan
Breakout Artists 2004-2007: Where are they now?
by Rachel Furnari and David Mark Wise

To mark this fifth edition of Breakout Artists, we decided to check up on the artists we’d featured in the past and see where their careers have taken them.

Elisa Harkins
Still active as a street artist, Harkins has branched out and incorporates this aesthetic into BFF, an art performance she does in collaboration with Hunter Husar of MahJongg, incorporating songs and animations into live music shows. She is now co-gallerist, curator and webmistress at Heaven Gallery. She has been invited to do her latest installation, “Totems,” in St. Louis and New York, but is looking for a residency that will allow her to keep it in Chicago.

http://www.newcitychicago.com/chicago/7680.html

There is a first time for everything. Thanks to Jillian for sending me the linky!

“Styles…I have many/My flows are like candy/And my beats are Good And Plenty/So eat it up/It’s on me”

Funky Buddha Lounge, Chicago

The Juiceboxxx performance at the Funky Buddha Lounge was the highlight of a truly Chicago show. The Milwaukee club rapper, along with DJ Rand Sevilla, Neues Musiker-Kollektiv, and BFF, drew close to 100 experienced party people. The double-bar, nice-sized dance floor, lounge area, and dragon-themed DJ booth only enhanced the warm and fun-loving feel immediately palpable from what little I saw of BFF’s set. BFF’s music doesn’t stray too far from what you’d expect from an artist named Best Friend Forever: danceable pre-recorded beats backed by funny animated projections and sung over by the twenty-something Elisa Harkins. The finale, “Ham Dance,” definitely rocked the hardest.

Between acts, the attention shifted from the stage to the dance floor, but the party never ceased. Jams ranging from “Puttin’ on the Ritz” to Bizarre Inc’s “Playing with Knives” provided the ideal interlude until Juiceboxxx took the stage at 12:45. He emerged from the crowd sporting red-on-red Filas, a tight pair of jeans, and a loose ’90′s T-shirt (later removed), saying, “My name is Juiceboxxx, from Milwaukee. Yeah, I know, that’s pretty close,” followed by some crowd pump-ups.

Juiceboxxx was stationary on stage for maybe the first three seconds of the opener, “Thunder Jam # 5,” and spent the rest of the time in the faces of the crowd, atop a bar stool in the middle of the dance floor, and on his knees amidst the adoring fans. For St. Louis readers, Juiceboxxx’s live performance matches Superfun Yeah Yeah Rocketship’s, although Juiceboxxx uses fewer props, has more sophisticated beats, and his lyrical depth transcends comic book rivals. While introducing song two, “100 MPH,” Juiceboxxx was already warning fans that he had just a few more numbers. “100 MPH” showcased an impressive Chicago-themed freestyle and a well-choreographed microphone slam as the song paused.

This mini-tour is in support of the incredible new single, “Center Stage,” the Dre Skull collaboration and follow-up to “Sweat.” “Riding Hard” seemed to be a new cut to most fans. He finished the five-song set with the anticipated “Sweat” coinciding strangely with a projection of a naked sumo woman. No acts followed Juiceboxxx, but the bar and the music from the DJ booth were enough to keep the Funky Buddha Lounge a full-blown party.

Overall it was a quality show, a serious display of fun art, and a mutual celebration among the artists themselves and between the performers and the diverse crowd, making for a great night. | Joseph O’Fallon

http://www.playbackstl.com/content/view/7388/158/

St. Louis! I’m coming for you and I’ll try to bring Juice and Hunter! I want to do an installation/performance at Open Lot Gallery. Aaron is a nice kid who asked me to do my new “Totems” installation there.

Go here and scroll down –> Aramis’ Art Basel Blog

If you don’t want to scroll down this is what he says

“ Saturday…I hid, cried in the shower and sang Computer Love whilst laying in bed and looking into my dog’s eyes for most of the day. In the evening was David Castillo’s opening and I had a big new painting up in the project room. I tried to smile and be nice but I was sooo tired. I’ve never seen more pretty women look at one of my paintings and not have a lick of energy to flirt with them. At 20/20 I saw some chick named Elisa Harkins give a performance that pretty much blew my mind. She sang songs like “Ham Dance” and “When I’m Not In Miami I Miss It” while wearing pink hot pants and furry bear boots. I don’t think most people knew how to take it. But I fell in love. Unfortunately, she is from Chicago and I think she is obsessed with poop. I need a rendezvous. I need a rendezvous. “

Part 1

Part 2

Miss Carey Rohrbacher created a documentary about me.

I am being featured as one of the twelve artists for Chicago Artists Month.