Posts tagged with diy
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Wall Dogs: The Midair Muralists Who Paint New York
It’s 8am in Soho, the thermometer reads just above freezing, and the sky is bleak. Taxis splash down the streets; New Yorkers stride with their heads down, leaping over puddles, carelessly bumping into each other. Everyone wants to get out of the cold, out of the rain, into the warmth.
Ten stories above — on a long, skinny platform hanging from the facade of a building at Canal and Mercer in downtown Manhattan — it’s a different story. Climbers’ ropes secured around their torsos, Jason Coatney and Armando Balmaceda stand in a melange of open paint cans and brushes. These two muralists of Colossal Media, the largest hand-painted advertising company in America, are heavily layered in sweatshirts and raincoats. But in this industry, c’est la vie. Paintbrushes in their fingerless-gloved hands, earbuds in their ears — “I like to start out with Miles Davis in the morning,” Coatney smiles, his breath visible in the frigid air — they begin yet another workday in the sky.
It’s the third morning at this location, and the duo are on track, despite the rain, to complete a 30x18-foot mural — commissioned by Etsy to advertise a holiday pop-up shop — by the next evening’s deadline. Coatney carefully bends down, dipping the tip of his brush into a ruddy orange. “It’s a really weird mix of things that makes an artist like a wall dog,” he says.
Some say the origins of the term is derogatory. “Wall dogs” were the unofficial names of the men who were, almost literally, chained to outdoor facades to hand paint the enormous signs still decorating the faded exteriors of today’s landmarked buildings. But these days, the name is a sign of professional pride.
Before vinyl posters printed and hung by a couple guys and a crane became the norm, this was the way big-city advertising was done. Common practice in the decades before the Great Depression, painting these signs took days, perhaps weeks, of hard labor and skills that took years to hone.
Despite a couple updates (they now use motorized pulley systems to raise the building rigs, instead of pulling them up themselves), Colossal is carrying on the tradition, just as their predecessors did more than a century before. Paul Lindahl and Adrian Moeller cofounded the company nine years ago (a third cofounder tragically passed away in a subway accident) by pooling together their savings, a few thousand dollars, and leasing a large wall on 14th Street and 6th Avenue. “Hanging banners is faster; there are less variables. Everyone just told us to take a hike,” recalls Lindahl. Finally, months later, someone bit –- Rockstar Games, of Grand Theft Auto fame -– and they were so taken with the medium that they commissioned Colossal to paint 30 walls.
Moeller chuckles proudly as he talks about the past. “For the first few jobs, we couldn’t even afford a pounce machine,” the little contraption that burns holes into the life-size sketch they make for each job. They’ll spread this out and rub it with charcoal dust to get a faint outline when they’re on the rig, to help get the proportions right. “So Paul used a thumbtack. You can imagine, that’s a lot of holes to make for a 20x30 foot wall.”
No more thumbtacks. Today, Colossal is a $10 million company, with over 150 walls around the country and 30 wall dogs to fill them. “It takes years and years of practice,” emphasizes Coatney, still on the Etsy rig, who’s been doing this for 15 years. The rain has abated, and he’s added the finishing touches to the “always handpaint” lettering of the Colossal insignia. He pauses, his brush hovering in midair. “There are a lot of talented people waiting to get up here, you know? A lot of talented people.”
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The Creators of NYC: Geometric Artist Aakash Nihalani
Josh Wool spent a decade as an executive chef, opening restaurants across the south. But all that changed in 2010, when the carpal tunnel in his hands meant he could no longer work. To keep from going stir crazy, he picked up a camera and found his next calling. Two years, thousands of portraits, and a move to New York later, Wool is documenting the people who inspire him on a daily basis. Welcome to Creators of NYC.
Aakash Nihalani
Aakash Nihalani is at the forefront of the next generation of modern artists working in New York. His work in spray paint and tape can be found not only on the walls of private collectors but in and around the streets of New York. I met up with Aakash in his Williamsburg studio, where he was preparing for a solo show.
How do you describe your art?
It’s hard … I usually direct people to look up an image on their phone. But I think at the barest, the work is about perspective, playing with our idea of three-dimensional space within a two-dimensional plane using tape as my primary medium, often in urban environments.
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The Creators of NYC: Leather Craftsmen Billykirk
Josh Wool spent a decade as an executive chef, opening restaurants across the south. But all that changed in 2010, when the carpal tunnel in his hands meant he could no longer work. To keep from going stir crazy, he picked up a camera and found his next calling. Two years, thousands of portraits, and a move to New York later, Wool is documenting the people who inspire him on a daily basis. Welcome to Creators of NYC.
Billykirk
A simple, well-worn leather watch strap was the catalyst for brothers Kirk and Chris Bray to start a business. In the last decade they took an idea and built it into a thriving leather goods company called Billykirk, recently transplanted from LA. Their focus is on craftsmanship and quality, and it shows in their products. I first met the duo at the Pop-Up Flea Market in Chelsea, and they invited me out to their workshop just across the river.
Billykirk is making hard goods meant to stand the test of time, in an age where everything is disposable. What’s your philosophy on that?
Chris Bray: At a certain point you start to think about a product’s worth. Saving money versus an item’s longevity becomes questioned. I think we would all agree that, on the surface, saving money makes sense. However, peel back the onion and one quickly realizes that while you may get that initial satisfaction of saving a buck on a cheap suit or frying pan, that suit or frying pan will inevitably have a short life.
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The Pumpkin Maestros
The year is 1992, and Marc Evan and Chris Soria are sitting next to each other in sixth-grade Spanish class. They don’t know it yet, but these two 12-year-olds are going to become best friends. They’re going to construct epic haunted houses each year, petrifying parents more than peers. They’re going to attend an artsy high school, study illustration at Parsons, grow up, and move to Brooklyn. They’re going to freelance and bartend and, per their favorite holiday, casually carve some pumpkins for bosses and friends. And then the Yankees are going to put in a double-digit order, and Maniac Pumpkin Carvers will be born.
Every year, in early September, the orders begin flooding in. Pumpkins are sourced from an organic farm just a couple hours from their childhood home. Clients range from colossal enterprises like CitiBank, Yahoo, and the BBC, to devoted girlfriends wanting a carving of their boyfriends’ face.
And all those pumpkin seeds? “Oh, we save them. We give them to our friends to roast. You can imagine, it’s a lot of seeds, but we’re not really getting into the business of selling roasted seeds, too.” And least, not yet.
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Brick House: Lego Legend Sean Kenney
Brooklyn resident Sean Kenney’s day job is as much avocation as vocation: He’s an artist who builds and create sculptures with Lego bricks. Kenney, who has studios in Queens, is a “Lego Certified Professional” — a designation currently bestowed on only 12 other people worldwide. His creations range from life-size mosaics to 10-foot-tall buildings, and just about everything in between.
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An All-Tumblr Fashion Affair
How far-reaching is Tumblr’s fashion community? Well, it’s certainly big enough to pull together an all-Tumblr fashion photo shoot. Earlier this summer, we invited an all-star Tumblr cast for a photo shoot, every aspect of which — from talent to garment — can be found on our wondrous dashboards. The team commenced the adventure on rooftop of Tumblr HQ, in downtown Manhattan, then strolled through the Gramercy Park Hotel, and ended the night on the streets of Tudor City. We hope you enjoy the portfolio — and behind the scenes footage — as much we loved producing it.
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