I created this illustration for the Burnaway Fundraiser Event this Saturday the 8th from 7-11 at the Granite Room in Castleberry Hill. They’ve asked artists, writers, performers, and designers to explore the theme of Atlanta’s ongoing cycles and history of building, destruction, rebuilding, renewing, and expanding–from Sherman’s march to the sea to pre-Olympics urban renewal, from our short memories of the past to our long-running myths of the future–and what the city has lost and gained through these cycles.

I’ve always thought that Atlanta needed a giant monster. New York has King Kong and Tokyo has Godzilla and now Atlanta or in this case #ATLantis has the Kracken.

We’re releasing our We Are The Process Summer 2012 line very soon and as a sneak peak, we’ve made this skate deck for the 3rd annual “Let The Good Times Roll” skate deck art show. It’s organized by our friends over at Black Sheep Skateshop in Charlotte. It will take place at Twenty-Two Art gallery from August 11-31.

Nike has teamed up with artist, Tom Sachs, in conjunction with his new show, SPACE PROGRAM: MARS, at the Park Avenue Armory in NYC. The show opens today and there will be a pop-up shop celebrating and selling this artisanal capsule collection in limited quantities.

Astronauts must be as fit as an elite athlete to even withstand the rigors of exiting the earth’s atmosphere. Their daily tasks require a substantial effort and endurance. Equally, their equipment must be up to the task of performing under the most unforgiving conditions.
The journey itself would end up inspiring the Tom Sachs: NIKECraft collection – The Mars Yard Shoe, the Trench, The Marsfly Jacket, and the Lightweight Tote. Nike design and Sachs applied materials that have never been used in sportswear, taken from automotive air bags, mainsails for boats and the space suit itself. Each piece is packed with functionality that would prove useful in the voyage through space. Zipper pulls that double as storage containers, paracord that can be fashioned as a tourniquet and embellishments like the periodic table of elements screened on the inside of a jacket – they all merge visual interest with purpose.

Check out key pieces of the collection after the jump.

Airbag Bag

Airbag Bag

Mars Yard Shoe

Mars Yard Shoe

Marsfly Jacket

Marsfly Jacket

Trench

Trench

Trench

I am a car guy. Always have been. On May 10th the world lost one of the greatest car guys ever: Carroll Shelby. Carroll Shelby wasn’t an engineer, never went to college, and, if he’d had it his way, likely would have made a living racing high-performance cars instead of designing and building them. But his simple philosophy on how to build a fast car influenced many designers: “Put a big, powerful engine in a little car,” he once told Popular Mechanics. “That’s where you start.” This is sad news. Rest in peace man.

In the last decade, street-inspired graffiti artwork has slowly begun to stray away from its original home. This often frowned upon style of art, which uses the space on blank city walls as a modern-day art canvas, is now finding a new home, a home off of the streets and into some of the world’s most well renowned and upscale art museums. The best of the best are even selling their work to some high-end art collectors who are paying thousands of dollars for art that only a few years ago was looked down upon.

Here in Atlanta, where graffiti can be found on almost every corner, The High Museum of Art is now home to an exhibit curated by the hugely influential and the greatly respected street artist, KAWS. Born in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1974 with the name of Brian Donnelly, KAWS was a student at the School of Visual Arts in New York where in 1996 he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in illustration. After graduating, KAWS had a short-lived work career at Disney. While he was there he painted backgrounds as a freelance animator. He also had contributed to the animated series Daria, Doug and 101 Dalmatians.

His art career began as a young aspiring graffiti artist in the late 80’s when he began spray painting freight trains and covering the city walls of New Jersey with his name. He later moved to New York City in the 90’s where he would paint on phone booths, bus shelter ads and even high-rise billboards. At first, his modified ads would be left untouched for several months on end. But once the popularity of KAWS’ work began to rise, the pieces were a hot commodity and were being snatched up all over by his many fans. With all of the marketing hype surrounding the persona of KAWS, he had no time to take a break. In the late 90’s he began creating limited edition vinyl toys, which were instantly grabbed up by fans and toy collectors across the globe. His key market appeared to mainly be in Japan, where collecting toys was very common and highly respected. KAWS has also been involved with a few collaborations with different clothing companies like Original Fake, A Bathing Ape and Kung Faux. He has even made snowboards for Burton and different kicks for Nike and Vans. KAWS has painted everywhere from Paris and Berlin to Tokyo and London. KAWS’ ability to blur the line between fine art and street art is a huge reason he has such a wide audience. His sculptures and paintings both have recurring themes in them that anyone can understand in any language. His new exhibit “Down Time” at The High Museum highlights some of KAWS’ older work that he has created.

Walking up to the museum in the Sifly Piazza you are greeted by a 16 ft sculpture of KAWS’ character, Companion. Created by KAWS in 2010, the sculpture portrays a generic grey and white cartoon character with a Mickey Mouse inspired body and gloves whose head is a skull and cross bones. The gloves, that cover Companion’s eyes in a see no evil fashion, have KAWS’ trademark X’s on them. The sculpture gave me a sort of depressing vibe and you almost feel bad for the sad guy. KAWS says Rodin’s The Thinker was an inspiration for Companion’s posture. I get the feeling that Companion is down because even a happy go lucky cartoon gets somber sometimes, right?

Inside at the top Sky Level of the museum the rest of KAWS’ art can be found.

The first room is filled with 27 circle canvases that KAWS has hand painted. The images are close up views of his KAWSBOB prints, a play on SpongeBob SquarePants. The canvases were all close-ups of character eyes crossed out by X’s and views of mouths with tongues out and teeth showing. His use of straight lines is so thorough and precise it’s almost like he’s a robot.

Strolling over to the back room was a more intimate look at some of his smaller pieces, which were still equally amazing.

KAWS’ sketches were an inside look at how his art process as a whole begins. His attention to detail and use of shading is so unique and impressive. There were at least twenty framed sketches, all of which were eye-catching. The sketches ranged from outlines for T-shirt designs to ideas for toys. Most people walked right by the sketches but I highly recommend taking a closer look to actually see how detailed this guy really is.

The tucked away room also features KAWS’ collaboration with fashion photographer David Sims. These photos of celebrities like Kate Moss and Iggy Pop were made even cooler with the help of KAWS. His ghost-like character is hugging Kate’s body with such perfect form that they appear to have been at the actual photo shoot. There were about twelve of these photos displayed on the wall and they led you to a display of a few vinyl toys made by KAWS. There was his take on Pinocchio and Jiminy Crickett with and a few different versions of Companion also. My favorite was the almost cute Darth Vader doll with red X’s for eyes.

KAWS is truly one of our generations top crossover graffiti artist so I would totally recommend going to check out this exhibit while it’s in town. The exhibit ends May 20, so make sure you make some time to check it out.

Charlotte’s Black Sheep Skate Shop has teamed up with Alien Workshop for a limited edition deck that will be released on Friday, December 2nd, 2011. The original artwork was created by Alien Workshop co-founder Mike Hill. To celebrate this release, Black Sheep has teamed up with CharlotteSkate for a photo retrospective of the skateboarding scene in Charlotte featuring over 20 years of local skateboard history from photographers, including Brian Tucker, Richie McCorkle, Jason Waters, and Mark Hansen.

The photo reception is from 6pm to 10pm, but the party lingers on the Camden Block at Dharma Lounge for Hella!! PRSNTS: Care Package charity to benefit Levin’s Children Hospital with DJ Mike the 2600 and BLNGxBDGT.

In a world full of instant gratification, Liu Bolin of Beijing, China has to be one of the most patient visual artists the world has even seen. He has a painstaking process of painting himself with the aid of several assistants and capturing a photograph of himself blending into his environment. Not only is this process of converting himself into a human canvas very painstaking, but I’d imagine his deadlines are very tight, as sunlight and other variables could ultimately affect his final images. More images after the jump.

I love how most of Steven Dixey‘s paintings come paired with a uniquely-sourced, customized frame. This attention to detail sets his work apart from the others. On this particular piece, the frame originally housed a mirror in his grandmother’s house somewhere in South America. You can see Ouroboros in person along with the rest of Dixey’s new collection now at Beep Beep Gallery. The Dixey/Relkin show is up from now until November 26th.

PBR asked us to submit entries for their 2011 PBR Art & Design Shirt-Off contest and we’re asking you to vote! CrowdTogether, the website that’s hosting the contest currently has our entries, but the images are very small and don’t do our graphics justice, so we’ve decided to post them here in full detail.

The submission deadline keeps getting mysteriously pushed back… So much for hitting a deadline! I had my entry ready weeks ago and was waiting until the last minute so as to NOT show my cards. But you can now see what I did and 1-up me if you like. Sigh… I guess it’s really not that serious.

The good news is: if you’d like to submit your own entry, you still have time.

What I’m really asking you to do is to head over and SIGN UP and VOTE for either of the following:
-We Are the Process: Blue Ribbon Pin-Up
-PBR Derby Winner

Check out large versions of our submissions after the jump.

We Are the Process: Blue Ribbon Pin-Up

PBR Derby Winner

Calling all sports nerds! You need to check out Chartball.com and their amazingly designed info-graphics; charting championship seasons of MLB, NBA, & NFL franchises. These posters are visual candy for graphic designers & sports fans alike. Printed on uber-glossy paper, and measuring at 24″ x 36″, they are the perfect gift for any fan wanting to uniquely-commemorate the year their team won it all. The only drawback is that the posters ain’t cheap! They’re $42.95 ea + $9.99 shipping to wherever you are in the US. Tell us your thoughts! Would you spend roughly $53 for special wall piece?

Here’s a direct link to the 1995 Atlanta Braves History poster.